her
political institution Germany is lamentably behind. Only in her
municipal life is she in advance of most European countries.

V.

As we hinted at the outset, the municipality has far greater powers in
Germany than in Great Britain. It is true that the police authority is
under the control of the central power, that education inspection is
under the control of the Church, which is another kind of spiritual
police. It is true that the City Fathers are debarred from mixing with
party politics. But within those limitations, and in the province of
economics and social welfare, municipal powers are almost
unrestricted. It is thus that German towns have been the pioneers in
school hygiene. Every German child is under the supervision of the
school dentist and the school oculist. It is thus that German cities
have established their public pawnshops, and have saved the poor man
from the clutches of the moneylender. It is thus that they have
initiated gratuitous legal advice for the indigent. They have even
established municipal beerhouses and _Rathhauskeller_. In one word,
they have launched out in a hundred forms of civic enterprise.

VI.

One of the most striking fields of municipal enterprise is the policy
of Land Purchase. The people were encouraged to enter on this policy
by the evils of private land speculation, and by the shocking housing
conditions in some of the big cities, and especially in Berlin, where
the curse of the barrack system still prevails.

Nearly every German city is an important landowner, owning on an
average 50 per cent. of the municipal area.

"While the powers of English urban districts in relation to land
ownership are severely restricted by law, German towns are free to buy
real estate on any scale whatever, without permission of any kind,
unless, indeed, the contracting of a special loan should be necessary,
in which event the assent of the City Commissary is necessary. This
assent, however, entails no local inquiry corresponding to the
inquiries of the Local Government Board, simply because the German
States have no Local Government Board, and no use for them; the
proceeding is almost a formality, intended to remind the communes that
the State, though devolved upon them their wide powers of
self-government, likes still to be consulted now and then, and it is
arranged expeditiously through the post. For, strange as it may sound
to English ears, the Governments of Germany, without exc