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scanty comfort and petty mode of life are not conspicuous; but the Eskimo who is ready to sacrifice everything for fish-fat is as much an epicurean as Lucullus. Moreover the German, lymphatic by temperament, soon puts on weight and sends down a thousand roots into his familiar mode of life ; anything that might disturb him in his habits terrifies his philistine temper.
All German revolutionaries are great cosmopolitans, sie haben uberwunden den Standpunkt der Nationalitat, and are filled with the most touchy, most obstinate patriotism. They are ready to accept a universal republic, to abolish the frontiers between states, but Trieste and Danzig must belong to Germany. The Vienna students did not disdain to set off for Lombardy and to put themselves under the command of Radetsky; they even, under the leadership of some professor, took a cannon, which they presented to Innsbruck.
With this arrogant, bellicose patriotism, Germany has, from the time of the first revolution and up to this day, looked with horror to the right and with horror to the left. On this side, France with standards unfurled is crossing the Rhine; on that side, Russia is crossing the Niemen, ;md the people numbering twenty-five millions finds itself utterly forlorn and deserted, curses in its fright, hates because it is frightened and to comfort itself proves theoretically, according to the sources, that the existence of France is no longer existence, and the existence of Russia is not yet existence.
The 'council of war' assembled in St Paul's Church at Frankfurt, and consisting of various worthy professors, physicians, theologians, pharmacists and philologists, schr ausge::.cichneten in ihrem Fache, applauded the Austrian soldiers in Lombardy and oppressed the Poles in Posen. The very question of Schleswig
Holstein (stammvcrwandt!) touched on the quick only from the point of view of 'Teutschthum.' The first free word, uttered after centuries of silence by the representatives of libera ted Germany, was against weak, oppressed nationalities. This incapacity for freedom, these clumsily displayed inclinations to retain what had been wrongfully acquired, provoke irony: one forgives insolent pretensions only in return for vigorous actions, and there were none of these.
The revolution of 1 848 had everywhere the character of precipitateness and instability, but there was scarcely anything absurd about it in France or in Italy; in Germany, except in Vienna, it was full of a comicality incomparably more humorous than the comicality of Goethe's wrett:hed comedy, Der Burgergeneral.
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There was not a town, not a spot in Germany where at the time of the rising there was not an attempt at a 'committee of public safety' with all its principal actors, with a frigid youth as Saint-Just, with sombre terrorists, and a military genius representing Carnot. I knew two or three Robespierres personally: they always wore clean shirts, washed their hands and cleaned their nails. To make up for these there were also dishevelled Collot d'Herbois; and if in the club there was a man fonder of beer than the rest and more openly given to dangling after Stubenmiidchen-he was the Danton, eine schwelgende Natur!
French weaknesses and defects are partly dissipated by their owners' prompt, easy nature. In the German the same defects get a more solid, steady development, and hence are more conspicuous. One must see for oneself these German efforts to play so einen burschikosen Kamin de Paris in politics in order to appreciate them. They have always reminded me of the playfulness of a cow when that good, respectable animal, garnished with domestic benevolence, starts frisking and frolicking in the meadow, and with a perfectly serious mien kicks up her two hind legs or gallops sideways chasing her own tail.
After the Dresden affair,31 I met in Geneva one of the agitators who had taken part in it, and at once began questioning him about Bakunin. He praised him highly, and began describing how he had himself commanded a barricade under his orders. Inflamed by his own narrative he went on.
'A revolution is a thunderstorm; in it one must listen neither to the dictates of the heart nor to considerations of ordinary justice. . . . One must oneself have taken part in such events in order fully to understand the Montagne of 1 794. Imagine: we suddenly observe a vague movement in the royalist party, false reports are intentionally circulated, suspicious-looking men appear. I reflected and reflected, and at last resolved to terrorise my street. "l'.Iiinncr!" I said to my detachment, "under pain of courtmartial which in a 'state of siege' like this, may at once deprive you of life in case of disobedience, I order you that everyone, without distinction of sex, age or calling, who attempts to cross the barricade, shall be seized and brought under close guard to me." This was kept up for more than twenty-four hours. If the Burger who was brought to me was a good patriot, I let him 31 In May 1 849 M. A. Bakunin led a rising in Dresden. He was arrested and sentenced to be hanged; but the sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. (A.S.)
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through; but if he was a suspicious character, then I gave a sign to the guard.'
'And,' I said with horror, 'and they?'
'And they took him off home,' the terrorist replied with pride and satisfaction.
All these absurd failings, together with the peculiar Plumpheit of the Germans, jar upon the Southern nature of the Italians and rouse in them a zoological, racial hatred. The worst of it is that the good side of the Germans, that is, their philosophical culture, is either of no interest to the Italian or beyond his grasp; while the vulgar, ponderous side always strikes his eye. The Italian often leads the most frivolous and idle life, and that is why he can least put up with the bear-like joking and clumsy familiarity of the jovial German.
The Anglo-Germanic race is much coarser than the Franco
Roman. There is no help for that: it is its physical characteristic ; it is absurd to be angry with it. The time has come to understand once for all that the different breeds of mankind, like different breeds of animals, have their different natures and are not to blame for this. No one is angry with the bull for not having the beauty of the horse or the swiftness of the stag; no one reproaches the horse because the meat of its fillet does not taste so good as that of the ox: all that we can require of them in the name of animal brotherhood is to graze peaceably in the same field without kicking or goring each other. In nature everything attains to whatever it is capable of attaining to, is formed as chance determines, and so takes i ts generic pli: training goes to a certain stage, corrects one thing and grafts on a11.other; but to demand beefsteaks from horses, or an ambling pace from bulls, is nevertheless absurd.
To get a visible conception of the difference between the two opposite traditions of the European races, one has but to glance at the street-boys in Paris and in London; it is they that I take as an example because they are absolutely spontaneous in their rudeness.