good citizens, and we have welcomed them as among the best of the foreigners who flock to our shores.  German music and German musicians find nowhere a more cordial welcome than here where admiration for their achievements is unstinted.  Nor have we forgotten the heroic services of the many Germans who laid down their lives in defence of our flag, that the Union might live.  The Germans’ love of honour and family has touched the American heart in a tender spot, and many of my acquaintances admit that with no other foreigners do they establish such intimate and affectionate relations as with their German friends.

This admiration and friendship has not blinded us to certain defects in the German character, any more than has your friendship for Americans closed your eyes to our defects.  The bad manners of Germans are proverbial, not only among Americans, but all over the world; so much so that certain German writers, admitting that Germans as a nation are ill-mannered, have sought to find in this fact an explanation for the world-wide antagonism toward Germany’s policy in the war.  I do not believe, however, that, so far as American sentiment is concerned, there is any considerable element of truth in this explanation.  It is true that we do not like the lack of respect accorded to women by the average German; that the position of woman in Germany seems to us anomalous in a nation claiming a superior type of civilisation; that the bumptious attitude of the German “intellectual” amuses or disgusts us; and that the insolence of your young officers who elbow us off the sidewalks in your cities makes us long to meet those individuals again outside the boundaries of Germany, where no military Government, jealous of their “honour,” could protect them from the thrashing they deserve.  It is also true that, at international congresses, excursions and banquets, attended by both men and women representatives of all nations, the Germans have gained an unenviable reputation for bad manners because they have pushed themselves into the best places, crowded into the trains ahead of the women, and generally ignored the courtesies due to ladies and gentlemen associated with them.  But, in spite of our full recognition of this undesirable national trait, I doubt whether any great number of Americans have permitted a dislike of German manners to affect their opinion as to German morals in the conduct of war, though some do hold that lack of good manners is a characteristic mark of inferior civilisation.  On the whole, we have been inclined to be tolerant of German rudeness, regarding it as in part due to the rapid material development of a young nation, and possibly as, in part, the result of over-aggressiveness fostered by a military training.