THE ANGLO-GERMAN EXCHANGE

Andrew Gimson says England is more now the country of Prussian military virtues, and Germany that of fair play

Berlin THE GERMAN trainer Berti Vogts had one reservation about his team's victory over the Czech Republic in the final of the European football championship, which was won by scoring the first or 'golden' goal in extra time: 'I don't respect the golden goal. I think it's not fair play.'

The Germans use the word 'fair' with astonishing frequency. Admittedly the term sticks out in German, being borrowed straight from the English because there is no native German word with quite the same connotations.

One should also admit that many people thought the Germans played not altogeth- er fairly, Jiirgen Klinsmann apart. But the more interesting point is that the Germans want to see themselves as exemplars of fairness. Even Chancellor Helmut Kohl began a post-championship interview by praising Germany's games against England and the Czech Republic as 'fair'.

The man standing beside me in the Tempodrom tent in Berlin's Tiergarten, where 1,500 people watched the semi-final match between England and Germany on a big screen, gave a cry of delight when England took the lead.

'So you're English?' I said, pleased to come across a fellow-countryman, but he turned out to be a German engineer who was applauding the goal in a spirit of pure sportsmanship. His greatest hope was that there would be 'a good game of football', regardless of who won.

This is so much the traditional English attitude to sport that it makes one wonder whether the Germans are nowadays more English than the English. The idea of fair- ness in sport is not so honoured in Eng- land as it used to be. There is a strong school of thought, expressed by people like the brilliant but yobbish cricketer, Ian Botham, according to which Britain has declined in comparison with other nations for the last 100 years because we do not care enough about winning.

This explains why so few of our players get beyond the early rounds at Wimble- don, although we invented lawn tennis. It also explains why our national side keeps losing important football matches to coun- tries such as Germany, though we codified the rules of Association Football.

The idea of the gentleman, who whether he loses a game or an export contract is expected to behave with grace and magna- nimity, is held to have turned us into a nation of losers. Our ruling class was ham- strung by a sense of moral superiority which has irresistible attractions for the vic- tor — who would want to be thought to have won either an empire or a football match simply by luck, let alone by cheat- ing? — but is suicidal when you find your- self two goals down. The gentleman politicians who tried to put a good face on our decline were imbued with a fatal pref- erence for defeat, as being less vulgar, rather like faded tweeds.

But not all our politicians in this century have been either gentlemen or defeatists. Winston Churchill is the obvious exception. The Edwardian bounder side of his person- ality finds an anachronistic echo in his grandson Nicholas Soames.

Churchill's refusal to be defeated found an anachronistic echo in Margaret Thatch- er, when she refused to let some tinpot dic- tator keep the Falkland Islands. The gentlemen of the Foreign Office had plau- sible reasons to let the dictator have the wretched things, just as they are ready with plausible reasons to let the IRA have Ire- land, and Brussels take care of Westmin- ster.

How did she get away with the Falklands escapade? Sitting in Berlin, surrounded by German pacifists who believe all war is evil, one answer leaps irresistibly to mind. When every allowance has been made for luck, the Americans etc., she could do it because our armed forces still think of themselves as incorporating certain Prussian virtues.

A rather stiff word, Prussian, perhaps, but apart from courage, pride in tradition and a proper standard of drill, it indicates a willingness to engage in daring operations with the utmost professionalism, and regardless of whether the Fabian Society has doubts. The Bundeswehr, scruffy, democratic and classless — in a word, un- Prussian — is all over the shop by compari- son. The East German army, which took life rather more seriously, used to joke that if it invaded West Germany at lunchtime on Friday, when the Bundeswehr's con- scripts had gone home for the weekend, it could be in Bonn by Sunday afternoon.

An exchange of stereotypes has occurred. The Germans have paid us the compliment of borrowing the idea of fair play (though German business is riddled with a positively 18th-century level of cor- ruption, each month bringing fresh cases of massive fraud, misappropriation of public funds etc.), while we have paid them the compliment of seeking to uphold the mili- tary virtues which they of all people once held dear. The Daily Mirror recently paid a special tribute to the crazed militarism of Ger- many's most degenerate period. This sort of war crime was too much for high- minded Britons. They said the Mirror was going too far, just as they said John Major was going too far when he threatened to block all European business until he got satisfaction about beef.

Mr Major and the Mirror backed down, and the obvious lesson was lost, that we are nevertheless a country more prepared for war, and warlike rhetoric, than Ger- many is. Trying to understand Germany by going around looking for men in pointy helmets — let alone men wearing swastikas — is as likely to work as trying to understand the British Conservative Party by going to interview women in hats at the party conference. You can't find them any more. The stereotype has changed, as Simon Heifer recognised when he described Essex Man.

There is a longing in Britain for the Ger- mans to revert to type. At least then we'll know where we are with them, and all those insufferably pious assurances that Germany has reinvented herself will be shown to be false. Human nature doesn't change, you know.

Perhaps not. But there are different ways in which human nature can express itself, and not all of them are equally alarming. The Germans are possibly now suffering from something like the kind of decadence or weakness which Britain began to go through generations ago. The country still has an industrial lead over its rivals, but plainly cannot maintain its over- whelming superiority as workshop of the world. Its business methods suddenly look old-fashioned. 'Wake up, Germany!' its leaders my, but a host of new competitors are wider awake.

The country still believes in the superior virtue of its institutions, which it is earnest- ly trying to export to Europe, rather as Britain once tried to export the Westmin- ster system to Africa. But the first disquiet- ing signs are apparent that the natives have not quite got the hang of doing things the German way.

In this worrying state of residual strength but incipient weakness, how blessed is a win in a football competition, and how important to believe that it was fairly gained. How important to believe that everything Germany still possesses was fairly gained. As physical power wanes, moral grandeur becomes the conso- lation. People in Britain worry that Ger- many is going to start throwing her weight around, but it is just as likely that a Ger- many preoccupied by economic troubles will not want to throw around anything more menacing than moral exhortations, or kick around anything bigger than a foot- ball.