ENGLAND NOT A " GERMANIC " NATION. [TO THE EDITOR
OP TUB "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—The German Emperor has been pleased lately to speak of England as a " Germanic " nation. The term is inappro- priate. We are not Germans. The Germans are our cousins, not our brothers. In the course of what is growing to be a long life I have known, more or less intimately, many Germans and Danes. I have always felt the Germans to be foreign in their cast of mind, even those who, like the late Chevalier Bunsen, had the greatest affection for England.
J On the other hand, I have felt more and more that the Danes are, in Nelson's words, the "brothers of Englishmen." Our minds seem to be cast in similar mould,—so similar that I have sometimes felt as if a Dane who could hardly speak English were an Englishman brought up abroad, who had not thoroughly learnt his own language. I have never felt any- thing of the kind with a German. As I believe I have before had occasion to observe in your columns, at the present moment Denmark is, with Greece, the only country which thoroughly sympathises with us in our African troubles. We have some hearty friends in Switzerland ; one at least—M. Ives Guyot—in France ; perhaps a few in Austria-Hungary and Italy. With what total want of even cousinly considera- tion we have been treated in Germany during this Boer War every one knows. It is clear to me that Danish influence upon the development of the English character has been enormously underrated, and that the term "Anglo-Saxon" as applied to the English-speaking peoples is a misnomer. It should be " Dano-Saxon" Canute has been too much over- shadowed by Alfred.—I am, Sir, &c., J. M. LUDLOW.
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