The Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1915. GERMANY'S ABSENCE OF HUMOUR

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 8

The Star. SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1915. GERMANY'S ABSENCE OF HUMOUR

If we take a retrospective glance at •German history during the last hundred years, and especially at those great figures who have dominated Prussian philosophy, we search in vain for that saving Bense of humour which has ever helped British and American statesmen ¥0 steer a middle course and to avoid those extremes which might ultimately endanger the safety of the. state. Instead the Prussian mind seems to be imbued with such an altogether irrational conception of Germany's importance that it has been blinded to tho ridiculous capers sometimes cut by the fervent patriots of the Fatherland. Could we imagine in any other country than Germany a military class so egotistic that it imagined it was engaged in a holy mission. Such assumptions ion the part of military people in Britain and America would at once be laughed to scorn. But in Germany the rank and file seems to have followed sheepishly the lead of the military class. The Kopenick affair that convulsed the world a few years ago and the Zabern scandals illustrate this point. Had the German people realised the humour of Kopenick's audaoious move of masquerading as an officer of high rank and deceiving the military dupes, they should have pensioned the man instead of imprisoning him in a fortress.

The extraordinary utterances of the Kaiser in times of peace; his invocations of the Almighty's aid into every venture tho State undertook: his absurd belief that God and the Emperor "of-'Germany were identical, convinced everyone outside of Germany that this noisy ruler was without a vestige of real humour. The *?'. Myself and God" motto is unheard of in any other country but Germany. A Stuart King was tho Icist ruler in England to lay claim to a: Divine authority for all his acts, and the English people showed their faith in this claimant of "Divine Right" by driving him from the throne to the scaffold. Charles 1., like Wilhelm 11., had undoubtedly convinced himself of the reality of his Divine mission, but the English being a practical people took a different view and rather than their ancient Constitution upset they removed Charles abruptly. j

« Had the Kaiser been on the throne of England he would in all probability have shared the same fate. His mind with all its superficial modern culture is essentially medieval. His ideals are the ideals of the alicient House of Hapsburg, and his main endeavour seems to have been to increase hiss despotism with the material machinery of civilisation. The strange thing is that the German people should have been led to put their trust in a man whose utterances were often so ludicrous as to excite the laughter of mankind. But IJSgrhapß the binding together of what was until quite recently a loose conglomeration of States by the blood and iron policy of Bismarck accounts for this peculiar mental attitude of the .Germans The consolidation of the Em'pire was not the result of the slow? growth of democratic principles, but jwas achieved by strong, sometimes vnBcrupulous men, with the aid of aj Stringent militarism that guaranteed. the rule of the many by the few. In these circumstances there grew up in. Germany two classes, the military class, or the rulers, and the proletariat, pi- the ruled. Prussian philosophers 's,jid statesmen pointed to the former class and taugbt those pernicious doctrines made familiar to us by Clausewitz, Treitschke and in our own day; by Bernhardt

Ik With the reputation -of being such { jgKf, " thorough " people, it is wonderful fjpfiow German thought was influenced ffi'ljjr these extremists. They preached a F gOßpel of war unrestrained by the action of any law other than that of expediency. They extolled the German State and Germany's mission until .Militarism had the force of a religion. They engendered :%i kind of popular fanaticism in their country's invincibility that was fatal to minds endeavouring to estimate things in their true proportion, The mental outlook of the German people was thus narrowed and became focussed on the fixed idea of German's mission as the leader of the world. It was impossible, therefore, that the people should see anything ludicrous in the wild atateraents* of their leaders and philosophers, and in. the utterances of \ their Kaiser, who exalted himself to [/terms of equality with God. Stranger, ;ioo, and not a little tumorous to the looker-on, is the spectacle of the great . German people humbly accepting the doctrines of Neifczsche and Bernhardi, .'the former a Pole, the latter an Jtalian.