Kume is less impressed by Western society in general. He observes that in Germany the feudal system is
still strongly rooted, the local nobility exploiting their various estates too much while at the same time
admiring France and spending their money on French arts and crafts. Only recently, after the victory of
1871, it seems to him, the German upper class started to develop cultural tastes of their own. The city of
Berlin, seemed to him less refined as compared to London or Paris, and the manners of the common people
appeared to him to be likewise, statements we Germans have to accept