15 JANUARY 1927, Page 3

The death is announced in Bavaria of Mr. Houston Stewart

Chamberlain, who was notorious before and during the War as the Englishman who became a fanatical apologist for Germany. His book, Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, was accepted by many. Germans as a most serious contribution to history. The Emperor was particularly impressed by it. Nor was that surprising, as the purpose of the book was to exalt the Teutonic type. Mr. Chamberlain's definition of Teuton was astonishingly comprehensive ; it embraced not only the Anglo-Saxons but the Celts and the French. Nearly all the great leaders and great authors of Europe were, by Mr. Chamber- lain's curious tests, Teutonic. Teutons were saints and heroes ; anti-Teutons were mean barbarians. His arguments were helped out by a farrago of metaphysics . 'and art. His book did a great deal to inflame the self- conscious and arrogant nationalism of Germany. In the War he became a naturalized German. He married as his second wife the only daughter of Richard Wagner.

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