THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1907. GERMAN SOCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANISATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8524, 29 August 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 1907. GERMAN SOCIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANISATION.

The editor of the London Daily News ■came back from his trip through Germany, as one of the party of English journalists, with a* very high opinion of German social and administrative organisation. "Germany is organised with a thoroughness and minuteness in startling contrast with our own chaotic condition," he writes. "Its development has been unhindered by the burden of precedent, tradition and privilege under which stagger. It has had neither our insularity, nor our prosperity to contend with." The hard struggle for a place in the world has given fullest play to the practical genius of the people; the Germans are wonderfully disciplined, have a high standard of public conduct, and are habitually clean and thrifty. The extremes of poverty and riches are much less apparent than in England. The working-classes are not so well paid as in England, but they spend more carefully. All the visiting journalists remarked on the fact that nothing was seen of the derelict "work-shy" class so common in English cities, and the party were impressed by the absence of drunkenness, although the liking of the German for his beer is well-known. Education was found to be "the keystone of the national and Imperial fabric." The writer noticed the existence of an active individual political life in the different States, and the strongest sentiments of temperamental aversion, side by side with devotion to the Empire. The Bavarian and the Prussian are as remote from each other in spirit as any two peoples in Europe—one being vivacious and emotional, and the other • rigid and cold—yet their enthusiasm for the Empire as a political necessity is unquestionable. One consequence of this union of jealous States is that, instead of dominating Germany as London does England, or Paris France, Berlin is simply one of several great cities. Dresden and Munich, Cologne and Frankfort, Hamburg and Leipsic,, rich in tradition and culture, are, in all that counts for civilisation, at least the equals of the capital. A suspicion of Great Britain was found to_ everywhere, one factor of which is the misunderstanding as to the place of

King Edward in the British Constitution, and the consequent importance attached to his movements. The Germans are convinced that the King is the executive officer of the British people, and see in his visit to another monarch as much importance as the British saw in the Kaiser's visit to Tangier.