THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1902.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11869, 22 January 1902, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1902.

The German outbreak- of Anglophobia has seemingly subsided almost as suddenly as it arose, but the British peoples are by no means inclined to forget the shameful and shameless attacks which were made upon our troops not merely by foolish mobs but by journals of standing and with the tacit consent of the German Government. The mail shows that these attacks', both in cartoon and letterpress, were infinitely worse than had been imagined. They would be inexcusable under any circumstances, being manufactured from the whole cloth of hatred, contempt and all uncharitableness. They are a national insult when we remember that the boasted freedom of Germany is but on paper and that the journals mostly bark or keep silent at the whistle ot the authorities. We may take it for granted that the feeling which, inspired these calumnies is one of unqualified hatred of Britain. We believe that we may go further than this and say that behind this outburst of calumny and slander is a bitter envy and hatred of all AngloSaxortdom. Its source is traceable not merely to the commercial and industrial rivalry of Germany with the United Kingdom, but to the gnawing rancour with which Germany sees the pre-emption by the Anglo-Saxon nations of the new lands of the earth. North America and Australasia are. barred to her. the more so because our colonial martial strength has been demonstrated and has shown her the hopelessness of dreams of dominion in the Pacific. The United States not only seized the Philippines in despite of her, but utterly refuses to allow her to annex any part of South America, where only the Monroe Doctrine prevents her from becoming a great conquering power. And in South Africa, which she unquestionably planned to seize some day with the rest of the Dutch inheritance, if the Afrikander movement triumphed, she sees another scheme brought to nought, she sees the Anglo-Saxon making good his grip and giving the last blow to her colonising ambitions. Her hatred is the hatred of feebleness and impotence, that vociferous and venomous hatred which exhausts the passions of nations that shrink from staking their claims upon the cast of the iron dice of war.

It is still a habit of the English mind to regard some European alliance as necessary to "the balance of power," very few of our political thinkers having perceived that when Lord Salisbury boasted of our glorious isolation," that: shrewd, di-, plomat- perceived, and did not shrink' from, the inevitable. The unqualified rancour of the Germans has rudely reminded us that they are conscious of having now very little to gain by our friendship. The easiness with which we all regard the fact that the old belief in the AngloGerman understanding has been completely shattered should teach us that our Empire has outgrown any need for European allies. Many still cling to the old habit and propose to give the right hand to Russia and the left to France; but this is nothing but a very natural clinging to an ancient and once-profitable custom and will pass as the futility of such diplomacy becomes apparent. For while we have been all unconsciously working out our Imperial destinies, the United • Kingdom has become more and more detached from Europe and is now the head of a maritime federation which is as completely out of touch with European politics and policies as though it were in Mars. At the same time we have been keeping Germany to her Continental limits—for tropical regions do not count in colonising and find her to-day European and •Continental through and through. On one side we have the AngloSaxon peoples, whether monarchist or republican, adhering in one form or other to peculiar Anglo-Saxon institutions, their development moulded by the dominant AngloSaxon element on the other side, a heterogeneous and disorganised Europe whose one common bond, is enmity to Anglo-Saxondom and fear of the combined strength of the Anglo-Saxon peoples. We have literally no friends, upon the European Continent, not a-single ally in whom we can place confidence. We are no more regarded by European Powers as part of them than are our American fellow tonguesmen, In the course of a thousand years, by imperceptible and fluctuating gradations we have become a people apart, whose interests, whose traditions, whose laws and whose customs, differ so fundamentally from those of Europe Proper that a gulf has been formed between us and it is as broad and as fixed as the Channel.

We need not trouble ourselves as to the outcome of this great division provided we make it our business to strengthen in every way the resources and defences of the Empire and accept as a political maxim the present identification of the political interests of the Anglo-Saxon peoples as against Europe. For every decade will emphasise the schism of Anglo-Saxondom from Europe, not by the weakening of the United Kingdom but by the oversea growth of the already mighty federation whose vast dominions Britain won with her sword and divided among her children. Three-fourths of the British still live in the Mother Country, but every year reduces the proportion, and the majority of those now living will probably see the population of the colonies overtake that of the United Kingdom; of the Anglo-Saxon peoples over twothirds already live beyond the Atlantic, and these increase not merely by their own growth but by the absorption of that great stream of Teutonic migration which the Anglo-

Saxon monopoly of the ne-u.lands prevents from perpetuating taersea the antagonisms of Europe.! This is all very gratifying to thosl of us who look to see Peace made are by the universal Law of a univeital nation, but it fills the Germai with bitter and envenomed hatred Which overflows now in a storm oi ProBoer calumny upon our brave poops and may find vent later in a European coalition against eithe} the British or the Americans or loth. We must remember that only Britain's warning prevented such a oalition of intervention during the Spanish-American war, that onllthe inflexible American neutrality prevents such a coalition of intervention in the present war. For, akin Ave repeat, we have no parti in Europe, no lot with the peopleslof the Continent; and we hold our oVn so peacefully only because we a-e still admittedly lords of the ocean a lordship which has given to tie Anglo-Saxon the uttermost parts )f the earth as his possession.