11 SEPTEMBER 1909, Page 15

GERMANY AS A MODEL.

CID THE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTATO R.1

SIB,—I should like to ask why we are now to take all our ideas ready made from Germany. In 1905 every Radical platform echoed with stories of the poverty of the German working class. Speakers at Liberal meetings, notably in Kent, held up pieces of preserved dog's-flesh said to be certified as authentic by various local authorities in Germany, and stated that they were commonly sold as food. They also exhibited loaves of black bread as samples of the workman's diet. To-day all is changed. Prince Bismarck, to whom all this misery was attributed in 1905, is now held up as the beneficent angel to whom all the happiness of the working man in Germany is due, although Mr. Churchill con- veniently omits to state that Prince Bismarck made the working men in Germany pay for his social policy by sub- mitting them to compulsory military service and by enforcing a "Protectionist tariff. Nothihg was done by him with respect to the introduction of social changes until the German tariff had been established.—I am, Sir, &c., OUTIDANOS.