Another cause of as general, but less ponderable, a nature is the remnant of the feudal spirit and feudal manners which lingers in the attitude of the German governing and official classes towards the rest of the population.  The most objectionable features of the feudal system have passed away, the cruel and exclusive rights and privileges which only men in ignorant personal servitude to an all-powerful master could permanently endure; but traces of the system still exist in the official attitude towards the public and in the tone of the official communications issued by the administrative services generally.  Attitude and tone may be referred in part to the traditional character of the Prussian monarchy, which regards the people as a flock of sheep, or as a “talent,” as the Emperor has called it, entrusted to its care and management by Heaven; but it is also due in part to the systematization of public life—­and largely of private life—­which at times makes the foreigner inclined to think Germany at once the most Socialistic and at the same time the most tyrannically ruled country in the world.  Everything in Germany must be done systematically, and the system must be the result of development.  But there is no use in having a system unless it is enforced—­otherwise it remains, like Social Democracy, a theory.  Compulsion, therefore, is necessary, and the Government provides it through its official machinery and its police.  The systematization has enormous public advantages, but it is difficult for the Anglo-Saxon, jealous of his individual right to direct his public life through his own representatives and his private life according to his own judgment, to accommodate himself to a system which seems to him unduly to interfere with both right and judgment.

Perhaps it is the manner in which, under the name of authority, compulsion is exercised by subordinate officialdom and in especial by the police, as much as the compulsion itself, which irritates in Germany.  Every profession, business, trade, and occupation, down to that of selling matches and newspapers in the streets, is meticulously regulated; and while there is nothing to object to in this, what strikes the Anglo-Saxon as objectionable is that the regulations are enforced with the manners and in the tone of a drill-sergeant.  The official in Germany, he finds, is not the servant of the public.  There is a story current in England of a Duke of Norfolk, when Postmaster-General, going into a district post-office and asking for a penny stamp.  The clerk was dilatory, and the Duke remonstrated.  “Who are you, I should like to know?” asked the clerk impertinently, “that you are laying down the law.”  “I am the public,” replied the Duke simply, at the same time showing the clerk his card.  An English Foreign Secretary once told a deputation that the Ministry was “waiting for instructions from their employers—­the people.”  In Germany it is the opposite; the official is the master and the public his dutiful servant.  In Germany the official expects marked deference from the public:  the post-office clerk is “Mr. Official,” the guardian of the law “Mr. Policeman” (with your hat off).  The Anglo-Saxon rather expects the deference to be on the other side, and has a sordid subconsciousness that he pays the official for his services.  Perhaps the Social Democrat has something of the same feeling.