[Illustration: AMBASSADOR GERARD ON THE WAY TO HIS SHOOTING
PRESERVE.]
[Illustration: A KEEPER AND BEATERS ON THE SHOOTING PRESERVE.
IT SHOWS THE EARLY INNOCULATION OF DISCIPLINE INTO THE GERMAN
SMALL BOY.]
For instance, to-day there exist estates in the Central Empires
which must pass from oldest son to oldest son indefinitely and,
failing that, to the next in line, and so on; and conditions
have even been annexed by which children cannot inherit if their
father has married a woman not of a stated number of quarterings
of nobility. There is a Prince holding great estates in Hungary.
He is a bachelor and if he desires his children to inherit these
estates there are only thirteen girls in the world whom he can
marry, according to the terms of the instrument by which some
distant ancestor founded this inheritance.
This vicious system has prevented extensive peasant proprietorship.
The government, however, to a certain extent, has encouraged peasant
proprietorship, but only with very small parcels of land; and it
would be an unusual thing in Germany, especially in Prussia,
to find a peasant owning more than twenty or thirty acres of
land, most of the land being held by the peasants in such small
quantities that after working their own lands they have time
left to work the lands of the adjoining landed proprietor at a
very small wage.
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