ENGLAND AND GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 271, 13 November 1909, Page 15

ENGLAND AND GERMANY.

REMARKABLE GEEAIAX OPINION. (The London "Times.") When a German writer of the influence and popularity which Herr Bleibtrsu has long enjoyed undertakes, at a juncture like the present, to tell us something ol the relations, actual or desirable, between his own country and England, his words are likely to be worthy of serious consideration. He is well equipped for his task on the only side of it which can be called into question—his knowledge of England. But he knows the essential things well—the English language, English history, and English society; and he has a much better acquaintance with English literature (of which, indeed, he has written a history) than have many educated Englishmen. Furthermore, though he may have misjudged us here and there, he is quite devoid of chauvinistic bias. We have no hesitation in taking his book in the spirit in which it is offered—as a sincere contribution towards a better understanding between the two countries. His object appears in the first sentence of the book:— "'The Englishman and the German are more closely related to each other than are any two nations on earth." Yet probably there are no two which regard each other, just at present, with so much suspicion and animosity. This feeling Bleibtreu considers to .be absolutely unfounded on both sides. Into the immediate causes which have led to it he does not inquire at any length; but one standing cause he devotes himself to removing—the false and ignoble picture which each presents to itself of the character and Wesen of the other. With a better mutual knowledge should grow more good-will and a firmer basis for enduring agreement on all points of difference that may arise. Hia method is to take the principal fea-tures of the national life of both countries, and to show in relation thereto, first, the view which the average, ignorant German entertains of England, then the corresponding English view of Germany, and finally, die Wahrheit as seen through the Brille of Herr Bleibtren. He ranges his study methodically under six headings—Political history ; Military and maritime power; economies; works of literature, art, and science; Social life; and the national conceptions of religion, of e-thics, and of civic and personal freedom. In the discussion of these features we learn that to the ordinar}' German view the Englishman appears to be the incarnation of selfish arrogance and vainglory, inordinately proud of a history in which his success has been largely fortuitous, a "shopkeeper" with his eye bent fixedly on the main chance, and only now and then throwing up iby some unaccountable accident a fiery genius like ■Shakespeare or Byron, who stands out brilliantly against a background of petty, materialistic minds, devoid of all sense of the ideal. In the present day this nation is regarded as well-nigh bankrupt in all moral and material power not depending directly on the control of money, and even that control is fast disappearing. The Army is a laughing-etock, only fit I to be clapped into prison if it showed itself on German soil; the Fleet, undermanned and wretchedly constructed, is being rapidly outstripped by the young marine of Germany. Such is the image which Bleibtreu sets himself to demolish with many a heavy hammer-stroke. He tells his countrymen plainly that they are under a dangerous delusion if they imagine that England can be made little of in any sphere, intellectual or material. Germans are apt to excuse the lateness, as they think it, of their development in powejr and civilization by a series of misfortunes —the Thirty Years War, and so forth. Let them consider the case of England! If Germany allowed itself to ibe"depressed by such circumstances while England, under the most difficult conditions, struggled indefatigably upwards —an extraordinary achievement for a nation originally owning but one-eight of the population of Germany—what can this denote but a great intellectual, moral, and physical superiority? Has any German ever had a true conception of the bitter toil which it has cost to bring the British world-power to its bloom? Good luck? A nation of three millions under Cromwell, of ten millions at the time of Napoleon, ventures on a war to the knife with the Corsican giant, who controlled in France ilone a force of forty millions, and had .rty millions more as his obedient vaesals in Europe. Nor will any German reader of this book easily delude himself with the idea that this once mighty power is now exhausted and tne Titan grown too weary for her burden. According to tho author England could not, indeed, play a serious part at present in a land war on the Continent, but it is "leeres Gerede" to say that she has not plenty of good stuff available for the repelling of any possible invasion, while Germany must for ever toil in vain to reach the magnificent development of the British Fleet, which is superior to that of che whole of Europe. "Not only on sea, but, I relatively to her needs, on land as well, England is' stronger and better equipped than ever before." In comparing the spiritual and intellectual development of the two countries, Bleibtreu again shows no mercy to the cherished illusions of the German chauvinist. Far from being a nation of unpoetic materialists, the really striking thing about tha English is the artistic turn, the sense of form, which pervades all their literary work: — "Even the well-known military history, Napier's 'History of the Peninsular War,' reads so eloquently, is pervaded with such a veritable breath of poetry, that no similar German or French work can be compared with it. And herein lies the incredibly comic side of the international legend which pictures the British as essentially a people of dry and cold intelligence, practical, but altogether unpoetic. Little as they resemble a 'nation of shopkeepers,' but, rather, at all times, a politic and warlike folk of the Roman stamp, yet there is implanted in them a notable artistic impulse which a certain loftiness of spirit (ihre hochgeistige Art) ever tends to turn inward, to the things of the soul—in a word, to poetry. Even in their works of science and of philosophy an artistic handling of the matter often makes itself agreeably felt." Quite in accordance with this taste for things of the spirit,, we are told, is, the remarkable consideration which the aristocracy of intellect enjoy in the highest social circles —a state of things to which Germany offers no parallel. A fine sense of the higher and larger values of things is widespread, and is in .many directions tonangebend in England. Thus, Bleibtreu notes that an English nobleman, or an officer, would deem it an act of the utmost impropriety and bad form to show anything but the most obliging civility to persons of lower rank in the social order.

We have quoted enough to show that Herr Bleibtreu has approached his task : in a spirit of sincerity and candour, and has shown a courage in dealing < with his countrymen's misconceptions, which is worthy of our respect, and, we « shall add, of our imitation. We can, < therefore, bear to let him show us tho ' other side of the picture. His main complaint of us—a complaint to which he recurs again and again, and supports by a shower of instances drawn ' from the sayings (or silences) of the - Duke of Wellington down to the stories '. of Mr. Fitchett —is the «elf-complacency, ' the niggardly recognition of the high ' qualities or achievements of alien races '< (Mr. Kipling's "lesser tribes without ' the Law"), which distinguish the Briton, and which, according to temperament, cause so much ridicule or so much ; irritation on the Continent. Let us ' frankly admit—the candid critics on our * own hearth have often said no less than Bleibtreu—that he has here hit ■ an undeniable blot, a weakness, an un- ' worthiness, in the national character : and the national intelligence. Bleibtreu, writing in his own slashing and spirited manner, has certainly sometimes pressed his ease too far. It is not, for instance, true that English historians "invariably" suppress ail mention of the two Hanoverian regiments which formed the second line of advance at Minden. Carlyle, for one, gives them full credit—a great deal more than the defeated French General did, who puts dewn to the first line alone the credit for the amazing feat of war performed on that day. Again, the Duke of Wellington (whose remark to the German Legion under his command in the Peninsula, "You are worthy to be Britons," was perhaps an unfortunate form of laudation), when advocating the Militia Bill in Parliament called attention to the fact that the British armies, "which had so well served the State," were never more than one-third British: and he expressly mentions the services of the German troops. Nor do boys' stories, like Mr. Fitchett's, to which Bleibtreu recurs again and again with deep disgust, seem quite important enougli to stir up national animosities. Still, he is, in the main, right; we do need, all of us, more intelligence, morn generosity, and less of national self-conoeit, in our attitude towards the foreigner—and especially the German foreigner; for here, as Bleibtreu points out, our ignorance is deepest, and our need of true knowledge and sympathy certainly not not least. Everything that goes on in the higher life of France is carefully noted in the British Press, but "ein'e Rubrik fur deutsche Ergebnlsse gibt es nicht." The book is not. and it makes no pretensions to be, a work of philosophic and permanent value. But it is eminently a book of the day; it is full of points of great, immediate, and practical interest, and it is worthy of careful reading—which we venture to hope a good translation may soon facilitateby everyone who laments that there is something amiss in our relations with the ancient and noble Teutonic stock, from which our own nationality has mainly sprung.