Greifenstein, page 79 by Francis Marion Crawford
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in other countries. German beer is protected by law, and unoppressed by taxation. To adulterate it is a crime, an attempt to tax it would bring about a convulsion of the empire. Its use, in quantities that amaze the understanding, does not appear to have made Germans cowards in war, nor laggards in commerce; still less does it seem to have stupefied the national intellect, or dulled the Teutonic keenness in the race of nations. The first military power in the world drinks as much beer as all the rest of the universe together, and probably a little more. The commercial nation that undersells Englishmen in England, Frenchmen in France, Italians in Italy and Turks in Turkey, consumes more malt liquor than they drink of all other liquors. The intellectual race that has produced Kant, Goethe and Helmholtz, Bismarck, Moltke, Mommsen, and Richard Wagner in a century, swallows Homeric draughts of beer at breakfast, dinner and supper. That other nations do not follow their example, and laugh at their potations is of little consequence. Even if the Germans do not to some extent owe their national characteristics to their national drink, it cannot be asserted with any show of reason that beer has swamped their intelligence, damped their military ardour or drowned their commercial genius. Beer is the natural irrigator of conservative principles and intellectual progress. A little of it is good, much is better, and too much of it can never produce delirium tremens. Can more be said of any potable concoction manufactured by humanity for its daily use?
The Korps student drinks beer, therefore, and as though he felt a sort of religious reverence for the drink of his fathers, he has invented laws and rules for the ceremony, from which no departure is allowable. Every meeting of the Korps begins and ends with a 'Salamander.' At the president's word the glasses or stone jugs are moved rhythmically upon the oaken board. Another word of command, and each student empties his beaker. Then the vessels are rattled on the table, wh