14   THE  BVOLDTION  OF  MODEEN  GBEMANY

iuteresting  and  perfectly  governed  city  on  the  Spree  from  tbis
standpoint  will  understand  what  a  recent  German  writer  means
when  he  says,  "  We  have  buildings  dedicated  to  the  noblest  and
highest  functions — theatres,  schools,  parliaments ;  and  yet  they
proclaim  nothing  of  the  wonderful  mysteries  of  the  German  soul,
nothing  of  our  stock's  proud  consciousness  of  mastery,  nothing
of  our  longing,  our  faith,  our  achievement.  Nay,  they  hardly
speak  of  the  purpose  for  which  they  exist."  *

There  is,  indeed,  a  largo  element  of  Romanism  in  modern
Germany,  in  its  megalomania,  its  exaltation  of  machinery  and
systems,  its  fondness  of  massiveness,  its  restless  hankering  after
great  effects,  and  all  these  characteristics  are  summarised  in  the
phrase  "  force-worship."  Wherever  one  looks  in  Germany  at  the
present  day  one  sees  the  assertion,  on  a  grandiose  scale,  of  an
endeavour  after  sheer  mastery — in  the  struggle  with  natural
forces  which  has  been  carried  on  with  such  wonderful  persever-
ance and  deserved  success,  in  the  strengthening  of  the  Imperial-
istic spirit,  in  the  irresistible  advance  of  industry  and  commerce,
in  the  striving  after  an  inviolable  military  power,  in  the  eager
and  jealous  glances  which  are  now  being  turned  to  the  sea.  In
all  these  things  the  underlying  thought  is  the  thought  of  subdual,
and  subdual  is  the  spirit  of  modern  Germany,  now  in  the  first
blush  of  a  now  life,  its  capacities  still  but  partially  developed,  its
resources  but  partially  discovered.
