GERMAN PROFESSOR'S FORESIGHT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17324, 25 May 1918, Page 5

GERMAN PROFESSOR'S FORESIGHT.

The famous Oxford professor of Victorian days, the celebrated Max Muller, was a German who was proud of his own land, and devoted to his birthplace as well «s to England; and he was always wishful of promoting good and friendliness between the two countries. In a letter to Prince Christian (who died quite recently) written from Oxford in 18847 Max Muller says: — I know the feeling of Germany towards England. . . . England has from time to time to pass through crises, and no one can deny that her statesmen and doctors do not always prescribe the right remedies. . . But the I&iglieh nation is of good old stock, and woe to him who forgets this! England will never be conquered—not before the last Englishman, the last Scotchman, the last Irishman, the last Canadian and Newfoundlander, the last Sikh —aye, and the last Yankee—has fallen!" " Bismarck knows what England signifies. . . . No danger threatens Germany from England!" There is a truly remarkable foresight indeed of the coming-in of all the dominions beyond the seas to assist the Motherland when she needs it, though at the time Muller wrote this the British and colonial relations were more strained than cordial. Moreover, note, further, how clearly he even sees the vision of a great and loyal India rushing to the rescue, too—a thing which has happened exactly as foretold, though Kaiser and junkers had both imagined so differently. Still grander is the vision which saw the United States hurrying up— "to the last Yankee" —to fight wrth Britain when she needed their help. Still more astounding are the prophecies in another letter by Mnllcr, written m 1885 to the then German Minister at the Vatican, Herr von Schlotzer:— "We are living to-day like the beasts of prey in prehistoric times. Every man in Europe is now a soldier. . . . What are wo to think of a Europe where no single State finds itself safe unless its cannons outnumber those of its neighbour?/ . . . England is the only land which has not yet taken to arming all its sons. But drive England into a corner, and every man in it. would to-morrow rush to bo a soldier! There may be jealousies and disputes between England and her colonies; but. if it comes to extremities any time .the colonics will not allow a hair of England's head to be touched. Even India, which was once a bifr danger, would clearly show that England's enemies are her own. " I wish they (the Germans?) would send some other sensible man as ambassador to London. The ambassadors we have here are clew diplomatists perhaps, but they cannot shake off the idea that, diplomatists must play chess. . . . Let us hope for better times. The present state of Europe is a disgrace to all, and history will condemn ns and our times more strongly than it did the Iluns and Vnndals." — Bacon figures twice in town nomenclature in the United States, but whether it was in compliment to the great Elizabethan or to the product of Chicago there is nothing to show. In the sam? great country which called its capital after its greatest man, Washington. there are a large number of Miltons, and almost as manv Byrone. and at least a dozen Burnses, probably the last being the abode of canny Scots or their doscendants. There are only two Tennysons, however, and the same number of Shellevs and Keatses and Ruskins and Balzaes. Thackeray has one town named after him. whereas his rival and contemporary, Dickens, scores three times.