Some of the new Prince Consort letters which the Deutsche
Allgemeine Zeitung is publishing have a marked political interest. It is ironic enough in the light of later events to find in 1852, when the reaction against 1848 was in full swing and even French democracy had just succumbed to Louis Napoleon, the Prince writing to Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (afterwards Emperor Wilhelm I) to caution him against going back upon the rights granted to the Prussian Parliament in 1848. The Prince's reference to his adopted country sounds strangely up-to-date 85 years later : " We are now the only representatives of liberal and constitutional institutions in Europe, and must expect the most complete hatred from the side of the reactionary Governments. They have sometimes a dark inkling that the example of England will prevail in the end."
In the sentence which I italicise may not he probe the secret of the peculiar antipathy felt by so many leading Germans for English institutions, from Bismarck to Goebbels ? Has there not always been a lurking fear in it ?
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