Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 | Page 5

Edwin Lawrence Godkin
is not altogether pleasing. We have
been flattering ourselves--in Anglo-Saxondom, at least--for many years
back that all social progress was to be hereafter in the direction of
greater individualism, and among us, certainly, this view has derived
abundant support from observed facts. But it is now apparent that there
is a tendency at work, which appears to grow stronger and stronger
every day, toward combination in all the work of life. It is specially
observable in the efforts of the working classes to better their condition;
it still more observable in the efforts of capital to fortify itself against
them and against the public at large; and there is, perhaps, nothing in
which more rapid advances have been made of late years than in the
power of organization. The working of the great railroads and hotels
and manufactories, of the trades unions, of the co-operative

associations, and of the monster armies now maintained by three or
four powers, are all illustrations of it. The growth of power is, of course,
the result of the growth of intelligence, and it is in the ratio of the
growth of intelligence.
Prussia has got the start of all other countries by combining the whole
nation in one vast organization for purposes of offence and defence.
Hitherto nations have simply subscribed toward the maintenance of
armies and concerned themselves little about their internal economy
and administration; but the Prussians have converted themselves into
an army, and have been enabled to do so solely by subjecting
themselves to a long process of elaborate training, which has changed
the national character. When reduced to the lowest point of humiliation
after the battle of Jena, they went to work and absolutely built up the
nation afresh. We may not altogether like the result. To large numbers
of people the Prussian type of character is not a pleasing one, nor
Prussian society an object of unmixed admiration, and there is
something horrible in a whole people's passing their best years learning
how to kill. But we cannot get over the fact that the Prussian man is
likely to furnish, consciously or unconsciously, the model to other
civilized countries, until such time as some other nation has so
successfully imitated him as to produce his like.
Let those who believe, as Mr. Wendell Phillips says that he believes,
that "the best education a man can get is what he gets in picking up a
living," and that universities are humbugs, and that from the
newspapers and lyceum lecture the citizen can always get as much
information on all subjects, human and divine, as is good for him or the
State, take a look at the Prussian soldier as he marches past in his
ill-fitting uniform and his leather helmet. First of all, we observe that he
smokes a great deal. According to some of us, the "tobacco demon"
ought by this time to have left him a thin, puny, hollow-eyed fellow,
with trembling knees and palpitating heart and listless gait, with
shaking hands and an intense craving for ardent spirits. You perceive,
however, that a burlier, broader-shouldered, ruddier, brighter-eyed, and
heartier-looking man you never set eyes on; and as he swings along in
column, with his rifle, knapsack, seventy rounds of ammunition,
blanket, and saucepan, you must confess you cannot help
acknowledging that you feel sorry for any equal body of men in the

world with which that column may get into "a difficulty." He drinks,
too, and drinks a great deal, both of strong beer and strong wine, and
has always done so, and all his family friends do it, and have only
heard of teetotalism through the newspapers, and, if you asked him to
confine himself to water, would look on you as an amiable idiot.
Nevertheless, you never see him drunk, nor does his beer produce on
him that utterly bemuddling or brain-paralyzing effect which is so
powerfully described by our friend Mr. James Parton as produced on
him by lager-bier, in that inquiry into the position of "The Coming
Man" toward wine, some copies of which, we see, he is trying to
distribute among the field-officers. On the contrary, he is, on the whole,
a very sober man, and very powerful thinker, and very remarkable
scholar. There is no field of human knowledge which he has not been
among the first to explore; no heights of speculation which he has not
scaled; no problem of the world over which he is not fruitfully toiling.
Moreover, his thoroughness is the envy of the students of all other
countries, and his hatred of sham scholarship and slipshod
generalization is intense.
But what with the tobacco and the beer, and the scholarship and his
university education, you might naturally infer that he must be a
kid-glove soldier, and a little
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