femmes.' Ce sont
'des moeurs de serail.'"

Here the "greatest of all observers" seems to talk nonsense, for
marriage in the seraglio does not hinge on the submission of one wife
to one husband, but on a plurality of wives that English and German
women have only endured in certain historic cases. In both western
countries marriage has its roots in the fidelity of one man and one
woman to each other. A well-known English novelist once said quite
truly that an Englishman very rarely distrusts his wife, and never by
any chance distrusts the girl who is to become his wife; and just the
same may be said of the German of the better classes. In both
countries you will find sections of society above and below where
morals are lax and manners corrupt. German professors write sketches
of London in which our busy grimy city is held up to a virtuous
Germania as the modern Sodom and Gomorrah; and the Continental
Anglophobe likes nothing better than to entertain you with pictures of
our decadent society, pictures that really do credit to the vividness
and detail of his imagination. Meanwhile our press assures the
respectable Briton that Berlin is the most profligate city in Europe,
and that scurrilous German novels about the German army will show him
what the rotten state of things really is in that much over-rated
organisation. But these national amenities are misleading. The bulk of
the nation in both countries is sound, and family life still
flourishes both here and there. The men of the race, in spite of Herr
Riehl's prognostications, still have the whip hand, as much as is good
for them in England, a little more than is good for them in Germany.
If you go to Germany you must not expect a man to open a door for you,
or to wait on you at afternoon tea, or to carry a parcel for you in
the street. He will kiss your hand when he greets you, he will address
you as gracious lady or gracious miss, he will put his heels together
and make you beautiful bows, he will pay you compliments that are
manifestly, almost admittedly, artificial. That at least is one type
of man. He may leave out the kisses and the bows and the compliments
and be quite undisguisedly bearish; or he may be something betwixt and
between, kindly, concerned for your pleasure and welfare. But whatever
he is he will never forget for a moment that you are "only a woman."
If you marry him he will expect to rule everywhere except in the
kitchen, and as you value a quiet lif