LORD HALDANE ON THE GERMANS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1233, 15 September 1911, Page 3

LORD HALDANE ON THE GERMANS.

. *. A STRIKING ADDRESS. The following is a summary of the important and illuminating address delivered recently by Lord Haldano at Oxford. It is never easy to make a satisfactory appreciation of a country to which one stands in the relation of a foreigner. Germany, moreover, is for us Britons a specially difficult country to understand. Its people possess traits so like ours that w.o are apt to overlook those other traits in which they are profoundly unlike. Henco arise misinterpretations and disappointments on both sides of the German Ocean. Tho racial difference in habit of mind might be stated thus: The Englishman has less often than the German formed in his mind an abstract principle or plan heforo ho moves. This is the outcome of his characteristic individualism. Tho practical life of the Germany of to-duy rests, far more than does that of Britain, on abstract and theoretical foundations. In German intellectual development the search for system is the cardinal fact. Luther led tho uprising of conscience against the abstract domination of the Church. He emancipated man's reason. But he provided no stable basis on which religion might rest, though, in Heine's words, ho gave Germany not only freedom of thought but alto the means of movement, sinco he created the German language by his translation of the Bible. The emancipation of reason which he began Lcssing and Kant completed. Nothing henceforth in Germany was taken for granted. And Kant, by making a place for religion where it could find a firm foundation and base a claim to authority which science could not shake, made possible a further grant work, that of tho poets and idealists, such as Goethe, who were to dominate German thought for tho first half of the nineteenth century.

"Without Goethe, No Bismarck."

System, then; system that has its beginning and end in concrete life was the intellectual inheritance of the German nation from Hi a philosophers and posts of tho early nineteenth century. Someone once said, "Without Goethe, no Bismarck." It seems to me this saving is true. But its author might have' added that without the great German thinkers (hero would also have been no Scharnhorst, no Clausewitz, no Boon, and no Moltke. There is hardly anything in the history of modern Germanv that illustrate more thwoughh- what has been called "the wonderful might of thought" than tho capacity it lias developed for organisation. An especially fine illustration is the organisation of the German military system. It began after the battle of Jena. Prior to that catastrophe German generals had ceased to think. They had been content to adhere blindly to tho traditions inherited from Frederick the Great. But those traditions belonged to a system which was of the past, bound up with the personality of an almost unique leader—one who could do what he liked with his Army and had fashioned his strategy and his tactics and his staff not for all time but for the special problems of his day. Treitschke, in tho pages of his history, tells how (he change came about in Hie uprising against Napoleon of ISI3. He tells us, first of all, of the inspiration of Prussia by her statesmen, soldiers, thinkers, and poets. Ho draws tho picture of a nation penetrated by enthusiasm and determination in every rank and every phase of life. He describes how the national energy was directed and organised by great military leaders like Sehanihcjst and Blucher. And then he tells hov? a great Army was rapidly created, apparently by the people themselves, with a single purpose—that of dtlivering Prussia from tne yoko of the oppressor.

the Coming of Socialism,

Next there came a period in which Germany gradually turned from idealism to science, and in a less but still marked degree to Socialism. Her literature became insignificant and her philosophy lost its hold But in science she became stronger than ever, and in tho faculty of organisation strongest of all. This was natural. Nothing so recalls a people to serio'js practical purposes as war dees, and Prussia had a succession of war's. They culminated in IS7O, and Bismarck then was free to turn ■ his attention to industrial and social organisation.

Bismarck subordinated economic to national consideration?, and nlwve all to the end of German unity. For this purposo ho introduced into the life of tho people organisation wherever ho could. In education, in military training, in her Poor Lair, Germany began to stand out more and more among the nations. A process carried so far was necessarily attended by reaction. And reaction came in thinkers like Nietzsche and iu the 1 criticisms of the modern spirit on tfie narrowness of the type created by the German school system. Il is odd to reflect that Eton and Harrow, institutions which many people -here do not regard as free from grave defects, have become much thought of in educational circles in Germany. And why? Not for the learning'they impart, because in these and other great schools in England the real rulers aro seen to be tho boys themselves, and their tendency is to produce individuality and the qualities which go to the making of men. It is not an unmixed good to a country to bo over-governed, and Germany is still probably too much governed for that free development of individuality which is characteristic of life here and in the United Stales. But this must not bo taken to mean that the order which prevails in so many departments of German racial life is not a great advantage to her, and ono which ought as far as possible to be preserved. In many ways wo ourselves are rapidly adopting German examples, with the modifications that tho national habit of mind makes inevitable, not only in national insurance, but in other directions. Tho Teutonic spirit is moving among us, but moving in a fashion that is on the whole our own. And, on the other lia.ud, Grrma.ny is learning something from us. Sho is studying our methods of colonial development and applying them. And she is watching our vigorous local government. Moreover. Germany is altering in bcr habits of thought and feeling. Professor Windlebxid, of Heidelberg, one of the best known of modern historians of philosophy, in a volume of addresses published two years ago, points out that tho nilo of the masses has increased and is increasing, so far as the things of outward life are concerned. Wliat is needed is a strong and heighle.ued personal life that can preserve its own spiritual inwardness. The relation of the individual to the community is the new problem. The great question for modern Germany is how the infinite value of tho individual inner lifo and tho elnims of the society of which the individual is a member aro to be reconciled.

The German Democracy,

In Britain democracy is advancing with even greater strides, but the sfalo of things is not quite the same. There is a general disposition to view tho people who already pos-ess education as a class; apart. Vet the two democracies havo much in common in vita! iioints, such as the desire than the State should insist on lielter conditions of life for manual workers. The German democracy would probably follow its rulers to war, as would in all probability the democracy hero. But both democracies are more and more influencing the policy of these rulers. Neither regards war in -any other light than that of a calamity. A marked and growing interest in pressing forward the demand for the solution of social problems is a guarantee of peace. Mutual suspicions are largely due to mutual misunderstandings. English politicians must learn that vague and sentimental appeals lo German statesmen provoke distrust. Genua as should recognise that we do not conceal deep-laid plans and selfish schemes under the guise of obscurity in word and deed. We do not seek as to sot purpose to annex more and more of the earth in advance of ali others. What we have done in this direction we have done not as tho outcome of any preconceived policy, but because wo wore for a long time the only people on the spot. Germany seems to mo to have had one particular piece of ill-luck: the misfortune of having been born as a nation 100 years late in the world's history. 'This fact need not materially hamper her progress. She is penetrating everywhere and to the profit of mankind. Nothing is likely to keep her buck, and nothing is so likely to smooth her path, as really frank and easy relations in commerce, iu politics, iu 'sqcictv with, this couatry.