Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H THE BACKGROUND OF MODERN GERMANY With all of the books that have been written on the subject, Germany still mystifies us. She evades Anglo-Saxon analysis. She differs from other countries in the most unexpected ways and challenges most of our theories of politics. We find difficulty in understanding the psychology of the people, their attitude toward the war, the Kaiser, and the ruling classes. There are many other anomalies that the Anglo-Saxon, and especially the American mind, cannot explain. Governed by an almost feudal aristocracy with a detachment and disdain for all other classes, Germany has worked out the most elaborate programme of social legislation and state socialism of any country in the world. Admittedly a people with but little aptitude for politics in the common acceptation of the term, the states and cities have perfected their administration and carried government ownership beyond the programmes of any except the extreme socialists of other countries. Oppressed by the anti-socialist laws of Bismarck, there has grown up the most highly organized revolutionary type of socialism in Europe, with a total vote of over 4,000,000 electors. Up to1870 almost exclusively an agricultural nation, Germany has developed her resources, diversified her industries, expanded her trade and commerce, and pushed herself to the front rank as an industrial power in the face of the almost complete occupation of the markets of the world by other countries. These are but suggestive of the many political and social riddles which Germany presents. These are some of the anomalies which challenge the teachings of history and our currently accepted theories of politics. What is the explanation of the German people? What lies back of the prowess of the nation not only in w...