That's how the Germans are.... The aristocrats at the top hard as glass, cold as ice, servants of the King, the working masses willing, pliable, sentimental, susceptible to brutality, the middle class educated and cowardly to the point of servility.
Alfred Döblin (1878–1957), German-Jewish novelist, physician. Trans. by David Dollenmayer. Citizens and Soldiers, vol. I, bk. 2, November 1918: A German Revolution (1939).
