No other country in the world employed so large a proportion of its total population in the administration of government, and in no other country was the system so cleverly calculated to make government office attractive to the average man. The salaries were not larger than those earned by men of the same class in non-official employments, but employment under the government offered in addition both material and moral advantages. The chief material advantage was the right to retire after a specified number of years of service on liberal pension. The moral advantages rested in the dignity of government service and in the special protection afforded government servants. A carefully graded scale of titles made its appeal to personal vanity. This has frequently been described as particularly German, but it was, in the last analysis, merely human. There are comparatively few men in any country, not excluding America, who are totally indifferent to titles, and there is at least one state whose fondness for them has become a stock subject for all American humorists. What was, however, particularly German was the astuteness with which the ruling-classes of Germany had turned this human weakness to account as an asset of government, and also the extent to which it had been developed, especially downward. Mr. Smith, who cleans the streets of an American city, would not be especially gratified to be addressed as Mr. Street-Cleaner, but his German colleague felt a glow of pride at hearing the address "Herr Street-Cleaner Schmidt," and this feeling was a very real asset to his government. It was the same at the other end of the scale. The government councillor was the more faithful and energetic in his devotion to the government's work because he knew that by faithfulness and energy he would eventually become a "privy government councillor" and the next step would be to "real privy government councillor, with the predicate 'Your Excellency'." And since wives bore the titles of their husbands, the appeal was doubly strong.
The _Beamter_ enjoyed furthermore special protection under the law. To call an ordinary person "idiot," for example, was a _Beleidigung_ or insult, but the same term applied to a _Beamter_ became _Beamtenbeleidigung_, or "insult to an official," and involved a much sharper punishment, and this punishment increased with the dignity of the person insulted until the person of the Kaiser was reached, an insult to whom was _Majestätsbeleidigung_, an insult to majesty, or _lèse majesté_, as the French term it. Prosecutions for _Majestätsbeleidigung_ were not frequent, but the law was occasionally invoked. One of the last prosecutions for this offense occurred in 1913, when a man who had demonstratively turned a picture of the Kaiser toward the wall in the presence of a large gathering was sent to jail for four months.