IF a preliminary glance at Switzerland suggested to me a high individuality, primarily Teutonic but secondarily national and distinctive¹, all I saw afterwards in Germany and Holland with which I contrasted it, confirmed my first impression. I believe that the Swiss, for all that they speak the German language and have an architecture that certainly has much in common with that of medieval Germany, are yet of markedly diverging³ character. They struck me in the main as colder, more taciturn, more introspective and less flamboyant⁴ than the Germans. The rank and file, in so far as I could see, were extremely sparing, saving, reserved. They reminded me more of such Austrians and Tyrolians as I have known, than of Germans. They were thinner, livelier in their actions, not so lusty nor yet so aggressive.
 
The new architecture which I saw between Lucerne and the German frontier reminded me of much of that which one sees in northern Ohio and Indiana and southern Michigan. There are still traces of the over-elaborate curlicue type of structure and decoration so interesting as being representative of medieval Teutonic life, but not much. The new manufacturing towns were very clean and spruce with modern factory buildings of the latest almost-all-glass type; and churches and public buildings, obviously an improvement or an attempt at improvement on older Swiss and Teutonic ideals, were everywhere apparent. Lucerne itself is divided into an old section, honored and preserved for its historic and commercial value, as being attractive to travelers; a new425 section, crowded with stores, tenements⁵ and apartments of the latest German and American type; and a hotel section, filled with large Anglicized and Parisianized structures, esplanades, small lounging squares and the like. I never bothered to look at Thorwaldsen’s famous lion. One look at a photograph years ago alienated⁶ me forever.
 
I had an interesting final talk on the morning of my departure from Lucerne with the resident manager of the hotel who was only one of many employees of a company that controlled, so he told me, hotels in Berlin, Frankfort, Paris, Rome and London. He had formerly⁷ been resident manager of a hotel in Frankfort, the one to which I was going, and said that he might be transferred any time to some other one. He was the man, as I learned, whom I had seen rowing on the lake the first morning I sat out on my balcony—the one whom the wild ducks followed.
 
“I saw you,” I said as I paid my bill, “out rowing on the lake the other morning. I should say that was pleasant exercise.”
 
“I always do it,” he said very cheerfully. He was a tall, pale, meditative⁸ man with a smooth, longish, waxen countenance⁹ and very dark hair. He was the last word as to toilet and courtesy. “I am glad to have the chance. I love nature.”
 
“Are those wild ducks I see on the lake flying about?”
 
“Oh, yes. We have lots of them. They are not allowed to be shot. That’s why they come here. We have gulls¹⁰, too. There is a whole flock of gulls that comes here every winter. I feed them right out here at the dock every day.”
 
“Why, where can they come from?” I asked. “This is a long way from the sea.”
 
“I know it,” he replied. “It is strange. They come426 over the Alps from the Mediterranean¹¹ I suppose. You will see them on the Rhine, too, if you go there. I don’t know. They come though. Sometimes they leave for four or five days or a week, but they always come back. The captain of the steamer tells me he thinks they go to some other lake. They know me though. When they come back in the fall and I go out to feed them they make a great fuss.”
 
“They are the same gulls, then?”
 
“The very same.”
 
I had to smile.
 
“Those two ducks are great friends of mine, too,” he went on, referring to the two I had seen following him. “They always come up to the dock when I come out and when I come back from my row they come again. Oh, they make a great clatter¹².”
 
He looked at me and smiled in a pleased way.
 
The train which I boarded at Lucerne was a through express from Milan to Frankfort with special cars for Paris and Berlin. It was crowded with Germans of a ruddy, solid variety, radiating health, warmth, assurance, defiance¹³. I never saw a more marked contrast than existed between these travelers on the train and the local Swiss outside. The latter seemed much paler and less forceful by contrast, though not less intellectual and certainly more refined.
 
One stout¹⁴, German lady, with something like eighteen packages, had made a veritable express room of her second-class compartment¹⁵. The average traveler, entitled to a seat beside her, would take one look at her defenses and pass on. She was barricaded¹⁶ beyond any hope of successful attack.
 
I watched interestedly to see how the character of the people, soil and climate would change as we crossed427 the frontier into Germany. Every other country I had entered had presented a great contrast to the last. After passing fifteen or twenty Swiss towns and small cities, perhaps more, we finally reached Basle and there the crew was changed. I did not know it, being busy thinking of other things, until an immense, rotund, guttural-voiced conductor appeared at the door and wanted to know if I was bound for Frankfort. I looked out. It was just as I expected: another world and another atmosphere had been substituted for that of Switzerland. Already the cars and depot¹⁷ platforms were different, heavier I thought, more pretentious¹⁸. Heavy German porters (packträger) were in evidence. The cars, the vast majority of them here, bore the label of Imperial Germany—the wide-winged, black eagle with the crown above it, painted against a pinkish-white background, with the inscription¹⁹ “Kaiserlicher Deutsche Post.” A station-master, erect²⁰ as a soldier, very large, with splendiferous parted whiskers, arrayed in a blue uniform and cap, regulated the departure of trains. The “Uscita” and “Entrata” of Italy here became “Eingang” and “Ausgang,” and the “Bagaglia” of every Italian station was here “Gepäck.” The endless German “Verboten,” and “Es ist untersagt” also came into evidence. We rolled out into a wide, open, flat, mountainless plain with only the thin poplars of France in evidence and no waterways of any kind, and then I knew that Switzerland was truly no more.
 
If you want to see how the lesser²¹ Teutonic countries vary from this greater one, the dominant²² German Empire, pass this way from Switzerland into Germany, or from Germany into Holland. At Basle, as I have said, we left the mountains for once and for all. I saw but few frozen peaks after Lucerne. As we approached Basle they seemed to grow less and less428 and beyond that we entered a flat plain, as flat as Kansas and as arable²³ as the Mississippi Valley, which stretched unbroken from Basle to Frankfort and from Frankfort to Berlin. Judging from what I saw the major part of Germany is a vast prairie, as flat as a pancake and as thickly strewn with orderly, new, bright forceful towns as England is with quaint²⁴ ones.
 
However, now that I was here, I observed that it was just these qualities which make Germany powerful and the others weak. Such thoroughness, such force, such universal superintendence! Truly it is amazing. Once you are across the border, if you are at all sensitive to national or individual personalities²⁵ you can feel it, vital, glowing, entirely²⁶ superior and more ominous²⁷ than that of Switzerland, or Italy, and often less pleasant. It is very much like the heat and glow of a furnace. Germany is a great forge or workshop. It resounds²⁸ with the industry of a busy nation; it has all the daring and assurance of a successful man; it struts²⁹, commands, defies, asserts itself at every turn. You would not want to witness greater variety of character than you could by passing from England through France into Germany. After the stolidity³⁰ and civility of the English, and the lightness and spirit of France, the blazing force and defiance of the Germans comes upon you as almost the most amazing of all.
 
In spite of the fact that my father was German and that I have known more or less of Germans all my life, I cannot say that I admired the personnel of the German Empire, the little that I saw of it, half so much as I admired some of the things they had apparently³¹ achieved. All the stations that I saw in Germany were in apple-pie order, new, bright, well-ordered. Big blue-lettered signs indicated just the things you wanted to know.429 The station platforms were exceedingly well built of red tile and white stone; the tracks looked as though they were laid on solid hardwood ties; the train ran as smoothly³² as if there were no flaws in it anywhere and it ran swiftly. I had to smile as occasionally on a platform—the train speeding swiftly—a straight, upstanding German officer or official, his uniform looking like new, his boots polished, his gold epaulets and buckles³³ shining as brightly as gold can shine, his blond whiskers, red cap, glistening³⁴ glasses or bright monocle, and above all his sharp, clear eyes looking directly at you, making an almost amazing combination of energy, vitality³⁵ and superiority, came into view and disappeared again. It gave you a startling impression of the whole of Germany. “Are they all like that?” I asked myself. “Is the army really so dashing and forceful?”
 
As I traveled first to Frankfort, then to Mayence, Coblenz and Cologne and again from Cologne to Frankfort and Berlin, and thence out of the country via Holland, the wonder grew. I should say now that if Germany has any number of defects of temperament³⁶, and it truly has from almost any American point of view, it has virtues³⁷ and capacities so noteworthy, admirable and advantageous³⁹ that the whole world may well sit up and take notice. The one thing that came home to me with great force was that Germany is in no way loose jointed⁴⁰ or idle but, on the contrary, strong, red-blooded, avid⁴¹, imaginative. Germany is a terrific nation, hopeful, courageous⁴², enthusiastic, orderly, self-disciplining, at present anyhow, and if it can keep its ............