A GERMAN VIEW OF THE ENGLISH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12409, 23 October 1903, Page 6

A GERMAN VIEW OF THE ENGLISH.

To see ourselves as others see us we need only study the articles in the Continental newspapers by the foreign correspondents in our midst. One of these, a lady, whose sense of humour makes her contributions in the Frankfurter Zeitung amusing reading is Frauiein Henrietta Jastrow. In a recent article (says the Magazine "of Art) Miss Jastrow has something to say on the subject of the English system of coinage, weights and measures, with, incidentally, a few remarks on our, railways, telephonic communication, and the lighting, cleaning, and naming of our streets. Miss Jastrow begins by a defence of the people among whom she has for some years made her home, and denies that they are the stiff, unapproachable, inconsiderate beings that they are represented to be on the Continent. " Wheii you live jn England you are convinced that a friendly attitude, warm feeling, a Strong # sense of justice, and an almost" punctilious politeness and consideration, especially to th? other sex, are the characteristics of the English nation, rather than the reverse."

But that the epithet " practical," universally conceded ,o the English in Germany, is deserved, Miss Jastrow stoutly denies. "The Englishman is far too conservative, far too much the slave of the old order and of custom, to be 'practical.' He has a special horror of ever disturbing a privilege conferred in the Dark Ages, and so we live to see that most indispensable necessity of life—water—at the present day in the metropolis of England the monopoly of private enterprise, and every summer in the East End of London a "water famine produces scenes such as ona would, have believed impossible in so highly cultivated a country." After a few non-flattering comments on our British railway system, "which, by imposing dearer freight on its own goods traffic tnan on that of foreign countries, handicaps the trade of its own country,"' Miss Jastrow has some comparisons on the English versus the Continental Telephone system, the out-of-date method oi streetcleaning in London, and the inadequate display of the names of streets and the numbers of houses, citing as a model, in regard to the last-mentioned item, the large and distinct street-shields and numbers of the \ houses in Berlin. Such a state of things as exists in London would not. she maintains, be tolerated another day if the Englishman were "practical."