mayor's business, and perhaps I may justify my speaking of them by saying that I spoke of them principally to make that point clear. They and some other problems that may or may not be foreign to his duties, have the effect of keeping a mayor from his real work which is or should be, the administration of the communal affairs of the city, and not the regulation of the private affairs of the people in it. It is quite impossible to imagine any work more delightful than this administration. Hampered in it as one is by politicians, who regard every question from the viewpoint of the parish pump, it is nevertheless inspiring to be concerned about great works of construction regarding the public comfort and convenience, the public health and the public amenities. It is in such work that one may catch a glimpse of the vast possibilities of our democracy, of which our cities are the models and the hope.
I have observed in Germany that the mayors of the cities there are not burdened by these extraneous issues, and I think that that is the reason the German cities are the most admirably administered in the world. Perhaps I should say governed, too, though that is hardly correct, since the governing there is done by the state through its own officials. I have not been in Germany often enough or remained long enough to be able to assert that government, in its effect for good, is quite as much a superstition as it is everywhere; mere political government, I mean, which seems to be so implicitly for the selfish benefit of those who do the governing.
