GERMANY’S POLICY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 52, 16 October 1911, Page 4

GERMANY’S POLICY.

Aii historical review of German policy —or, more properly—Prussian policy —is given by Mr Thomas Kirkup in an article in the “Nineteenth Century and After,” the' writer taking tho view that modern Germany is an industrial as well as a military State, and tliat it became a military State, not from choice, but from necessity. “To many minds,” writes Mr Kirkup, “a military State suggests a predatory State. Such a suggestion is intolerable with regard to Prussia, industry has been the note of the Prussian State throughout its history ; industry ceaseless, thrifty, welldirected, and victorious under adverse conditions of soil and climate. War was, generally speaking, a most unwelcome incident to her rulers.” The contributor invites his readers to “clear their minds of the absurd and pernicious idea that the wars of 1861-71 were wars of vulgar aggression.” They were waged, he says, to secure unity and independence, and all the thousand blessings implied in unity and independence, for a great people that had for centuries endured the worst evils of disunion, and cf foreign interference and domination.” That is no doubt perfectly true from the" German point of view. But this contributor’s argument would find an equal justification for, say, a German attack on Great Britain, which undoubtedly bars the way to German' expansion. Such a war might be considered by Germany—and doubtless would be so considered —not as a war of '“vulgar aggression,” but as a thoroughly justifiable struggle for obtaining the blessing of liberty to expand, as well as the blessings of unity and independence.