What was it but
just a rush through Germany, to get across as quickly as possible?
Germany is the part of the earth's solid surface of which I know the
least. In all my life I had been across it only twice. I may well say
of it _vidi tantum_; and the very little I saw was through the window of
a railway carriage at express speed. Those journeys of mine had been
more like pilgrimages when one hurries on towards the goal for the
satisfaction of a deeper need than curiosity. In this last instance,
too, I was so incurious that I would have liked to have fallen asleep on
the shores of England and opened my eyes, if it were possible, only on
the other side of the Silesian frontier. Yet, in truth, as many others
have done, I had "sensed it"--that promised land of steel, of chemical
dyes, of method, of efficiency; that race planted in the middle of
Europe, assuming in grotesque vanity the attitude of Europeans amongst
effete Asiatics or barbarous niggers; and, with a consciousness of
superiority freeing their hands from all moral bonds, anxious to take up,
if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's burden.
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