The Youth Of Germany.

New York Times 100 years ago today, June 1, 1913:
Merely Bows His Head to the Yoke, Says French Writer.
    PARIS, May 9.— The well-known publicist M. André Franqois-Poncet has just been making an elaborate inquiry into the mental status and spiritual outlook of the youth of Germany, and finds, according to his conclusions published in L'Opinion, that "the German university youth of to-day is, broadly speaking, neither alert nor wide-awake, nor keenly interested in contemporary questions. He reads little, observes little; he is stolid, self-satisfied, without foresight, ignorant. He is at the beck and call of the forces which rule the country. Upon it the military State rests — it is one of the pillars on which it raises its hierarchical edifice."
    The writer considers that the young men of the university form a caste which is closely linked with the caste of the army.
    "The student imitates the Lieutenant. He adopts his stiff carriage, his restrained walk. He wears his moustache in the same way; he bows with the same click of the heels." This university caste is also a devout supporter of the Government, and of the Government not as representing some principle or other, but simply as such.
    "There is," he goes on, "in the German nature, I will not say a natural servility, but an inborn tendency to obedience, an inveterate respect for power. The youth of the university shares these sentiments with the majority, but other considerations enter into his attitude. The attachment of the students and also of the professors to the Government is due no doubt to a sincere conviction that on it the national greatness depends. But this conviction is further strengthened by the knowledge of the advantages to be found in subservience to the powers that be. The cry of the stomach (sic) is in harmony with the cry of the heart."
    Among the German students is found no trace of the "intellectual measles" which seizes on the young Frenchman — and Englishman for that matter — in the first year of University life, and passes off in a harmless, even salutary, eruption of red ties. The writer's conclusion is, "The youth of Germany to-day does not resemble the young man of 1830. He does not march in the vanguard toward a future of liberty and consolation. He bends his neck to the yoke, and does not find it galling."