GERMAN SENTIMENT

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1847, 31 July 1907, Page 20

GERMAN SENTIMENT

ANIMOSITY AGAINST ENGLAND BLUNTED. Writing of the interchange of opinion that accompanied the recent visit of a party of Britisli editors to Germany, Mr H. Jones, of the “Daily Chronicle, We found the Germans almost, nervously anxious to justify maintenance of their great army, and to vindicate che attitude of their Government in regard to arrest of armaments. a Prussian statesman put it. to me, “A powerful army is as necessary to Germany as is a powerful Navy to England If we were weak, our weakness would invite attack. “The strong man armfcd keepest peace in his house. Then he dwelt on what the Germans had suffered in the past from foreign foes owing to weakness and internal dissension. Particularism ihas been in marked degree a vice of the German peoples. The Imperial Army is a boiid of unity giving coherence and strengtn to what used to be “disjecta membia. There are profound differences still between the various States banded together in the German Confederation. Bavaria and Prussia, for instance, have curiously little in common. It is necessary to remember how inveterate I articularism used to be in Germany to appreciate the magnitude oi Bismarck s work in uniting into one harmonious whole such dissonant elements. T>e hegemony of Prussia is now cheerfully accepted, and we discovered in Dresden and Frankfort as warm a pride in the German army as in eßrlin itself. The Emperor, too, is undeniably popular. There is criticism of his taste in the arts and reprobation of his love for oratory; but the people have a genuine pride in his leadership and admiration for his personality. Happily the edge of the old animosity against England on account of the Boer War has been blunted by. our grant of a Constitution to the Transvaal. That striking proof of British belief in the efficacy of free institutions has greatly impressed the Germans. “No other nation would have done it,” said Professor Brentano, the eminent economist, to me. “The new Transvaal Constitntion is worthy of the best traditions of British statesmanship.” Other eminent Germans, old friends of England, rejoiced in our recent policy in the Transvaal and in our adhesion to Trade. “England,” said one of them, is herself again. She has recovered her old position in the world as the standai dbearer of liberty.”