In a Socialistic State, inevitably there would be formed a bureaucracy of selfish office holders.  Although, owing to the impetus of our previous free Democracy, the first Socialist officials might be men of ability who had gained their places through successful experience, yet a close corporation of officials would follow them and retain the exercise of power.  The people gradually would sink to a level of servile conformity.

We have a perfect illustration of this in the Germany of the past forty years.  There is a good reason for the fact that Germany, in the hands of a selfish and conscienceless autocracy, made more successful use of practical Socialism than any other nation in history and even carried efficiency itself to a point of great success.  Her close corporation of bureaucratic officials, playing upon the remains of feudal and aristocratic loyalty among the people that have survived the darkness of past centuries as nowhere else among civilized nations, successfully carried through Socialism in many practical ways, just as Morris Hillquit and his un-American followers probably would have succeeded in doing in New York for a short time.  But the inevitable followed.  The German people have been reduced to a very low level of political ability.

The German is one of the poorest politicians in the world, as every student of political science knows.  His lack of ability to run a government on constitutional principles has been found in the inane vaporings and factional maneuvering of the Reichstag, the supposedly “popular” House of the Parliament, which was merely a machine to register the will of the aristocratic autocracy.  The individual citizen is the most servile and unthinking person in any civilized country of the world to-day.  He has been trained to political incapacity.

What has the success of German Socialism amounted to?  We find that Germany, from the political standpoint, is nothing but an organized machine without soul.  Professor Ely, in taking the Moral side of the matter into consideration, well says that “it may be added that truth, an attribute of the gentleman, is less valued in Germany than in English speaking countries.  As long ago as 1874 Professor James Morgan Hart in his book German Universities called attention to this weakness in the German character.  A German mother will say to her child, ’O, you little liar,’ and does not imply serious reprobation thereby, and Professor Hart said that if you called a German student a liar, he might take it calmly, but if you called him a blockhead, he would challenge you to fight a duel.  All this has been amply exemplified during the present war.  It was the German socialist Lassalle who said of the lie that it was one of the great European Powers!  It was natural enough that he should have said it."[7]