THE GERMANIC RACE AND ANGLOPHOBIA.* THE germ of this work

was contained in the pamphlet, England in South Africa, published in 1900, when to Con- tinental critics the issue of the war still seemed quite un- certain. That ardent and courageous protest is enough in itself to entitle a new book by Freiherr Langwerth von Simmern to a respectful and sympathetic reception in this country ; but these volumes do not, in fact, require any introduction. As a serious study of the relations between Great Britain and Germany, they are full of interest, even for those readers who are com- pelled to dissent from their main conclusion.

The writer is the son and grandson of officers in the German Legion, and has inherited a cordial feeling towards England ; but his attempt to restore a good understanding between his country and ours is prompted by a higher motive than a personal liking for England or the political exigencies of the moment. The first and last article of his political creed is the conviction that the salvation of Europe, and of more than Europe, is in the hands of the Germanic—we generally use the ugly equivalent Teutonic—nations : the Germans, "with their Dutch appendage," the German Swiss, the Scandinavians, and the English ; the people of the United States are excluded, it is not clear why. He looks out upon a world threatened on the one hand by absolutism, on the other by Social Democracy, seething with subversive forces, represented chiefly by Slays, Celts, and Latins ; and sees no security for order and true progress except in a union of the Germanic kinsfolk. "The Germanic idea is for me a secular religion. What I have loved in all that I have loved has been the Germanic element. The Germanic idea has been the motive-power in all that I have achieved in my life." In England almost more than in modern Germany he recognises the guardian of the true Germanic tradition. There has been no break in her historical continuity ; her insular position and character have shielded her to some extent from the contagion of modern political decadence ; she is not democratic, though she likes to be thought so ; she loves the monarchical principle much, but freedom more ; she had the revolutionary fever rather badly two hundred and fifty years ago, and is not likely to take it again. These are the considerations which inspire this earnest appeal for an Anglo-German understanding.

The book opens with a description of England. The writer is convinced that the German hostility to England is chiefly due to a misconception ; the England which Germans certainly hate, and appear to scorn, is not the real England which Goethe praised and Arndt loved, and which Freiherr Langwerth von Simmern has satisfied himself by personal inspection still

Deutschtum. und Anglopliobie. Von Heinrich Freiherr Langwerth von Situment. 2 vols. Wiesbaden Wilhelm Snicking.

exists, but the figment of a heated and jealous imagination. And so he begins by showing them England as he saw her on three occasions—in 1898, 1900, and 1901—noting excellences, explaining defects, pausing at every turn to defend or refute. "I am a German, and everything English is alien to me," is the attitude of his countrymen at the present moment; and Englishmen who do not realise this will be a little surprised to find how many things require defence or explanation, from our custom of dressing for dinner to our ingrained duplicity. The passion with which Continental critics denounce the un- scrupulous perfidy of a nation which is itself generally conscious of a lack of diplomatic dexterity and a clumsy bluntness of speech is accounted for here very acutely. The Englishman is simpler than people think him, and absolutely incapable of the elaborate artifice with which he is credited ; but he does not think logically, and in consequence often involves himself in seeming contradictions ; he says one thing and means another, and so people call him a hypocrite. He is in reality nothing of the kind ; he has only not learned "to think logically in the modern German sense." Everywhere in England the signs of Germanic kinship are sought and found,—the Southern counties resemble Holstein, the Fen country recalls the marshlands on the Lower Elbe, at a cattle-market in York one might fancy oneself at a gathering of Low German farmers :—

"The life of the educated classes in the country has a quite indescribable charm. When I say that the English family life made me the friend of England, I am referring chiefly to the im-

pression left on me by English country life Certainly one meets with an immense amount of luxury, and people in England accustom themselves to many things that are not

actually necessary But we should remember that luxury in England spreads much further than in Germany. In a keeper's house, for instance, a remarkable degree of comfort was apparent, and among the smaller farmers there is something which is never

to be found in Germany among people in a similar position I cannot imagine anything more pleasant than English life in the country. The guest's liberty is never interfered with, and yet

there is always a delightful sociability I must say out- right that I cannot picture to myself anything more essentially German."

Wherever the observer went he was struck by the absence of the bureaucratic element. "The English people came of age some centuries ago, and they watch over their own laws. Every Englishman feels himself called upon to maintain public order." This trait, we may add, was noted by Moryson, the sixteenth-century traveller, who points out that while in Germany justice was left to those paid to attend to it, every honest man in England is on the side of honesty.

There is much in these records that Englishmen will read with pleasure ; we must add that neither Scots nor Irishmen can have any share in this complacency. The fact that Scottish and Irish blood is constantly mingling with the pure Germanic stream "is, in my eyes," says the writer, "a calamity for England." It strengthens the regrettable tendency of the English to ignore or make light of their Germanic origin ; it helps to obscure the pious memory of Hengist and Horsa; and it is chiefly owing to malign influences emanating from beyond the Tweed that "the thought that England may in a sense be regarded as a German colony is unsympathetic to Englishmen."

From England as he saw her the writer passes to England as she was represented in Germany during the South African War. He discusses the causes and consequences of the war, and with relentless precision reviews the history of the German Press campaign, "conducted, I venture to assert, as no Press campaign against a friendly Power has ever before been con- ducted," commenting pointedly upon the fact that "if the English retired it was always a flight, if the Boers re- tired it was always a proof of remarkable strategical skill; if the English generals did not move they were cowards, if they did move they were recklessly foolhardy; if they sent news they were liars, if they sent none it showed that we were intended to draw the worst conclusions." The chapter in which the writer traces the steps which led Germany to this deplorable goal is of particular interest. There is nothing in it that is new, but much that is half forgotten.

The German animosity to England is, as every student of contemporary history knows, no mushroom growth, but the fruit of a tree planted in fruitful soil, and carefully nurtured

for more than thirty years. Englishmen, who are so un- methodical in their likes and dislikes, have difficulty in rightly appreciating the profound and purposeful enmity in which the present generation of Germans has been educated. The artificer of modern Germany was a Prussian, and the Prussian ideals are not the English,—we may perhaps say, with Freiherr Langwerth von Simmern, that they are not the Germanic ideals. Even before Bismarck's day German Conservatives had been afraid of English Liberalism and its far-reaching influence; and when, after 1848, constitutional forms borrowed from England were "inorganically attached to the old German order of things," disappointment inevitably ensued. English liberty went too far for Continental Conservatives, not nearly far enough for Continental Radicals ; and ." already half way through the ' fifties ' the nimbus of constitutionalism had faded." In the Schleswig-Holstein struggle English sympathies were with Denmark ; in the Austro-Prussian War with Austria ; in the Franco-Prussian War they were divided, but the Germans detected more benevolence in Russia's neutrality than in that of England. "Taking all together, it is plain that the course adopted by Bismarck which led to the founding of the German Empire was pursued independently of England, and was in some measure contrary to her views." But much more effective than this belief was the circumstance "that German unity, in Bismarck's opinion, required the concentra- tion of power in the bands of the Government and an over- whelming weight of militarism,"—two lines of policy "as un-English as possible." Then came Germany's industrial development and her colonial ambitions, and in both England was recognised as the rival. Germany's "once exaggerated national diffidence was exchanged for its opposite extreme," and when Bismarck's organs announced that England's day was over they were readily believed. England took Austria's former place in the Press, and the process of belittling her was steadily and adroitly carried on. Nothing gives Germans more artless pleasure than to be told that England's com- merce is fast decaying, her Colonies ready to abandon her, and her Navy rotten through and through, a colossal sham ; and this satisfaction is constantly afforded them. At the same time, evidences of her sinister and not unsuccessful activity are visible at once in every quarter of the globe. "When an English agitator took part in the Hamburg strike, that was at once an English intrigue, the British Government might almost be seen moving in the background." Did the Americans resent the attitude of a German warship at Manila? It "would have passed unnoticed had not English telegrams drawn attention to it in order to create bad feeling between Germany and the -United States." Since the Jameson Raid and the newspaper quarrel over the Emperor's telegram, "all parties in Germany have united in dislike of England. The victory of the Bismarck faction was complete, and when Bismarck died part of the legacy he left behind was a hatred of England." Los von England ! is only an echo of the older watchword, Heins Englanderei !

To see this state of things altered is the writer's dearest hope. In his view, Russia is Germany's enemy, and the future lies, not on the water, but in the Balkan Peninsula, where sooner or later the encroaching Slav tide must be turned back, and the long quarrel between the Slav and the Germanic idea must be finally fought out. Germany's foreign policy has driven Austria into the arms of Russia, and England to the side of France, and before she can fulfil her true mission she must undo the past and recover her own natural allies ; but he does not disguise from himself or from us that if a reconciliation is to be effected we must do most of the work. He asks of us no sudden revulsion of feeling; but he reminds us that blood is thicker than water ; he declares that the friendship of the Latin nations cannot possibly com- pensate England for losing her place in the Germanic house- hold ; and he urges us to learn to know our kinsmen better, and to be more mindful of all that we have in common with them. "There are," he adds, "many Germans in whom a latent, or half-latent, feeling for England still exists. Anti- pathy to Russia lies deep at the heart of the old Empire ; the consciousness of our Mission to the East is inherent in us all. The hour of our awakening may yet arrive." The kind and faithful friend who has pleaded our cause so valiantly in these volumes must forgive us for saving that we see no sign of it at present,