The German remembered the distance from the campaign of Waterloo as so many marches, and got it roughly right. That is the difference between English and German on the one side, and Latin and Celt on the other. They are all for the geometrical, the abstract; we get a grip on the concrete. So far, in this common ground, English and Germans are cut out by Nature to understand each other, to be friends. But then they very seldom get near enough to give the common factor a chance. Outside they are as absolutely different as inside they are alike. The German is demonstrative, sentimental, gushing; we are cold, matter-of-fact, reserved. The two natures may become friends if circumstances push them to it; but they can hardly be congenial acquaintances, and the difficulty in acquaintance usually blocks the way to friendship. When I went to England," sighed a German lady to me, "I was ill, and in trouble. I wrote to my friends I had known so well in were so cold, so stiff. houses, but they asked lunch, to tea, to dinner. country we should have they would never have been out of our house." "Yes," I said, "I can quite believe that. But that was only our manner: I think they really Germany, and, ach! they They asked me to their me at a fixed hour-to If they had been in our rushed to see them, and felt kindly towards you." Ach, yes," she cried, and tears came into her eyes; never can I forget what heart-love I experienced in England when they found I was really nigh to death. I shall always love England, though I was so wretched there. But at first the stiffness drove me to despair." There it is, you see. You see both sides of it. But the point is that the external antipathy is a far more potent factor in national relations than the inner sympathy. Few experience the last; all can feel and resent the first. Therefore it is that an anti-English policy in Germany starts with a prodigiously strong leverage of national dislike. Now to hark back to the policy. "Our Kaiser," said one of my German friends, "is one of the greatest men of history. He has the clear eye sees that the time for and the strong will. He Continental policy is gone by; first of Germans, he pursues a world policy. Up to now England has pursued world policy while all the other nations pursued Continental policy; England has had no rival. From now on we Germans pursue a world policy also. To do this is the greatness of our Kaiser. But, alas! nowhere is this greatness less appreciated than in Germany." That is true. For the German colonies even the strongest Bismarckians have little to say. They will faintly suggest that there may be valuable land in the interior of Damaraland, been, but they will hardly has been done with their where nobody has allege that much much colonies SO far. Outside the ruling Prussian circles most people would be in favour of giving them up. As for the strong navy, which is the essential condition of world policy, the people, as a whole, are dead against spending the money. They say they spend quite enough on the army for one nation, and they call the Kaiser "YondolWilly," which is Berlinese for Willy the Boatman. "But I am thinking," pursued my friend, when I offered these remarks, "that some day we shall have the Dutch colonies also not by force, but because we must naturally absorb Holland. And then "-his mouth watered before my eyes-" what rich colonies! It will be well worth the fleet. And though we can never be a naval Power, like England, yet-together with France and Russia, and two corps, only two corps landed in Englandwe would take London, my friend." Germany, France, and Russia! I would not say positively that is what the Kaiser is working for, but certainly it is what his warmest sympathisers believed him to be working for. For myself, I believe it too. For years now he has been trying to draw nearer to France and Russia, and the public announcement of the Franco-Russian alliance. is no real set-back to the design. The Continental alliance against Britain-that is the dream, the daily and nightly preoccupation, of all Imperialist Germans. It is some little way off yet, because even the Kaiser would hardly dare give back Metz in the lifetime of the men who bled at Gravelotte. "But it will come, my friend, and where will you and your navy be then?" Yes, where shall we be-if come it does?" 282 XIV. ON THE GERMAN ARMY. "IT is a noiseless engine -like doing from the topmost general to the bottommost soldier." That is the description of the German army given to me by a member of it. And the description is no over-statement. The German army is the most perfectly adapted, perfectly running machine. Never can there have been a more signal triumph of organisation over complexity. The armies of other nations in days past may have been as well organised, but the problem of organisation was infinitely less complex. The armies of other nations to-day may be as complex, but they are not so completely organised. To quote my friend again, in the French, the Austrian, the Italian services, "it works, but it works not with oil." The German army is the finest thing of its kind in the world; it is the finest thing in Germany of any kind. It is even worth the price that Germany pays for it. |