HERE can be little doubt that the greatest discovery of the War for the English, if not for the rest of the world, has been the revelation of German character. We, in England, were inclined to look down with good-natured amusement, a little mixed with contempt, on our German neighbour, with his Fatherland, his beergarden, his prosaic appearance, his tireless industry. We regarded him as a little dull, a little common and underbred, a little too industrious, but we never doubted that he was a good husband, a kind father and at bottom an honest fellow. With insular carelessness we made no very close enquiry into his morals and took him at his own valuation. The War has shown him in a new light. The German character has been revealed in lurid colours. Women outraged, children murdered, wounded soldiers shot or bayoneted, prisoners starved and left to die of disease, every abuse of warfare greeted with applause throughout Germany, "tragedy upon tragedy," as President Wilson said-these events have convinced the world that it was wrong about the Germans. Beneath that respectable and bourgeois exterior there lurked a deep-seated ferocity and blood-thirstiness. When the Emperor of Germany, on 27th July 1900, in bidding his troops farewell for China, said: "Give no quarter, take no prisoners. Gain

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a reputation like the Huns under Attila," we thought it was merely an imperial eccentricity. It was not. It was a genuine expression of German character. It represented the true German feeling and the "cultured" Herren and Frauen who read it, no doubt approved of it as they have since approved of the murder of Belgian civilians and of Englishwomen and children.

The new light thus shed on German character naturally leads one to ask whether the ferocity and bestiality, which has been revealed in war, did not also exist in peace. Nemo repente fuit turpissimus, as the Roman satirist said: None becomes at once completely vile. If the German is what he has shown himself to be in two years of war, there must have been some evidence of the lurking savagery of the race before. To test this conclusion it may be worth while to examine some of the records of German civilization before the war and see what conclusions they lead to.

It has long been a commonplace that the position of woman in Germany was inferior to that which she occupies in other civilized countries such as England, France, Italy, America, etc. It was known that the German Frau was often a domestic drudge and it was known that the superiority of the male and the inferiority of the female was a widely accepted view among Germans. But

it was not generally known that this view of the inferiority of women was accompanied by a moral laxity and a lowness of tone in the matter of sexual relations, which places the Germans on a different plane from most of the great nations of Europe. Evidence of this is however forthcoming in abundance. Let us first look at the statistics of illegitimate births, not a bad indication of national morals. Figures are not available for all countries but the following comparison will be sufficient:Average percentage of illegitimate births to total births.

The percentage of illegitimate to total births in Germany is thus more than double what it is in England and Wales, and moreover the proportion in Germany is rising, for in 1905 it was 8.9 per cent., while in 1912 it was 9.5. In the latter year nearly one in every ten Germans born was illegitimate. Even this high proportion is far exceeded in some parts of the country. In Bavaria the percentage of illegitimate births is as high as 14.3, while, in Berlin, the Mecca of German civilization, it reaches 14.9. The light which these figures throw on the morals of the German people is fairly obvious.

There is, however, much further evidence of the degradation of German morality and of the deepseated corruption of the German nation. It has been freely admitted by many German writers that the "White Slave Traffic" of both hemispheres is largely conducted by Germans. German women are to be found in all parts of the world from Siberia to South America, and German agents of this infamous traffic are notorious in many countries. In the single city of Chicago no less than 28 Germans (and not a single American or Englishman) were convicted of offences connected with this traffic in a single period of 18

months. Berlin is the headquarters of the trade, and Hamburg is its chief port. It is organized with characteristic German thoroughness. "This enormous business," wrote August Bebel, "is thoroughly organized and has its regular agents and commercial travellers." Large profits are made, and Germans, apparently occupying respectable positions, are mixed up with this traffic in German flesh and blood. Although there has existed in Berlin since 1904, a central police organization for the suppression of this trade, and although the German Police is not supposed to be inefficient when it chooses to act, the results achieved have been disappointing, and it is reported that the evil shows no sign of diminution. There could be no clearer sign of national depravity than that such a traffic is permitted to continue.

Meanwhile at home, in the Fatherland itself, prostitution has increased enormously, and the number of prostitutes in the country has been estimated at a million and half. Although there is no avowed State regulation permitted and controlled by the Sitten Polize or Morals Police, and houses of resort are allowed to fill whole streets. Any one who

of vice, it is

compares the chapter on this subject in Mr. Charles Booth's great work: "Life and Labour in London" with the accounts in German writings of the state of affairs in Berlin, will be able to judge of the difference between the two capitals. Berlin has become during the last fifty years notoriously the most immoral city in Europe. Its excesses are indeed almost incredible. In the English Review of a few months back, the Editor, Mr. Austin Harrison, a son of Mr. Frederick Harrison, gave an account of a ball in Berlin, at which he was apparently himself a spectator, at which all the guests were naked. The revelations in the notorious case of Prince Philip Eulenburg showed the corruption which existed in the highest circles of German society. It is not for nothing that the