The German comes from the forest, loves the forest. "Kein Yolk ist so innig mit seinem Wald erwachsen wie das Deutsche, keines liebt den Wald so sehr." ("No nation has grown up so at one with its forests as have the Germans; no other nation loves its forests as do they.") He walks, and meditates, and sings in the forest, and nowadays goes to the forest with his skis, his snow-shoes, and his sled. Our great games are, many of them, personal conflicts, and attended by some personal risk, and demanding both discipline in preparing for them and severe discipline in the playing. Our love of the aleatory, of betting our belongings, our powers, our persons even, against life, is not commonly alive in Germany. The Germans are only just emerging into safety and confidence in themselves, and beginning cautiously to agree with us that
"He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."
From these sombre forests came a race who still find it lonely to be alone, and they herd together still for safety as of old, and have no love of physical speculation. They are daring in thought and theory, but cautious in physical and personal matters. An office stool followed by a pension contents all too many men in Germany.
"Reden, Handeln, Tun und Wandeln Zeigt der Menschen Wesen nicht. Was im Herzen sie im Stillen Fest verschliessen, stumm verhüllen, Ist ihr richtigs Angesicht."
An overwhelming majority of Germans believe that this is man's real portrait; an overwhelming majority of Americans would not even understand it.
The German army is the antidote to this lack of physical discipline, this lack of strenuous physical life. The army takes the place of our West, of our games, of our sports; just as it takes the place of England's colonies and public schools and games and sports. When looked at in this way, when its double duty is recognized, the enormous cost of it is not so material. The expense of the German army is not greater than our armies, plus what we spend for games and sport and colonial adventure.
Germany has 4,570 miles of frontier to guard, to begin with, and her total area is 208,780 square miles, or an area one fourth less than that of our State of Texas, with a population per square mile of 310.4. Of this population 1,000,000, roughly, are subjects of foreign powers. Five hundred thousand are from Austria-Hungary, 100,000 each from Finland and Russia, nearly 100,000 from Italy, some 17,000 Americans, and so on. In 1900 the population speaking German numbered 51,000,000.