As the Germans are not yet political animals, so their newspapers reflect an artificial political enthusiasm. Society, too, is as little organized as politics. There are no great figures in their social world. A Beau Brummel, a d'Orsay, a Lady Palmerston, a Lady Londonderry, a Duke of Devonshire, a Gladstone, a Disraeli, a Rosebery, would be impossible in Germany, especially if they were in opposition to the party in power. When a chancellor or other minister is dismissed by the Kaiser, he simply disappears. He does not add to the weight of the opposition, but ceases to exist politically. This has two bad results: it does not strengthen the criticism of the administration, and it makes the office-holder very loath to leave office, and to surrender his power. An ex-cabinet officer in America or in England remains a valuable critic, but an ex-chancellor in Germany becomes a social recluse, a political Trappist. Even the leading political figures are after all merely shadowy servants of the Emperor. They represent neither themselves nor the people, and such subserviency kills independence and leaves us with mediocrities gesticulating in the dark, and making phrases in a vacuum. There are, it is true, charming hostesses in Berlin, and ladies who gather in their drawing-rooms all that is most interesting in the intellectual and political life of the day; but they are almost without exception obedient to the traditional officialdom, leaning upon a favor that is at times erratic, and without the daring of independence which is the salt of all real personality. There are, too, country-houses. One castle in Bavaria, how well I remember it, and the accomplished charm of its owner, who had made its grandeur cosey, a feat, indeed! But all this is detached from the real life of the nation, which is forever taking its cue from the court, leaving any independent or imposing social and political life benumbed and without vitality. There is no free and stalwart opposition, no centres of power; and much as one tires of the incessant and feverish strife political and social at home, one returns to it taking a long breath of the free air after this hot-house atmosphere, where the thermometer is regulated by the wishes of an autocrat. The press necessarily reflects these conditions. The Social Democrats, divided into many small parties, and the Agrarians and Ultramontanes, divided as well, give the press no single point of leverage. These political parties wrangle among themselves over the dish of votes, but what is put into the dish comes from a master over whom they have no control. If they upset the dish they are turned out as they were in 1878, 1887, 1893, and 1907, and when they return they are better behaved.