Berlin Is The Concentration Of The Strong
Will Of A State Which Has Made Itself Great Out Of The Weak
Will of
sundry inferior states, homogeneous in their disunity more than in any
positive quality, and which stands for a
Political ideal more nearly
reactionary, more nearly mediaeval, than any other modern state. Berlin
is not German as Paris is French, and Rome is not so exclusively
Italian. In fact, her greatness, accomplished and destined, lies in just
the fact that she is not and never can be exclusively Italian. Human
interests too universal and imperative for the control of a single race,
even so brilliant and so gifted as the Italian race, which is naturally
and necessarily in possession, centre about her through history,
religion, art, and make every one at home in the city which is the
capital of Christendom. Now and then I saw some shining and twinkling
Japs going about with Baedekers, and I imagined them giving a modest and
unprejudiced mind to Rome without claiming, tacitly or explicitly, the
right to dispute the Italian theory and practice in its control. But
every Occidental stranger (if any one of European blood is a stranger in
the home of Christianity) I knew to be there in a mood more or less
critical, and in a disposition to find fault with the Rome which is now
making, or making over.
We journeyers or sojourners can do this without expense or inconvenience
to ourselves, and we can easily blame the Italian conception of the
future city which, to name but one fact, has made it possible for us to
visit her in comfort at every season and to come away without having
come down with the Roman fever.
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