Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WEDNESDAY. DEC. 16. 1914. HATRED OF ENGLAND .

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13564, 16 December 1914, Page 2

Poverty Bay Herald PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, WEDNESDAY. DEC. 16. 1914. HATRED OF ENGLAND .

Evidence is continually accumulating of the intense hatred shown' towards the British people" by the Germans. To-day's messages' tell onoe again of-- -the severity of treatment accorded to our British soldiers in the hands of the Huns as compared with the treatment received by the Trench and Belgians. German poets have declaimed against England as their bitterest enemy j all the, venom and' spite .of- the German caricaturists and, post Scard designer's, is levelled against the contemptible'"British. Why, may we ask? ' Six7 months ago • "lit England and in' ! every: British community there we£e Germans, resident and passing, .who protested the utmost, friendliness' for our nation. They lived with us, traded with us, spoke our language -and' always endeavored to show that they . were- good friends: . The 'Germans who have, lived amongst us 'an'd J enjb'ye'd thelibertfes of British rule cannot surely have sent back to the Fatherland pictures of Britishers as ogres to. be reviled'. Germany,, with all its business and social communications across the North Sea, with its appreciation of English drama and English literature, must surely know that the British people are not scoundrels and dastards, that the character of the nation is not deserving of the vile splenetic epithets -suddenly called into being. English writers have been endeavoring to fathom the reasons for the intensity of the German hate. They show that wo have far more reason to hate Germany than she to hate us. If wo are at war it is not for hatred of Germany, states the Tinies, but because we have come to "realise the' hatred, the envy, the determination to cripple us, and to destroy our friends that animates the Imperial, military, and political pupils of , Ti-eitsclike^ says the Saturday Rcyeiew^ -'has done in : the full blaze of, the twentieth century what Spain did in the twilight of the sixteenth.; She has broken faith, robbed^ and massacred in the. name of a superstition fundamentally and eternally false. , . She 7 has roused in the most chivalrous, and the imOst kindly of European peoples the same downright loathing that the Spanish cruelties and the Spanish imbecilities roused in our Elizabeth ancestors. The stain on Germany's Teputatidn is blacker than on Spain's; her enormities have been wrought in a more sensitive age, and it is hardly possible that she can escape •the just punishment of her sins. There must be t intercourse /between' the peoples ; personal friendships and connections will be resumed after the war; but it will be against historical prev cedent if a deep distrust Of German influence does not form the basis of publio policy in most European countries for a" century to come." Germans claim that it was envy by England

which brought the war upon them. The London Times takes up the challenge arid^ makes this noteworthy reply : "The history of Germany since. 1871 has been one - ; of ever-increasing "-strength and prosperity. Of peace she has been assured. Nobody has' ever dreamed of attacking . her, and she herself, . ever since the formation of the /Triple Alliance, has never : tired of assuring -the world, through her well-instructed spokesmen in Germany, in Austria, and in Italy, that the Alliance- was the best and surest' guarantee of peace. Her Army, and during the last fifteen years, her Navy, have been her first and most constant oare, the object of the latter arm having' been nowhere more clearly and more naively defined than by the ex-Chancellor, Prince Bulow, in his little book on Imperial Germany. -. The only danger in peace has come from her, on three or four occasions when, to use Bismarck's words, she 'turned her unimpaired attention to the volcano in the west, which for three hundred years has so often littered Germany with its eruptions.' Certainly during a11 .... this period that volcano has been perfectly quiescent, as have Russia and England. Meantime science, education, and disciplinedenergy } working together and carried -to a point which the world has never . seen ? before, have combined to enrich, the German people- Villages have become towns, towns have become great cities, wealth has grown by leaps and bounds, and the trade of half "the world has been captured by the German' banks and mines and factories. What has heen the result upon the German mind and ' consciousness ? -Germany has gone on. hungering for more and more, and demanding ail outlet other than commercial. A, race so big, SO strong, j so rich, so cultured, ought not to be confined to its own home boundaries. What stops the way ? -.An', island Power lying across Germany's path, ; a Power which has had two hundred years' start has got control of the sea, and obtained command oyer Tndia, Canada, the Cape, , and most, of the other- unoccupied regions that were at all desirable/ How monstrous that an 'effete' island, and oiie' not even blessed with compulsory military service, should have been able to effect all this! It was hard enough to bear in peace "■' time j and now the island haa thrown off the mask, has joined Germany's enemies, has turned the scaley has made the conquest of France a doubtful problem, has encouraged Belgium to resist the decrees of Providence and the.' Kaiser, the instrument of the Deity; and. has barren the way of Germany's Imperial destiny. The amazing thing is that a people of high intelligence should have persuaded itself of all this. Beginning at the top, it would seem that the Kaiser, his Chancellor, and the leaders of opinion, military and civil, were, taken by surprise. They appear to have neally believed that^England was so effete and so corrupt that she would readily aishonor her own signature, and so stupid that she would consent to abandon that which for. eighty years has been a corner stone of her foreign policy — -the inviolability of Belgium. And when we proved them wrong, these leaders and the whole country rushed to the belief that it was we -and not they who were the traitors and tHe breakers of faith. To oppose the Kaiser and 'the manifest destiny? of Germany' was the worst \form of^se. majeste. We dared to dd it when ihey were certain we would not, and hence this outburst of hjakreA." And. so the poor British captives in Germany have to suffer. ...Wounded soldiers are taunted, ill-treated,; and subjected to privations, whilst German prisoners and wounded in England are placed on quite an equality in regard to fare and accommodation to our 'own British troops. The day of reparation will" assuredly come, ■ and meantime British people haVe. the satisfadtura, of knowing, at any rate, that they have played the .game and that in so doing they are heaping coals of fire upon; their vengeful enemy's head.