BY PRICE COLLIER
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS NEW YORK 1913
Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner’s Sons
Published May, 1913
To MY WIFE KATHARINE whose deserving far outstrips my giving
| CHAPTER | |
| INTRODUCTION | |
| I. | THE CRADLE OF MODERN GERMANY |
| II. | FREDERICK THE GREAT TO BISMARCK |
| III. | THE INDISCREET |
| IV. | GERMAN POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE PRESS |
| V. | BERLIN |
| VI. | “A LAND OF DAMNED PROFESSORS” |
| VII. | THE DISTAFF SIDE |
| VIII. | “OHNE ARMEE KEIN DEUTSCHLAND” |
| IX. | GERMAN PROBLEMS |
| X. | “FROM ENVY, HATRED, AND MALICE” |
| XI. | CONCLUSION |
The first printed suggestion that America should be called Americacame from a German. Martin Waldseemüller, of Freiburg, in hisCosmographiae Introductio, published in 1507, wrote: “I do not see whyany one may justly forbid it to be named after Americus, itsdiscoverer, a man of sagacious mind, Amerige, that is the land ofAmericus or America, since both Europe and Asia derived their namesfrom women.”
The first complete ship-load of Germans left Gravesend July the 24th,1683, and arrived in Philadelphia October the 6th, 1683. They settledin Germantown, or, as it was then called, on account of the poverty ofthe settlers, Armentown.
Up to within the last few years the majority of our settlers have beenTeutonic in blood and Protestant in religion. The English, Dutch,Swedes, Germans, Scotch-Irish, who settled in America, were all, lessthan two thousand years ago, one Germanic race from the countrysurrounding the North Sea.
Since 1820 more than 5,200,000 Germans have settled in America. Thisimmigration of Germans has practically ceased, and it is a seriousloss to America, for it has been replaced by a much less desirabletype of settler. In 1882 western Europe sent us 563,174 settlers, or87 per cent., while southern and eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkeysent 83,637, or 13 per cent. In 1905 western Europe sent 215,863, or21.7 per cent., and southern and eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey,808,856, or 78.9 per cent. of our new population. In 1910 there were8,282,618 white persons of German origin in the United States;2,501,181 were born in Germany; 3,911,847 were born in the UnitedStates, both of whose parents were born in Germany; 1,869,590 wereborn in the United States, one parent born in the United States andone in Germany.
Not only have we been enriched by this mass of sober and industriouspeople in the past, but Peter Mühlenberg, Christopher Ludwig, Steuben,John Kalb, George Herkimer, and later Francis Lieber, Carl Schurz,Sigel, Osterhaus, Abraham Jacobi, Herman Ridder, Oswald Ottendorfer,Adolphus Busch, Isidor, Nathan, and Oscar Straus, Jacob Schiff, OttoKahn, Frederick Weyerheuser, Charles P. Steinmetz, Claus Spreckels,Hugo Münsterberg, and a catalogue of others, have been leaders infinance, in industry, in war, in politics, in educational andphilanthropic enterprises, and in patriotism.
The framework of our republican institutions, as I have tried tooutline in this volume, came from the “Woods of Germany.” Professor H.A. L. Fisher, of Oxford, writes: “European republicanism, which eversince the French Revolution has been in the main a phenomenon of theLatin races, was a creature of Teutonic civilization in the age of thesea-beggars and the Roundheads. The half-Latin city of Geneva was thesource of that st