ALLEGED INTERNATIONAL HATRED BETWEEN GERMANY AND ENGLAND.
[To TB2 EDITOR 07 TH2 " 8PICT2T02..'l
SIR,—It is with astonishment and pain that I read in the Spectator of hatred supposed to exist on both sides between the people of Germany and England. I am satisfied that it is on both sides non-existent and unreal, a mythical creation of the present unhappy times. Are the windy and blatant speeches of a South German princeling to a mob of recruits, or the scurrilous verses of a newspaper like the Jugend, to be taken as evidence of the state of feeling among the educated people of these hitherto friendly nations? I do not for a moment believe it, and I have bad from my boyhood ample opportunities of judging. Frequent visits to my own sister in Germany, herself an Englishwoman, or rather a Scotswoman, to the backbone, married for forty years to a German soldier and Court official, now his widow resident in an Austrian town, surrounded by Austrians of the upper class, have given me prolonged opportunities of verifying my deliberate opinion that it is not hatred, or suspicion, or jealousy that exists even now on either side, but mutual esteem and affection and nothing else which exists among the better sort of people of the two nations. In recent years, moreover, in my practice as a lawyer in the City of London, I have had frequent business to transact with the prominent men of my profession in Berlin, Leipzig, and elsewhere, and I have always met with the same mutual trust and confidence. With these sentiments established in my mind by practical experience, I associated myself some two or three years ago with the Anglo-German Friendship Association, on the Council of which I found such men as our wise and cautious Arch- bishop of Canterbury, experienced diplomats and sundry able Privy Councillors and Members of Parliament, all satisfied, I am sure, by their knowledge of German character that we were colloguing with a nation whose representatives were entitled to real respect. It is true that I have since beard it remarked by outside critics that we were befooled by our German colleagues, who must have known what was impending, and who made us their dupes and tools. I utterly repudiate the suggestion, and so I am certain would all the English members of Council to whom I have referred. It is, of course, undeniable that there must, in fact, have been evil influences at work with the German War Lord of which we were not cognizant, but I am satisfied that it would be grossly unjust to our German colleagues to say that these tendencies, even if they then aided, were wilfully concealed from us. Knowing well the high character of these men, or those of them with whom I had the privilege of intimacy, one of them of high commercial position in Berlin, and two of them Admirals of the German Navy in close contact with their Sovereign, it is impossible that concealed knowledge of the influences that were at work can be laid at their door. It is still more impossible to believe that hatred of England can be truly ascribed as a widely felt sentiment in Germany. Hatred of Germany is assuredly not a widely felt sentiment in England. We need not protest. We all know this to be the fact. Your editorial columns, if I read them aright, attest this. If the feeling exists at all, it is only a recruiting figment, unpardonable even in mob orators, if they mis- represent as a national sentiment what should be alone justly condemned as the culpable breach of treaty obligations which led to the outbreak of a terrible war. My own profound con- viction is that the time is not far distant when the mists of international misunderstanding will lift with the dawn of peace, and the friendly feelings between the two countries, which have a far deeper root, will again be known as their true and permanent relation.—I am, Sir, &c., CHARLES STEWART.
[That the vast majority of the German people are at heart what they were before the war—decent, kindly, well-disposed folk—we do not doubt. Unfortunately, however, they are a very obedient, nay, subservient, people, and since they are told to hate us they obey, or, at any rate, act as if they hated us. That the ruling caste have given them the order to hate us and destroy us who can doubt, any more than that for years they have prepared to conquer us—when Germany's hour should strike ? The German people have been systematically educated into hating us as a despicable, effete, treacherous, and hypocritical race. Happily we have not followed suit. Our education has been the other way. We now face the facts, but we see no signs of hate, though, we are glad to say, plenty of grim determination to deal in a sensible and practical spirit with those who hate us. Our only aim is to take ample precautions against a second attack.—En. 'Spectator.]
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