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Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2013, 23 February 1907, Page 4

GERMANY IN 1906. Notwithstanding pol it ica 1 troubles, 1906 lias been a record year in the increase of German prosperity. This is shown (writes the Berlin correspondent of tlie London Times) both by tlio statistics of trade and by the returns of direct and indirect taxation, as well as by the activity of the savings banks. The people desire to consolidate its progress both in the economic and in the social sphere. In spite of many drawbacks, such as tlio increased cost of living and the dearness and inadequacy of liouso accommodation in the towns, the outward condition of the German working classes shows a steady and remarkable improvement. The laboring population of Berlin will now compare very favorably in point of cleanliness, orderliness, ami thrift with that of any great European city. Whether the moral and intellectual progress of the masses has kept pace with their material amelioration is another question. In politics they still, where they are not Roman Catholic, mostly pin their faith to socialism, which preaches a gospel that is mainly materialistic. The State Churches, Protestant and Catholic, labor quietly and steadily in their own spheres, but neither of them exhibits much missionary effort at homo. The inability of the educated and higher classes to exercise any effective political or social influence upon the masses is a discouraging feature of the situation. This seems to ho due to an absence of social contact, and to a lack of intelligent sympathy which arc the more remarkable in view of the way in which the different social strata are temporarily brought together, not only in the army, hut also in the secondary schools and tlie universities. But among the aristocracy of intellect as well as in that of birth or wealth there appears to exist an apathy towards the less-favored masses which has ceased to be more than an isolated feature of most other great European communities. The suggestion has often been made that it is largely due to the social and political exigencies of the military caste, and this feeling is believed to have found expression in the widespread sympathy as well as the hilarity with which tlio exploits of tlio clever criminal known as the “Captain of Kopojiick” were greeted. German materialism has its good as well as its bad sides. The universities may no longer produce their former splendid _ crop of “thinkers and poets,” but in no country is scientific research prosecuted with greater ardour, and in none are its results applied with greater promptness, assiduity, and success for the relief of suffering and tlie amelioration of the lot of mankind. The hospitals and sanatoria of Germany arc famous throughout the world, and so are lier State and other organisations for the roliof of poverty and the discouragement of idleness. •