第187章

Under such circumstances, universal military service in Germany is a condition of its existence, and evasion of this is naturally looked upon as a sort of treason. The real wonder is that Germany has been so moderate in her dealing with this question. The yearly ``budgets of military cases'' in the archives of the American Embassy bear ample testimony to her desire to be just and even lenient.

To understand the position of Germany, let us suppose that our Civil War had left our Union--as at one time seemed likely--embracing merely a small number of Middle States and covering a space about as large as Texas, with a Confederacy on our southern boundary bitterly hostile, another hostile nation extending from the west bank of the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains; a Pacific confederation jealous and faultfinding; British dominions to the northward vexed by commercial and personal grievances; and New England a separate and doubtful factor in the whole situation. In that case we too would have established a military system akin to that of Germany;but whether we would have administered it as reasonably as Germany has done is very doubtful.

Fortunately for the United States and for me, there was in the ministry of foreign affairs, when I arrived, one of the most admirable men I have ever known in such a position: Baron von Blow. He came of an illustrious family, had great influence with the old Emperor William, with Parliament, and in society; was independent, large in his views, and sincerely devoted to maintaining the best relations between his country and ours. In cases such as those just referred to he was very broad-minded; and in one of the first which I had to present to him, when I perhaps showed some nervousness, he said, ``Mr.

Minister, don't allow cases of this kind to vex you; I had rather give the United States two hundred doubtful cases every year than have the slightest ill-feeling arise between us.'' This being the fact, it was comparatively easy to deal with him. Unfortunately, he died early during my stay, and some of the ministers who succeeded him had neither his independence nor his breadth of view.

It sometimes seemed to me, while doing duty at the German capital in those days as minister, and at a more recent period as ambassador, that I could not enter my office without meeting some vexatious case. One day it was an American who, having thought that patriotism required him, in a crowded railway carriage, roundly to denounce Germany, the German people, and the imperial government, had passed the night in a guard-house;another day, it was one who, feeling called upon, in a restaurant, to proclaim very loudly and grossly his unfavorable opinion of the Emperor, had been arrested; on still another occasion it was one of our fellow-citizens who, having thought that he ought to be married in Berlin as easily as in New York, had found himself entangled in a network of regulations, prescriptions, and prohibitions.

Of this latter sort there were in my time several curious cases. One morning a man came rushing into the legation in high excitement and exclaimed, ``Mr. Minister, I am in the worst fix that any decent man was ever in; I want you to help me out of it.'' And he then went on with a bitter tirade against everybody and everything in the German Empire. When his wrath had effervesced somewhat, he stated his case as follows: ``Last year, while traveling through Germany, I fell in love with a young German lady, and after my return to America became engaged to her. I have now come for my bride; the wedding is fixed for next Thursday; our steamer passages are taken a day or two later; and I find that the authorities will not allow me to marry unless I present a multitude of papers such as I never dreamed of; some of them it will take months to get, and some I can never get. My intended bride is in distress; her family evidently distrust me; the wedding is postponed indefinitely; and my business partner is cabling me to come back to America as soon as possible. I am asked for a baptismal certificate--a Taufschein. Now, so far as I know, I was never baptized. I am required to present a certificate showing the consent of my parents to my marriage--I, a man thirty years old and in a large business of my own! I am asked to give bonds for the payment of my debts in Germany. Iowe no such debts; but I know no one who will give such a bond. I am notified that the banns must be published a certain number of times before the wedding.

What kind of a country is this, anyhow?''

We did the best we could. In an interview with the minister of public worship I was able to secure a dispensation from the publishing of the banns; then a bond was drawn up which I signed and thus settled the question regarding possible debts in Germany. As to the baptismal certificate, I ordered inscribed, on the largest possible sheet of official paper, the gentleman's affidavit that, in the State of Ohio, where he was born, no Taufschein, or baptismal certificate, was required at the time of his birth, and to this was affixed the largest seal of the legation, with plenty of wax. The form of the affidavit may be judged peculiar; but it was thought best not to startle the authorities with the admission that the man had not been baptized at all. They could easily believe that a State like Ohio, which some of them doubtless regarded as still in the backwoods and mainly tenanted by the aborigines, might have omitted, in days gone by, to require a Taufschein;but that an unbaptized Christian should offer himself to be married in Germany would perhaps have so paralyzed their powers of belief that permission for the marriage could never have been secured.

In this and various other ways we overcame the difficulties, and, though the wedding did not take place upon the appointed day, and the return to America had to be deferred, the couple, at last, after marriage first before the public authorities, and then in church, were able to depart in peace.