BOOKS.
THE GERMANS.*
MR. ROBERTSON'S disquisition on The Germans is a learned, useful and withal highly instructive work, but its utility, in so far as it is intended to serve any purpose of political education for the masses of the public, is rather marred by some minor defeets both of style and of substance. The verb "to posit," which is a favourite expression of Mr. Robertson's, reeks of the lecture-room on logic or philosophy. It is surely somewhat pedantic to speak of the Catholicism of Ireland being " stressed " to prove the bias of the Keltio mind to that form of religion. It requires also some acquaintance with the dead languages to grasp the meaning of such unusual words, which are of frequent occurrence, as the Anglicized Greek adjective " somatic " and the Latin noun pruritus. There is, moreover, an ex cathedra ring about many of Mr. Robertson's utterances which is somewhat distasteful to those who resent dogmatism on controversial subjects and disputable propositions. Further, it would surely have been possible to expose the fallacies on which the " race-gospel " of the Germans rests without - introducing oonstant gibes against the Christian religion. Mr. Robertson appears almost to regret that the victory of Charles Martel prevented the " then higher civilization of the Saracens" from being "imposed on Europe." "The case for Charlemagne," he says, " .has very little in it. . . . Charlemagne 'made a desert and called it '—Christendom." It is an unworthy slur on Christian ideals to say that "the time has perhaps come for Christians to realize that even for them brute conquest. is not a really successful mode of promoting civilization," Again, altheugh it is quite true that men of science such as Huxley were severely and very unjustly criticized in the days when belief in the Mosaic cosmogony held the field, it is none the less a gross exaggeration to say, with the examples of Tennyson, Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, and many ;Ahem stlll fresh in our memories, that "orthodoxy was, foe early Victorian England, a strait-waistcoat in which genius cannot breathe."
These blemishes should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that Mr. Robertson has subjected the German claim to superiority based on racial origin and antecedents to a,very able and pitiless anal*" which wholly demolishes its validity. In the first place, Mr. Robertson alludes to the unquestionable feet that with the possible exception of the African pygmies, there does not exist a single race in the world which can be characterized as " pure " in the sense of its being wholly of one physical type. All are mixed, and none more se than the Germans. Even those who have not devoted such deep attention to ethnology and anthropology as Mr. Robertson have come generally to the conclusion that, although perhaps some importance may be attached to hair pigmentation as a race indication, no broad distinction can be made between the characteristics of what have been termed the dolichocephalic and the brachycephalic inhabitants of the world. Mr. Payne, in his History of the New World Called America, says : "Probably no branch of inquiry has been less fruitful, in • Tr eausanr. 13/ the HOE!. J. I494;404. Loudon Willifans,
and erode. net.j
proportion to the time and pains expended on it, than craniology." 'Professor Ripley, who speaks with unrivalled authority on ethnological questions, says : "Europe offers the best refutation of the statement that the proportions of the head mean anything intellectually." More- -ever, it is a singular fact that, although the alleged superiority of the German race is to a great extent based on the assumption that they Are descended from dolichocephalio ancestors, most distinguished Germans—Bismarck, Luther, Goethe, Leasing, Kant, Beethoven, Hegel, and Ilelmholtz—did not conform to this type. Schiller was an exception. He was a dolieho, but with a "wretched forehead" fmiserable
If the craniological plea breaks down under close examination, the differentiation put forward by the learned, but highly prejudiced, YOMMaell and others between Kelts and Teutons fares no better, In the first place, the so-called Kelts are largely of Germanic origin. Thus, 1LS Mr. Robertson very truly says, "the laboriously insolent account of the Gall and Callao distilled by the Germanic prejudice of Mommsen Resolves itself into an impeachment of his own stock." In the second place, it cannot be said with the least truth that the civilization of any nation has been of purely indigenous growth. That eminent French ;choler, M. Ftustel de Coulanges, indeed, goes so far as to say that German civilization "has arisen solely from without." Even the Reformation, which is generally supposed to have been due to German initiative, received its first impulse from the English Wycliffe and the Czech Huss. Until recently two fallacies in respect to Germany were current in this country. It was not sufficiently recognized that the Germany of Goethe, Herder, Leasing, and Humboldt had ceased to exist. There was also an excessive tendency to acquiesce in the claim to intellectual supremacy advanced ley Germany. One of the results of the present war has been that this arrogant claim has been subjected to a closer scrutiny than was formerly the case, and that the degree of gratitude which the world owes to German intellectual effort is now more fully appreciated at its just value. Full credit is given to the industry and thoroughness of Germany, more especially in the domain of scientific research, but in that of original thought, compre- jiensive generalization, and high literary talent the Germans have Jagged far behind other nations. Speaking of literature only, Mr. Robertson no way exaggerates when he says :— "Since Goethe—as against the French roll of Chateaubriand, Hugo, Paiute, Lamartine, De Musset, George Sand, Michela, Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Anatole France, and England's toll of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Tennyson, Arnold, Browning, Carlyle, Ruskin, FitzGerald, Meredith—Germany can name hardly three writers who, after a generation of test, rank as men of genius.... Germany has had thousands of laborious students ; but of writers of enduring literature, • very few masters."
Moreover, the contributions of Germany to the accumulated learning sof the world have, as Mr. Robertson very truly points out, been accom- panied by the acquisition of "a maximum of political unwisdom." This defect has, indeed, been recognized by even so sturdy a Teuto- mania° as Prince Billow, who, in his Imperial Germany, declared that German home policy has, with rare exceptions, been "a history of political mistakes." The whole world is now in travail because, as Mr. Robertson aptly states the case, "the German sword is in the hands of • politically uneducated giant."
In the whole field of controversial subjects, there is probably none in which wide and sweeping generalizations are more dangerous than in dealing with national character. The commonplace shibboleths which passed muster about the excitability of the Italian, the vivacity of the Frenchman, the phlegm of the Englishman, and the veracity and pro- fundity of the German, even if they be allowed to embody a certain element of truth, are often applied to justify conolu.sions which are wholly fallacious. That very attractive writer, M. Le Bon, has been led away by hi a love of paradox and of a priori reasoning to arrive at a number of esermiu.sions which Mr. Robertson, in common with most ethers who have considered the subject, rejetts. "Dana toutes mani- festations de la vie d'une nation," he says, "nous retrouvons toujours Fame immuable de in race tissant son propre destin." It may be that some point of resemblairce can be indicated between the Gaul of the live of Vercingetorix and the modern Frenchman, as also between the Teuton of. the days of Arnairdus and the German of the present time. But, broadly speaking, it may be said that national character, in so km as it can be interpreted by national acts and thoughts, is liable to great and even rapid change. In pre-Revolutionary days, the steadfast conservatism of the French and their loyalty to existing institutions used frequently to be contrasted with the alleged fickleness and in- stability of Englishmen, who were held to be very political Reuben. Then came the great upheaval caused by the French Revolution, and the parts played by the two nations were reversed. France became a byword for political instability, and England was regarded as the great exemplar of conservative steadfaatness. So also, whilst the English were denounced in a phrase which originated, not as is usually supposed, with Napoleon, but with his countryman Paoli, as "a nation ef shopkeepers," and have generally secured the reputation on the Con- tinent of being an eminently practical nation, so acute an observer of human nature as Lord Beaconsfield held that they were the most emotional people in Europe. In truth, as Mr. Robertson says, tho transformations in national character are mainly cultural, and inasmuch
as they are cultural they admit of being guided by those in whose hands the national destinies happen for the time being to be placed. What Virgil says in the Georgics of plants applies equally to human beings — Adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. If the whole childhood of a nation is taken strenuously in hand by a powerful Government, it may in the course of a couple of generations produce a change, which need not necessarily involve a permanent shifting of national character, but which may create a product, possibly artificial, which will assume all the features of national character, and which will endure so long as the motive-power from which it derives its impulse preserves its full force. This is what the absolutist Government of Germany has done. For at least half-a-century one of the most potent and highly organized machines ever devised by man has been devoted to falsifying history, to obliterating any taint of cosmopolitanism from the German schools, to decrying modern humanitarianism, to inculcating a spurious code of morality, and to fostering, not a healthy patriotism, but a blatant and arrogant sense of self-worship amongst the various units which constitute the German nation. The result of this systematized and collective self-praise ie that, in Mr. Robertson's words, "Germany is now the most insular of all civilized countries." There can be no peace for the rest of the world until the anachronistic monstrosity which has grown up in our midst is destroyed, and until the more sane elements of the German people, who are now suffering an eclipse, but who, it may devoutly be hoped, are not dead but only dormant, have an opportunity for again asserting themselves.
It is satisfactory to note that Mr. Robertson fully realizes the part played by German Socialism in the present war. This branch of the subject may be regarded from two separate points of view. In the first place, in no direction did English public opinion before the war go more hopelessly astray than in the belief that the German Socialists could or would effectively contribute towards preserving the peace of Europe. But there were exceptions. When, in 1908, I ventured to draw public attention to the German danger, although I was in many quarters denounced as an alarmist to whose warnings no importance need be attached, I found an unexpected ally in the person of Mr. Blatchford, the English Socialist. He recognized then what Mr. Robertson recog- nizes now—namely, that the German Socialists are "themselves in large part permeated by the racial and national ideal, and, when not adopting it, are visibly constrained to bow before it." In the second place, Mr. Robertson clearly grasps the point of view from which the German rulers regarded Socialism. Like many despotic Governments in past times, they held that the best way to preserve peace at home was by diverting public attention to a war abroad.
On the whole, in spite of what seem to me to be certain defects, Mr. Robertson's contribution to the war literature of the day is distinctly valuable, and not the least part of its value consists in the fact that it affords a proof that some politicians of the special school to which Mr. Robertson belongs entertain no doubt of tho justice of the war, and of the absolute necessity in national interests of continuing it until such time as German policy and methods shall no longer constitute a menace to the rest of the world.
Finally, it may be noted that Mr. Robertson has something to say about an article which appeared in the Saturday Review in 1897 advo- cating a war of naval aggression against Germany. This article, which is known to have been written by an insignificant and wholly unrepre- sentative journalist, attracted but slight attention in England, but it was termed " famous " by Prince Billow, and served as a basis for some of his attacks on English policy. Mr. Robertson: now makes the following interesting comment on this intrinsically unimportant episode :— "It is latterly notorious that the litterateur who was Editor of the Saturday Review in 1897 has been figuring in the United States since th present war began as a violent pro-German ; and a number of English- men have strongly surmised that he acted as a German instrument in 1897. The article, in other words, was a piece of German incendiary strategy, to make easy the passing of the Gorman Navy Bill of that year.' Camusa.
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