THE GERMAN SPIRIT

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 33, 9 February 1915, Page 6

THE GERMAN SPIRIT

The final issue of great ware depends, in the last analysis, on the spirit of the combatant nations. It is, therefore, to the spirit of the Gorman nation that we must look if we are to gauge, with any degiee of accuracy, the powers of resistance to our arms and consequently the probable duration of the war. The average citizen of the British Empire is not much given to the study of foreign peoples and their way of thought, their attitude towards the world, their manner of life, their ideas and ideals —in a word, what the Germans call their "kultur." We aie content to live and let live, to go about our business as usual, and to expect other people to do the same. This absorption in our own affairs has been described by Continental nations as "British insularity." It may be so; it is certainly a fact that wo have not taken as deep an interest in tho affairs of our neighbour nations as they have in ours. It must have been a very small proportion of the British people in tho Motherland and abroad in tho Dominions overseas that knew anything about Germany and the German spirit before the storm of war burst on Europe. It is trae there had been warnings in the sensational halfpenny press of London, notably those of Mr, ltobert Blatchford in the Daily Mail, but tho public, with few exceptions, went on its way unheeding. Few Britons could take seriously a charge against Germany, our best customer, that for years she had actually been plotting the destruction of the British Empire, The thing seemed too fantastic, too monstrous to be anything moio than the fabrication of a sensationmonger. Tho bulk of the British Liberal j press ridiculed the Blatchfofd articles [ as mere essays in scare-raising foe the benefit of armament firms. The people generally were too busy with Home Rule, the Insurance Act, the Land Question, and other internal pioblems to think abotit the storm brewing on the Continent. In the Dominions, even less attention was paid by the "man in the street," and the giving of Dreadnoughts was accepted, perhaps, more as a token of loyalty to the ties Of race and kinship that bound the donors to the Empire than as much-needed weapons for a. war that was nearly at hand. The lack throughout New Zealand in libraries and bookshops at the beginning of the war of information that could throw any light on tho deeper causes of the outbreak was j a clear indication of a sort of mental unpreparedness for the event. And yet, prior to the war, at least four books had appealed in England of supreme interest to t.he people as foieshadowing with extraordinary impres&iveness the coming struggle. These were "Germany's Swelled Head," by Dr. Emil Reich, first published in 1907; "Pan-Germanism," by Dr. Roland Usher, of St. Louis, U.S.A. ; " Germany and the Next War," by General yon Berhhardi (translation in 1912). and in June, 1914, Professor Cramb's "Germany and England." it is not too much to say that had these works been as widely read before the war as they deserved to be and as they have, been read since, the Empire would have been far better prepared to face the situation of to-day. Two, at least, of the books mentioned will be familiar enough to many of our readers, but Df. Usher's work and Professor's Cramb's lectures aro difficult to obtain here even now, though according to a- iecent cable message they rank at Home with the elfusions of the egregious Bernhardi as the " best sellers " in the voluminous war-literature of the day. Piofessor Cramb's " Germany and England " is of special interest, as illustrating the extraordinary wai -spirit of tlie Germany ol the present Kaiser. For

a generation or more the University protestors have couspiicd with the |>re»« to fcteep all Germany in this worship of war — wai which made Putssia a nation, united Germany into a gicat empire, and was to make, until tingieat conspiracy failed, Germany the supieme world-power. Of this spirit Professor Cramb says : " Germany will never sinceiely cea&e arming. If England builds on the dream of Germany acquiescent she is destined to a bloody and terrible awakening. . , And here let me say with regard to Germany that of all England's enemies she is by far the greatpsl; and by greatness I mean not merely magnitude, not her millions of soldieis, her millions of inhabitants. I mean grandeur of boul. She is the greatest and most heroic enemy that England, in the thousand yeais of her history, has ever confronted." Had Professor Cramb lived to see tho war he would, doubtless, have chosen a more appropriate phrase than "grandeur of soul " to apply, for instance, to the German spirit operating in Belgium, but who would deny a certain terrible grandeur to the massed attack of Yon Hindenberg's army on the devoted Russian lines at Borjimoff ? Military critics, according to a recent cable message, declare the world has never seen such fighting. Those who me actually meeting the Germans in conflict on land and sea aro not disposed to disparage or underestimate the strength and valour of their opponents, nor is there any good to be derived from such a policy on tho part of those who are not at the front. Independent observers in Germany report that, heavy though the losses and sacrifices have been, there is still confidence in the ultimate victory of German arms. Such confidence is not the creation of a day, but the fruit of the victories over Austria and France nearly fifty years ago, enhanced by the wardoctrine preached by Treitbchkc, Delbruck, Bernhardi, anr 1 a score of other leaders of thought thrpugh a full generation of time. "Generals may win battles, but soldiers win wars," Lord Kitchener" is reported to have said in the famous interview by Mr. lrvin Cobb, the American journalist, in the course of an enquiry as to the spirit of German forces. This is a soldiers' war, as it is a peoples' war, and it is the spirit of peoples that determines more than anything else the length of such a> struggle. That the spirit of tho German people still presents a formidable power of resistance the Empire hiual take fully into account and make its preparations accordingly. Tho achievements of tho Motherland and the Dominions in the face of tho common enemy have been wonderful, but we must be prepared for greater achievements still if the issue of the war is to be made tho final reckoning, at least in our time and generation.