GERMAN HATRED OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXIX, Issue 7812, 3 June 1909, Page 1

GERMAN HATRED OF GREAT BRITAIN.

The following letter appeared m a recent issue of the London Times : Sir, —To-day, whilst turning over the pages of the twenty-ninth volume of the Revnue d'Histoire for information respecting a-particular campaign,. I came by chance on a notice of a German publication, ''Kriegsbriefe Aus Den Jahren, 1870-71," letters written by Major Hans; Yon Kretsehman, an officer of the staff of the Third Army Corps, during the war, to his wife. This officer attributed to the assistance rendered by England to France the prolonged resistance offered by France, and he accused England of having drawn on her own resources for the purpose of prolonging the contest, and m a letter which he wrote at Meung on the Loire on December 25, 1870, occurs the following passage preceding a bitter diatribe against us : "This Power will have to be annihilated, and for this purpose a war is not necessary. We shall have a Fleet. America is only waiting for an opportunity to get rid of England. Smco the Crimea, Russia has had a little accoiint to settle with her." This shows that even so long ago as thirty-eight years the idea of German naval supremacy m the future was already m existence among Germans other than German statesmen and diplomatists. It is an illustration, not the continuity of national policy, but of national sentiment. But, further, it shows that this hostile national sentiment is not of mushroom growth, and likely to be evanescent, but is of long standing, and permanent, and as such must be regarded and provided against m our own national future and 1 policy.—Yours, LONSDALE.