There are three classes of men who pick up the bill of fare of life and look it over: Civilization's paralyzed ones, with no appetite, who can choose what they will without regard to the prices; the cautious, those with appetite but who are hampered in their choice by the prices; the bold, those with appetite and audacity, who rely upon their courage to satisfy the landlord. The Germans are only just beginning to look over the world's bill of fare in this last lordly fashion, to which some of us have long been accustomed. I see no reason why they should not do so, though I see clearly enough the suspicion and jealousy it creates.
They have been swathed in "Forbidden" so long that their taste for daring was late in coming. Our colonies, small wars, punitive expeditions, and control over neighboring territories are not planned for far ahead; but the exigencies of the situations are met by the remedies and solutions of men fitted by their training in school, in sport, in social and political life for just such work, and who are the more efficient the more they do of it. We are inclined to do things, and to think them out the day after; while the German thinks them out the week before, and then sometimes hesitates to do them at all.
The German goes more slowly, perhaps more successfully, in commercial and industrial undertakings, but always with a chart in front of him, a pair of spectacles on his nose, and with no desire to take chances.
In the rough-and-tumble world, the American and the Englishman went ahead the faster; in a more orderly world, and commerce, industry, and war are all far more scientific or orderly than of yore, the German has come into his own and goes ahead very fast. He has not made friends and supporters as have the other two: first, because he is a new-comer; and also, I believe, because human nature, even when it is not adventurous itself, loves adventure, and has a liking for the man who is a law unto himself. Indeed, the Germans themselves have a sneaking fondness for such a one. At any rate there is far more imitation of American and English ways in Germany, than of German manners, customs, and methods in America or in England.
"Experiment is not sufficient," writes Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus; "experience must verify what can be accepted or not accepted; knowledge is experience." For the moment, but it is probably not for long, we have the advantage in the knowledge bred of experience.