The most obvious characteristic of a highly civilized man is his willingness to keep his word, at whatever cost to himself. For reasons satisfactory to itself, Germany broke its pledge to respect the neutrality of Luxemburg and of Belgium. It is another characteristic of civilization to cherish the works of art which have been bequeathed to us by the past. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany destroyed Louvain, more or less completely. It is a final characteristic of civilized man to be humane and to refrain from ill-treating the blameless. For reasons satisfactory to itself Germany dropped bombs in the unbesieged City of Antwerp and caused the death of innocent women and children. Here are three instances where German culture has been tested and found wanting.
The Standard Bearer of Culture.
But it may be urged that war has its own exigencies and that these three instances of uncivilized conduct partook of the nature of military necessities. Turning from the outrages of war to the triumphs of peace, let us make a disinterested attempt to find out just what foundation there may be for the implicit assertion that Germany is the standard bearer of civilization.
Perhaps it is too petty to point out that manners are the outward and visible sign of civilization, and that in this respect the Germans have not yet attained to the standard set by the French and the English. But it is not insignificant to record that the Germans alone retain a barbaric mediaeval alphabet, while the rest of Western Europe has adopted the more legible and more graceful Roman letter; and it is not unimportant to note that German press style is cumbrous and uncouth.
Taken collectively, these things seem to show German culture is a little lacking in the social instinct, the desire to make things easy and pleasant for others. It is this social instinct which is the dominating influence in French civilization and which has given to French civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their point of view, that we may ascribe the failure of German diplomacy, a failure which has left her almost without a friend in her hour of need.
And success in diplomacy is one of the supreme tests of civilization.
The claim asserted explicity or implicitly in behalf of German culture seems to be based on the belief that the Germans are leaders in the arts and in the sciences. So far as the art of war is concerned there is no need today to dispute the German claim. It is to the preparation for war that Prussia has devoted its utmost energy for half a century--in fact, ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is also no need to cavil.
But what about the other and more purely intellectual arts? How many are the contemporary painters and sculptors and architects of Germany who have succeeded in winning the cosmopolitan reputation which has been the reward of a score of the artists of France and of half a dozen of the artists of America?
Since Goethe, Who?
When we consider the art of letters we find a similar condition. Germany has had philosophers and historians of high rank; but in pure literature, in what used to be called "belles-lettres," from the death of Goethe in 1832 to the advent of the younger generation of dramatists, Sudermann and Hauptmann and the rest, in the final decade of the nineteenth century--that is to say, for a period of nearly sixty years--only one German author succeeded in winning a worldwide celebrity--and Heine was a Hebrew, who died in Paris, out of favor with his countrymen, perhaps because he had been unceasing in calling attention to the deficiencies of German culture. There were in Germany many writers who appealed strongly to their fellow-countrymen, but except only the solitary Heine no German writer attained to the international fame achieved by Cooper and by Poe, by Walt Whitman and by Mark Twain. And it was during these threescore years of literary aridity in Germany that there was a superb literary fecundity in Great Britain and in France, and that each of these countries produced at least a score of authors whose names are known throughout the world. Even sparsely settled Scandinavia brought forth a triumvirate, Bjornsen, Ibsen, and Brandes, without compeers in Germany. And from Russia the fame of Turgenef and of Tolstoy spread abroad a knowledge of the heart and mind of a great people who are denounced by Germans as barbarous.
It is probably in the field of science, pure and applied, that the defenders of the supremacy of German culture would take their last stand. That the German contribution to science has been important is indisputable; yet it is equally indisputable that the two dominating scientific leaders of the second half of the nineteenth century are Darwin and Pasteur. It is in chemistry that the Germans have been pioneers; yet the greatest of modern chemists is Mendeleef. It was Hertz who made the discovery which is the foundation of Marconi's invention; but although not a few valuable discoveries are to be credited to the Germans, perhaps almost as many as to either the French or the British, the German contribution in the field of invention, in the practical application of scientific discovery, has been less than that of France, less than that of Great Britain, and less than that of the United States. The Germans contributed little or nothing to the development of the railroad, the steamboat, the automobile, the aeroplane, the telegraph, the telephone, the phonograph, the photograph, the moving picture, the electric light, the sewing machine, and the reaper and binder. Even those dread instruments of war, the revolver and the machine gun, the turreted ship, the torpedo, and the submarine, are not due to the military ardor of the Germans. It would seem as though the Germans had been lacking in the inventiveness which is so marked a feature of our modern civilization.
In this inquiry there has been no desire to deny the value of the German contributions to the arts and to the sciences. These contributions are known to all; they speak for themselves; they redound to the honor of German culture; and for them, whatever may be their number, the other nations of the world are eternally indebted to Germany. But these German contributions are neither important enough nor numerous enough to justify the assumption that German culture is superior or that Germany is entitled to think herself the supreme leader of the arts and of the sciences. No one nation can claim this lofty position, although few would be so bold as to deny the superior achievement of the French in the fine arts and of the English in pure science.
Nations are never accepted by other nations at their own valuation; and the Germans need not be surprised that we are now astonished to find them asserting their natural self-appreciation, with the apparent expectation that it will pass unchallenged. The world owes a debt to modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German, speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character; and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of German culture.
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.
Culture vs. Kultur
By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the broadest sense--its successful achievement in civil and military administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of individuals--whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be sacrificed to it--but of nations.
Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. The open-mindedness and imagination implied in culture are potentially destructive to a highly organized national Kultur. A cultured leader is generally too much alive to the point of view of his rival to be a wholly convinced partisan. Hence he lacks the intensity, drive, and narrowness that make for competitive success. He keeps his place in the sun not by masterfully overriding others, but by a series of delicate compromises which reconcile the apparently conflicting claims. Moreover, he has too great a respect for the differences between men's gifts to formulate any rigid plan which, requires for its execution a strictly regimented humanity. He will sacrifice a little efficiency that life may be more various, rich, and delightful.
Hence nations with cultured leaders have generally been beaten by those whose leaders had merely Kultur. The Spartans and Macedonians had abundant Kultur; they generally beat the Athenians, who had merely very high culture. The Romans had Kultur, and the Hellenistic world wore their yoke. Germany unquestionably has admirable Kultur, and none of the mere cultured nations who are leagued against her could hope to beat her singly.
She Does Not Desire Culture.
On the other hand, Germany has singularly little culture, has less than she had a hundred years ago, does not apparently desire it. She has willingly sacrificed the culture of a few leading individuals to the Kultur of the empire as a whole. Thus it is not surprising that Germany, as measured by the production of cultured individuals, takes a very low place today. Not only France and England, Italy and Spain, but also Russia and America, may fairly claim a higher degree of culture. Here the fetich of German scholarship should not deceive us. Culture--a balanced and humanized state of mind--is only remotely connected with scholarship or even with education. A Spanish peasant or an Italian waiter may have finer culture than a German university professor. And in the field of scholarship, Germany is in the main chiefly laborious, accurate, and small-minded. Her scholarship is related not to culture, but is a minor expression of Kultur. Such scholarly men of letters as Darwin, Huxley, Renan, Taine, Boissier, Gaston Paris, Menendez y Pelayo, Francis J. Child, Germany used to produce in the days of the Grimms and Schlegels. She rarely does so now. Her culture has been swallowed up in her Kultur.
The claim of Germany to realize her Kultur at the expense of her neighbors is at first sight plausible. Her Kultur is unquestionably higher than theirs. She has a sharply realized idea of the State, and she has justified it largely in practice. In a certain patience, thoroughness, and perfection of political organization her pre-eminence is unquestionable. The tone of her apologists shows amazement and indignation over the fact that the world, so far from welcoming the extension of German Kultur, is actively hostile to that ambition. Yet, even if it be conceded that Germany's Kultur is wholly good for herself--surely a debatable proposition--it does not follow that it is or would be a universal benefit. Nations may deliberately and legitimately prefer their culture, with its admitted disadvantages, to the Kultur which pleases Germany. England is often mocked for the way in which she "muddles through" successive perils, yet she may feel that the stereotyping of her people in a rigid administrative frame might be too high a price to pay for constant preparedness. As for us Americans, we have made a virtue, perhaps overdone it, of avoiding a mechanical Kultur. We prefer the greatest freedom for the individual to the perfectly regimented state. We will move toward culture and cheerfully assume the necessary risks of the process.
Unlovely and Impressive.
In a broader view, the war may be regarded as a contest between the metallic, half-mechanical Kultur of Prussianized Germany and the more flexible civilizations of States that have inherited culture or aspire to it. Germany herself has rejected the humane and somewhat hazardous ideal of culture, so she cannot wonder or complain when she sees that the culture of the world is almost unanimously hostile to her. There is no quarrel with German Kultur itself; merely a feeling that it has its drawbacks, that it is, on the whole, as unlovely as it is impressive, that there is quite enough of it in the world already, and that its broad extension would be disastrous.
Meanwhile the nations of culture have much to learn from Germany's Kultur. Flexibility may mean weakness. The United States, for example, could well have a standing army and an army reserve commensurate with its history and prospects without incurring any danger of militarism.
There is, finally, some disadvantage in being merely a culture nation, for such a nation can add a large measure of Kultur without belying itself. On the contrary, so highly developed a Kultur nation as the German Empire puts itself in a position where it is almost impossible to acquire any considerable degree of culture. Culture is the enemy of such a state--it must remain in the Spartan or Macedonian stage. Rome began to decline as soon as Hellenistic culture got the ascendency over the old Latin Kultur. Kultur, in short, galvanizes; culture liberates. A survey of modern Germany hardly warrants a desire for her world dominion.
If any reader is still unclear about the distinction between culture and Kultur, let him examine his most-gifted friends as to their sympathies in the present war, choosing, of course, persons who have no racial reasons for taking sides. Almost without exception he will find they fall into two sharply defined classes. The mental characteristics of his pro-German friends will pretty certainly illustrate Kultur quite concretely, while he may read the meaning of culture in his more-gifted friends who favor the Allies.
FRANK JEWETT MATHER, Jr.
Princeton, Nov. 6, 1914.
The Trespass in Belgium
By John Grier Hibben.
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Some time ago I received with many others an appeal "To the Civilized World!" from certain distinguished representatives of German science and art. I at once wrote to Prof. Eucken, whom I know, and who is one of the signers of this document. I wished to draw his attention particularly to the second statement of this appeal, which is as follows:
It is not true that we trespassed in neutral Belgium. It has been proved that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so,
and I stated to him that "It is naturally to be expected of a group of scholars that where reference is made to proof, some citation should be given both of the sources of the proof and of its nature. I am sure you will agree with me that it is of the very essence of scholarly method in the treatment of any subject whatsoever that one should cite his authority as regards every important and significant statement that is made. No one of the distinguished group of scholars signing their names to this letter would think of writing an article in his own specialty and not add in the text or in a footnote the complete list of authorities for his several assertions.
"In your appeal, however, the most important statement by far which you make, and the one bearing most intimately upon the honor and integrity of your nation, is left without even the attempt to support it, save the bare assertion by you and your colleagues. In the interests of a fair understanding of Germany's position, I feel that it is incumbent upon you to give us who are under such a deep debt of gratitude to German scholarship in our own lives the opportunity of a full knowledge of all the facts which definitely bear upon this present situation."
At the time of writing Prof. Eucken, I also wrote to a friend of mine, Dr. A.E. Shipley, the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, England, asking him if he could get for me some authoritative statement from the British Foreign Office concerning the assertion that "it has been proved that France and England had resolved on such a trespass, and it has likewise been proved that Belgium had agreed to their doing so." I have just received a letter from Mr. Shipley, stating that Lord Haldane had prepared a statement in answer to this question. Thinking that your readers would be interested in seeing this, I am sending it to you.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN GRIER HIBBEN.
Princeton, N.J., Nov. 24, 1914.
_(Inclosure from Lord Haldane to the Master of Christ's College, Cambridge.)_
10 Downing St., Whitehall, S.W., Nov. 14.
Dear Master of Christ's: The inclosed memoranda have been specially prepared for me by the Foreign Office in answer to your question. Yours truly,