Germany Since the War
The Post-War Mind of Germany, and other European Studies.
15a.)
Paorusson C. H. HERFORD, Honorary Professor of English Literature in the University- of Manchester, has written a brilliant analysis of the thought which haS been shaping Germany since the War. The other book before us shows its the thought—the inchoate thought —at the bottom of German political life which caused the rise of the Republic, but Professor Herford gives us only the thought at- "the intellectual top--very much at the top. It seems ungracious to complain of an essay which Must give intense pleasure in the reading to anyone who values literary scholarship, a distinguished and pleasing style, sympathy, and a perfect control over the material in hand, but really if one failed to make alloWance for Professor Herford's humanitarianism one would be in danger of supposing that the Germans are angels of light, while our own 'people, by comparison, are merely the pedestrian authors of a clumsy and oppressive Treaty.
We shall deal here only with the first of Professor Herford's essays, that on the post-War mind of Germany, which gives its title to the whole volume. Enotigh to say of the other essays, every one of which is illuminating, that they are in tune with the first essay because: though they are purely literary, they deal with international affinities and relations. For instance, Professor Herford writes of the influence of Shakespeare on the Continent ; of the relation between Dante and Milton ; of Pushkin and of the national and international ideals of the English poets. In the present political mind of Germany Professor Herford finds nothing more conspicuous than the sharp antagonism of modern youth to the whole complex of ideas and passions embraced by the militarism of the fallen .Reich. Certainly Germany deserves great credit for having disavowed any future claim to Alsace-Lorraine and for having thus made possible the Loearno Treaties. Yet it is impossible not to remember what a German-imposed Treaty would have been if Germany had won the War. Professor Herford himself repeats a saying of Rathenau, to which we called attention when it was pub- lished in one of Rathenau's memorable books. Rathenau was ridiculing the claim that the German people had achieved their revolution of their own volition. " It is not we," he wrote, " who liberated ourselves: it was the enemy ; it was our destruction that set us free."
Let us put it like this, then, and we shall not be far from the truth : the German people as a whole did not mean to let go their militarism, which drew its general philosophy from Hegel and its historical sanction from practically all recent German historians ; but the ground collapsed under their feet. Since the collapse they have busied themselves with re- building their house with something of the frenzy with which ants rebuild their crumbled heap. This, indeed, in itself is a tremendous achievement which reveals an invincible temper and an adaptability possessed by almost no other nation. It is right to respect and praise it ; but it is unnecessary to go to the other extreme and discover a stronger primary impulse of international good will than is claimed by cool-headed Germans themselves. We should be the more ready to follow Professor Herford if he were ready to give the credit due to our own country. When writing of Rathenau he remarks that " the individualism of which we boast in England—' every -man- for himself '—was wholly foreign to him." Now is that perfectly just ? Has there been a more striking movement in Britain since the War than the aban- donment by all parties of laisser faire individualism ?
Professor Herford gives a supremely interesting account of the various branches of that vigorous movement which is known as the Youth Movement in Germany. The typical young German intellectual says that race is no proper founda- tion for nations. The best aspect of that doctrine is its powerful help for disarmament. It is impossible to withhold a welcome from anything that can possibly cheer us along the road to disarmament, but, of course, there are less pro- mising aspects of the movement. People of the same race cohere together in a polity for the simple reason that it is easy for them to do so. Men of the same race and language have a single ethos and this makes possible the generous forms of government that rest upon consent. Again, the Treaty of Versailles, which cannot for a long time be abro- gated, though we freely admit the need of revision, assumed that race was the right foundation of a new State. Nobody held to that principle more tenaciously than President Wilson. Indeed, there is a very curious illogicality in the Treaty which simultaneously encouraged nationalism where it had not existed before and provided the Covenant as a means of minimizing the well-known excesses of nationality.
We have not space to pursue Professor Herford's examination of the brilliant German dramatists Toller, Fritz von Unruh and others who have ministered to internationalism and anti- militarism, nor his admirable study of the revolt against the mechanization of life. All we can do is to commend this fascinating book to our readers.
Mr. H. G. Daniels, in The Rise of the German Republic, puts all his experience as a newspaper correspondent to excellent use in this concise history. It is very interesting to learn that the low wages paid in Germany during the War had a great deal to do with the revolution. Wages here were out of all proportion to the pay of the soldier, but Mr. Daniels implies some consolation in that lack of control. How full the German revolution was of ironies ! Mr. Daniel shows that the dismissal of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg was the first success of the revolutionaries, but the ultra-militarists believed that his disappearance was due to them. Similarly, the German Government deliberately helped the Russian revolution in 1917 for obvious reasons. The next year the Russian revolu- tion flowed back into Germany. One last note. Mr. Daniels thinks that a dictatorship is less unlikely than a -restoration of the Ilohenzollems.
Previous page
