Here is an example. On one occasion I, a prisoner of war, roundly reprimanded a sentry, reproaching him with disobedience to orders. Secretly I was laughing, but the sentry trembled. Standing at attention as if confronted by an officer, he trembled before the majesty of the command, the _Befehl_. I had issued an order, and that is why he stood to attention; there he was, submissive, stupefied with willingness; he forgot that I was a Frenchman, subject to his orders, that the regulations forbade me to speak to him, that he should have charged bayonet and touched me with the steel, even run me through. No, I had issued an order; the man who commands, who gives a _Befehl_, is sacrosanct for the German. The reason is that the German has never emerged from private life. He lives in his house, on his land, in his factory, his tavern, his church; he lives with his family, with a few friends, with his professional associates. He makes his life there as agreeable as possible; he is an able domestic economist, knowing well how to adorn his residence, his table, his savings bank. The currents of modern life, socialism, liberalism, materialism, the religion of comfort and of hygiene, have developed his practical aptitudes to an unimaginable extent, to a degree unsuspected in France. But no current of modern life has induced him to touch the holy of holies, the government; to discuss the constitution, the bureaucracy, or the army; to investigate the essential problems of political life. Even the boldest among them does not lose his veneration for constituted authority. In fine, there is but one domain in which he is free, that of economic life. Here, therefore, his energy is concentrated, and within this sphere his thoughts are confined. Here he is master; here none can equal him in perseverance and tenacity; here he risks everything and makes trial of everything; unceasingly he innovates; he is hindered by no prejudice: the poverty of recent days spurs him on and makes wealth seem marvellously appetizing; in a decade he transforms a province; in three decades he makes of Germany a fragment of America in the heart of Europe. We are forced to recognize that Germany is the “Marius’s mule” of the economic world. But this suffices him. Formerly he possessed the clouds, but he has bartered the inheritance for the markets of the world. He boasted of being Greek, but he is now content to be Carthaginian. He makes money, and he knows nothing more.