[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOP.."]
SIR,—As one who has grown up in steady admiration of the Spectator, may I venture to protest against the drift of the letter in your issue of the 14th inst. headed "Our New Foe "? Having spent all last autumn in a German University town, I may fairly set my experience against that of your corre- spondent. First in lodgings in the town, and then during three months in a large hospital, I met and conversed with many different classes of Germans, including students, towns- men and country-folk, doctors and Wailer, and, not least interesting, quite a number of soldiers from the barracks. Though belonging to the so-called "nation of robbers," I in- variably met with the kindest possible treatment from every one, and never found a trace of that irritable jealousy of which we have beard so much under the name of Anglophobia,—and this in spite of the steady stream of abuse put forth daily by the local paper. In fact, I found myself continually marvel- ling at the possible results of truth and fairness once more finding their way into the writings of the German Press, if Germans, in spite of reading every day such outrageous lies in their papers, could yet treat foreigners with such genuine and uniform kindness. Some people assert that "the Englishman abroad is always grumbling " ; but happily I know many ex- ceptions to this proverb who would support me in my high opinion of German hospitality. So far from agreeing that to talk of the blood-relationship is to talk cant, I believe that now more than ever is the time to foster good feeling between the two nations. The obstacle to this lies not in the German people, but in the German Press. As a German friend wrote to me, the German is sin Gefiihlamenach, and as such is needlessly sentimental in sympathising with the weaker side. Sections of the Press, under the care of Dr. Leyds, carefully used this feeling to further the Boer cause, and prolonged it by deluging the Continent with infamous lies and plausible scandals. One very practical way of counteracting the effect of these misrepresentations is to spread as widely as possible the German translation of Dr. Conan Doyle's pamphlet on the Boer War. If I may judge by its good effects among my own friends, its distribution would have a far more salutary effect than to name a great neighbouring Empire as "our new foe." It is to "Englishmen who pride themselves on not contaminating their insularity when abroad" that your correspondent's letter will appeal, coupling, as it does, "Germans and German Jews" in a phrase as contemptuous as it is in- discreet. But those who cross the Channel with a view to widening their insularity into a fuller and kindlier under- standing of their neighbours, and who show a respect for differing customs and ideas, will certainly find that "the demeanour of the German at home to English visitors" needs no changing for the better.—.I am,!Sir, &c.,
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