The parties themselves are not real, since thousands of voters lean to the left merely to express their discontent; but they would desert the Social Democrats at once did they think there was a chance of real governing power for them. A small industrial was warned of the awful things that would happen did the Socialists come into power. "Ah," he replied, "but the government would not permit that!" What has the press to chronicle with insistence and with dignity of such flabby political and social conditions? The press may be, and often is, annoying, as mosquitoes are annoying, but its campaigns are dangerous to nobody. As I write, it is hard to believe that within a few days the members of a new Reichstag are to be elected. There are political meetings, it is true, there are articles and editorials in the newspapers, there is some languid discussion at dinner-tables and in society, but there is a sense of unreality about it all, as though men were thinking: Nothing of grave importance can happen in any case! We shall have something to say farther on of political Germany; here it suffices to say that the press of Germany betrays in its political writing that it is dealing with shadows, not with realities. "They have been at a great feast of language, and stolen the scraps," that's all. The snarling Panther that was sent to Agadir, teeth and claws showing, came back looking like an adventurous tomcat that wished only to hide itself meekly in its accustomed haunts; and its unobtrusive bearing seemed to say, the less said about the matter the better. What a storm of obloquy would have burst upon such inept diplomacy in America, or in England, or even in France. Not so here. Everybody was sore and sorry, but the newspapers and the journalists could raise no protest that counted. It is all explained by the fact that the people do not govern, have nothing to do with the whip or the reins, nor have they any constitutional way of changing coachmen, or of getting possession of whip and reins; and hooting at the driver, and jeering at the tangled whip-lash and awkwardly held reins, is poor-spirited business. Only one political writer, Harden, does it with any effect, and his pen is said to have upset the Caprivi government. As one reads the newspapers day by day, and the weekly and monthly journals, it becomes apparent that the German imagines he has done something when he has had an idea; just as the Frenchman imagines he has done something when he has made an epigram. We are less given either to thinking or phrasing, and far less gifted in these directions than either Germans or Frenchmen, and perhaps that is the reason we have actually done so much more politically. We do things for lack of something better to do, while our neighbors find real pleasure in their dreams, and take great pride in their epigrams.