^K.^ ¦i'.^,^

mi

•>i-]

H *'

,-t.

wfignl
Collection

¦By 6

^v^^iiiilil

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

HOWELL WRIGHT COLLECTION
of Rhodesiat^a and
South Africana

A FRIENDLY GERMANY r
WHY NOT?

BY
LADY PHILLIPS
Author of ^^ South African Recollections''^

LONDON
^eONSTABLE & COMPANY, Ltd.

PREFACE
No attempt has been made in the following
pages to deal exhaustively with the subject of
Anglo-German relations. My object has been to
suggest new trains of thought and to put a new
point of view to those who, either from want of
due consideration or from the habit of reading in
the Press and elsewhere alarmist reports of German
hostility, have come to the regrettable conclusion
that war between Great Britain and Germany is
inevitable and impending. I have tried to show
not only that there is no foundation for such a
view, but that, for the sake of Western civilisation
in particular and of the world in general, it is
desirable that the two countries should be united
by a close bond of friendship, and essential that
they should not be parted by an artificial agitation.
I have received a great deal of help in the
preparation of this book from friends in England
and Germany, and have much pleasure in acknow
ledging it.
F. P.

A FRIENDLY GERMANY:
WHY NOT?
CHAPTER I
SHALL CHRISTENDOM PREVAIL ?
There is to-day but one real "foreign situation"
to the people of Great Britain and to the peoples
of other European Powers; and that is whether
Christendom is to survive this century or succumb
to the forces gathering for its overthrow. Used in
relation to the issues between European nations the
phrase " foreign situation " is not a good one : it
conveys a subtle hint of antagonism ; it implies the
untruth that there are necessarily, and must always
be, two camps in Christendom, a conflict of inter
ests between this and that civilised nation, and a
jealous identity of interests, forcing each nation, in
the interests of its friendships, into hostile relations
with other States. But one must accept the phrases
of the day, if under protest. Unfortunately, many
people blindly accept, together with a phrase, all
the reasoning, clear or muddled, selfish or dis
interested, which has gone to the making of that
I

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
phrase, and all the half-truths which are enlisted
in its support. The phrase seems to numb their
powers of thought and of examination.
"The foreign situation?" (so I imagine these
people saying to themselves) : " Ah, yes ; that is
becoming quite clear now; we are the friends of
France and Russia. The people of the United
States are our blood relations. Our Empire is
arming to aid us. We have to meet only the
regrettable antagonism of Germany, which is jealous
of our Empire and would wrest from us the com
mand of the sea. Our strength in Dreadnoughts,
&c." But I need not develop the musings of these
British citizens, hypnotised by some morning paper,
which has taught them with an air of pontifical
infallibility its latest view of the "foreign situa
tion." I suppose that a very great number of
British citizens to-day, if not an actual majority
of them, think in something like those terms.
Yet "think" is hardly the right word. They
mechanically accept the ideas offered to them as
proper to right-minded Britons of the day, because
of that phrase "the foreign situation." They
have been brought up to think of it as some
thing complicated and mysterious, about which it is
necessary to believe what they are told, even though
they cannot understand it.
Less than a generation ago the British voter
believed that France was a misguided foe intent on
the destruction of our African Empire. It was
unfortunate that it should take so badly the situa
tion in Egypt, which was, after all, due to its own
incompetency. Did not the man-in-the-street know
2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
that it was by no deliberate design that a co-
dominion in Egypt had been converted into a
British occupation ? He could, indeed, tell you how
to reconquer its Soudan territory, given over to fire
and rapine by the Dervishes, Egypt asked the Inter
national Commission managing its finances to
supply half a million of nioney, and how the repre
sentatives of Britain, Germany, Italy and Austria
decided to grant the money. The French and
Russian representatives, on the other hand, voted
against the grant, appealing to the law tribunals,
pleading that the unanimous consent of the Com
missioners was required, and that a majority of two
votes out of six was insufficient. He knew that the
British Parliament voted the amount required by
Egypt and placed it at its disposal, reconquered the
Soudan with Anglo-Egyptian troops and British
money. Then he would ask you, this well-informed
student of the "foreign situation," whether, in
refusing this money and therefore attempting to
delay the campaign in the Soudan, France and
Russia had not in view the possibility that that
territory might fall into the hands of Colonel
Marchand and the Abyssinian force which should
have joined hands with his, and enabled him to
overcome the Dervish host? In conclusion he
would say, sagely, that that sort of thing must
be stopped, and that with a supreme navy, &c., &c.
That was the " foreign situation " then, and it
very clearly pointed to the need for Great Britain
to go to war with France. The necessity was
deplored, but it was accepted, and at the time of
the Fashoda incident this idea was very nearly trans
lated into action. 3

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Twenty years ago there was yet another " foreign
situation." It was then clear that Russia was
Britain's one and only enemy. The Russian
designs on India were manifest. Russian diplo
macy, Russian cruelty, Russian relentlessness were
the themes of every conversation. The public, at
the call of the newspapers, braced itself manfully
to preserve Hindu shoulders from the knout.
Both those "foreign situations" have vanished.
Both the sad certainties which we were asked to
face with fortitude have been proved to be myths.
To-day we are busily engaged in helping France to
gain a strong foothold in A^ica, and Russia to
come closer to the gates of India. It is no longer
fatal to our existence as a nation that France should
be in Africa, and Russia in Persia. Germany is the
new foe, and on no pretext may it be allowed to
do anything anywhere : it is evidently preparing
to destroy England, and the peril must be faced
with all our courage and with all our spare money.
Germany wants something, and whatever it is it
must not have it, for it can only want it for a
bad purpose.
This position was stated the other day by Mr. W.
N. Willis, who claimed to be an authority, and
employed the dignity of a book ("What Germany
Wants ") through which to express his views :
"The most optimistic of us must frankly admit
that the terrible tension concerning what Germany
wants cannot go on interminably, and that if the
strain be not relieved it will reach breaking point —
by war, as the only means of relieving Europe of
the unbearable strain. In fact, every day, and
every hour of the day, the black German clouds of
4

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
war are growing darker, gathering more force, and
obscuring, little by little — almost imperceptibly, it
may be, to some, the rays of the sun of peace from
this country and France — and perhaps from the
civilised world. To revert to the popular metaphor,
the body politic of Europe must be relieved from
the weight and pressure of the German nightmare.
And the relief must not be long delayed. At the
actual moment one hears that ' the situation is
improving.' Yes, that may be so, but how long
will that last ? The real reason for the tension of
last year has not been removed nor properly
investigated, the very smallest spark might set
alight the conflagration. If diplomacy fails to
discover what Germany wants, or, having discovered
it, England and France be unable to accede to
Germany's demands, then war must follow, as a
natural sequence. Germany cannot go back. To
go back would risk destruction in her backward
march from within her own gates, by the
many contending and jealous States that now form
one conglomerate whole. Germany cannot adopt
or even think of adopting a retrograde policy.
Germany must get compensation for her vast
expenditure on armaments, and the compensation
must be of such a character as will gratify the rest
less ambition of her united people and balance the
expenditure in armaments and the ready sacrifice
German people have made in the past to perfect
those armaments, which, at the moment, are
Germany's great asset."
Briefly, Germany supplies the ghost story of the
moment, and we seem likely to be frightened into
madness by its telling.
The Roman augurs, they say, used to wink at
one another : they knew the humbug of their craft.
At times one wonders whether our writers are as
those Roman augurs. But no : they are usually
5

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
gentlemen, and they do believe what they write
and say, believe it honestly, pathetically. They are
obsessed by a phrase. The " foreign situation " is
like a game of chess. To have a "situation" at
all you must have opposing sides. The publicists
set up their opposing sides in mimic warfare,
discuss learnedly the " conflict of interests " between
this and that chess piece, the inevitable collision
between the black knight and the white knight. It
is a game, partly of diplomacy, partly of journalism.
But how dangerous a game ! For, beginning as
a game, it may become at any moment a dreadful
reality. There is really no "foreign situation," i.e., there
is no "foreign opposition," There is no reason at
all, if one can clear one's mind of the tangle of
cant phrases, "potted ideas" anti accepted tradi
tions, why any two of the great white Powers of
Europe should be ranged on either side of a cockpit
and held there with spurs sharpened and wings out
spread, waiting for the word "go," so that they may
tear at each other's breasts and rend each other's
combs. If we ceased to talk of the "foreign situa
tion " for a year, it would be seen quite clearly
that it was a bogey; belief in it would never be
revived except out of interested wickedness.
"War is an obscene word," said a great diplo
matist; "to employ it is to make its coming
possible." This is true, and if it were possible I
would banish the word from this plea for peace. But
the word is nowadays current both in British and
German circles. It stalks the earth unashamed.
One hears even so responsible a personage as the
First Lord of the Admiralty discussing from a
6

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
public platform our strength in ships on the assump
tion that we shall go to war with Germany.
The " obscene word " has become a common
counter in our diplomatic conversation. It must be
denounced before it can be withdrawn from circula
tion. Frankly I speak not so much from an English
point of view as from a British point of view. I
am not a Londoner, not an " Englander," except by
acquired affection and hereditary blood tie. My
outlook is that of a citizen of the Empire, a
"Colonial" untutored in the subtle science of
diplomacy, impatient a little of the jargon and
business of crisis-making. I do not know with what
weights a "balance of power " is arrived at. I can
not see why one great white nation should be
antagonistic to another. The presumption of that
necessity, I maintain, is a superstition. The fact
that it is so general does not make it any the less
a superstition. The earth is not a flat disc, though
most people once believed that it was ; the sun is
not a satellite of the earth, though it once needed
boldness to say so. There is no " foreign situation "
now which makes it inevitable that we and the
Germans should put back the work of civilisation by
centuries in order to send one another to the bottom
of the North Sea and destroy one another on British
or Continental soil.
Let those who will say that this is ignorant dogma
tism on my part. I shall retort that it was an
equally ignorant dogmatism which asserted in the
past that we could not avoid going to war with
Russia or France. For France and Russia were,
according to our augurs, as clearly determined on
7

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the destruction of the British Empire as Germany
is represented to be to-day.
If I state what I believe a little rudely, and with
out the cautious reservations of the diplomat and
the polite phrases of the dialectician, I ask pardon.
I feel deeply the wickedness of what is being
prepared. This does not mean that I range myself by the
side of those who would never have any war, what
ever sacrifice was necessary to ensure peace. If
there were to-morrow an attack upon Britain's
honour or Britain's territory in any quarter of the
world, I fear that I would become at once the most
rabid of Jingoes. If I could see that it was a
necessity of Germany's national existence that it
should undertake a war with Britain I could under
stand and sympathise with the spirit which would
lead it to undertake this perilous adventure. But
that is hardly the position. Rather the position is
that two great peoples, fitted by character, by blood
relationship, and by a mutuality of interests to safe
guard civilisation and to help each other to great
ness, are being kept apart and wantonly pushed
into hostile camps because the "foreign situation"
demands for its game of chess two sets of antagon
ists. Some mischance has decided that just now
Germany shall be the black and Britain shall be
the white side. (In Berlin, of course, these colours
are reversed.)
Nor is it all of the evil that, if matters are
allowed to develop on the present lines, a war
between Britain and Germany may result. Such
a war would in itself be an almost immeasurable
calamity. Its cost in blood and treasure would
8

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
probably be greater than that of any that has gone
before. But no one dares to predict that a war
between Britain and Germany would be confined
to them. The probability is that it would be the
first in a chain of catastrophes dragging down the
whole edifice of European civilisation.
Consider the position of the world to-day, the
problems which face civilisation and for which a
solution must be found. A mere catalogue of them
is bewildering in its suggestions of difficulty, dis
heartening in its many reminders that we live in a
transition stage; that civilisation is on its trial,
and that this century may possibly see its destruc
tion rather than the perfection of its system.
There is to face in the first instance the sex
question. There is the movement for "women's
rights," as it has been called, in almost every
country, from England to China. There is no need
to exaggerate, but it is likely to sow internal unrest
in the whole of Europe, to engage very deeply the
attention of our governors. Women are in rebellion,
and their demands are becoming so large that they
will have to be met and to be discussed abundantly.
The nationalities which have lately come into
being offer another and a troublesome problem to
civilisation. Putting aside for the present the race
or colour question, allowance has to be made in
world politics to-day for the new spirit of new
nations. These nations have in some cases the
impatience of youth, are flushed with ambition, and
are without the sobering memories of history.
Japan, but lately accepted as a Power; China,
apparently striving to come to a new life to-day
and unmistakably resenting the limitations of its
9

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
freedom of national action which the European
Powers seek to impose; the United States, huge,
amorphous, a nation yet in the making, but greater
in material wealth and, in possibilities of power than
any other single people — these are marching with
ambitious strides to their places in the world. There
are also Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South
Africa, growing up sturdily under the British flag,
but not at all lacking in national self-consciousness
and some of them already dreaming of Imperial
expansion on their own account. Like new boys
at school or new members of a firm, these have to
be broken in to the ways of world politics and
taught " to play the game." It is a task not without
its anxieties; it calls for care and patience and
demands that no "bad example" shall be set by
the older nations.
But the new woman and the new countries, though
they may in one case break windows and in the
other infringe the rules of international courtesy,
are small problems beside those presented to civili
sation by the race question and the social ques
tion. Will the supremacy of the white race be
maintained in the face of the growing organisation
for war of the coloured races ? Will the struggle
which we will have to face one day find attack from
without aided by attack from within, and a class
war added to the perils of a race war ?
These are the two questions which present them
selves to every white citizen of the world, who can
see beyond the fog of to-day where the threats of
the future are forging. It is because those two
questions await an answer that there comes to me,
as there must come to many, an angry impatience
10

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
at the spectacle of statesmen carefully preparing
a war between the two greatest and soundest white
nations, the two nations the united moral sense and
authority of which might banish the threatening
perils of a race war and a social war.
If this were a safe time for humanity when — one
phase of civilisation achieved — we were idle for
something to do, finding ready to our hands neither
new tasks nor works of regeneration and preserva
tion, then perhaps a struggle between the two great
Christian Powers, tragic as it would be, might be
carried through without actually imperilling the
whole fabric of the world. But this is not such a
time. It is a time of the gravest anxiety, and of
peril in many quarters. Within are the mutterings
of social discontent. Without are the threatenings
of races that have before this blotted out white
civilisations. Were there nothing else to engage our attention,
no labour question crying out for settlement, no
race question to bid us inquire whether the bul
warks of our white civilisation are really secure, we
might set our thoughts, however wickedly, in some
wise safely, towards building up the necessity for
a fratricidal war. As things stand the wickedness
of such a fomenting of strife is eclipsed by the folly
of it.
There is an old story — of Polycrates, I think — that
he was so blessed with all the gifts of the gods that
he was advised to cast away something of his
content and happiness as a sacrifice to the Fates,
who thus might be moved to spare him retribution.
He sought to obey the advice by casting a much-
treasured ring into the sea. Are we so well
II

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: V/HY NOT?
furnished with happiness, so well equipped against
all that the future may threaten, that we can treat
such a war as is now being wantonly prepared as
a trifling sacrifice — a ring cast into the sea, a drop
of wine thrown on the ground as a libation ? And
if we are, may not our sacrifice be as vain as was
that of Polycrates?
No one dares answer "Yes." At heart everyone
must recognise that our Western civilisation is
threatened to-day, from within and without, as it
has not been threatened before since the forces of
Islam beat up to the walls of Vienna and a fortunate
change of wind secured victory for a Christian fleet
fighting the Crescent on the Adriatic Sea. Every
one must recognise, if they will but think, that the
world position calls for a union of all the forces
of order and progress. Yet many seem to make it
the chief object of their energies to set at cross
purposes the two peoples who have always cherished
ideals of liberty and human happiness, who have
hitherto worked in harmony towards their attain
ment.

12

CHAPTER II
THE PERIL OF THE COLOURED RACES
It is not easy for a white South African to write
of the racial question without being charged with
intolerance. Truly, I might have had to confess,
in the past, to some blameworthiness in that
respect, though I never had anything but loathing
for that angry hostility to coloured people which
found expression in the American saying: "The
only good nigger is a dead nigger." Nowadays I
try to see things from the black man's point of view
as well as from the white man's, and to recognise
that the black man has a right to a place on the
earth, has a right to seek happiness and self-
improvement. There is nothing hostile in that
attitude. As to "intolerance," I own that I am most firmly
convinced that the white race is superior to any
coloured race, and that it must be the governing
race of the world. I believe this because I cannot
imagine any true civilisation, or any just system of
government, which is not European. Coloured
dynasties have at various times risen to great
magnificence and to splendid material prosperity,
13 * c

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
but have never yet evolved a stable and progressive
Power, have never produced that civilisation which
has human liberty and human right as its corner
stones. The white race, and the white race only,
stands for the betterment of men.
There has been only one rival to Christianity as
a world force since Christ was born, Moham
medanism, which set the Arabs marching as victors
over half of the civilised world. Carlyle, with his
passionate worship of mastery, eloquently hailed
Islam :
"To the Arab nation it was as a birth from dark
ness into light ; Arabia first became alive by means
of it, A poor shepherd people roaming unnoticed
in its deserts since the creation of the world; a
Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word
they could believe. See, the unnoticed becomes
world-notable, the small has grown world-great;
within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada
on this hand, at Delhi on that. Glancing in valour
and splendour and the light of genius, Arabia
shines through long ages over a great section of
the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history
of a nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great,
so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man
Mahomet, and that one century — is it not as if
a spark had fallen, one spark on a world of what
seemed black, unnoticeable sand : but lo, the sand
proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from
Delhi to Grenada ! "
Religion is largely a question of temperament,
and Christianity is the religion adopted by the
West. By it, and through it, the West has attained
the highest expression of civilisation known to us;
and therefore the white man, Christianity, and
Western civilisation, represent one and the same
14

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
thing. The danger of Mohammedanism is that it
is essentially the religion of the black man; its
appeal to the sensuality and the warlike spirit of
the negro is irresistible. Therein lies its danger.
The negro of the Soudan, who readily ernbraces
Mohammedanism, does not do so in a spirit of
religious conviction; as a Pagan he feels he is
inferior in the social scale to his Mohammedan
brothers who pray at stated intervals, and perform
religious rites of which he is ignorant. Polygamy,
too, irresistibly calls to the negro, owing to his
highly-developed animal passions. When once he
has learned the value of combination, which he will
do only as he hears the call of Islam, then will be
the moment of danger for the Western races in
Africa. I do not pretend that in any other part of
the world Mohammedanism is a danger, but the
continent of Africa, with its teeming black millions,
undoubtedly offers a fruitful field for the spread
of Islamism. The argument that it is surely better
for a black man to be a good Mohammedan than
a Pagan I agree with, for Islam raises him a step
in the social scale, and teaches him the value of
sobriety and cleanliness. It is the religion which
suits his temperament, and is most likely to appeal
to him; but, as the white man regards Africa as
a legitimate field for the application of his energies
to comrnerce and colonisation, this movement
among the blacks must not be disregarded by him.
In Northern Africa, Egypt, the Soudan and
Nigeria, Mohammedanism has full sway. The
striking description of an eye-witness of the entry
of the Sultan of Bornu into his palace, at the head
of 200 followers, clad from head to foot in the
15 c 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
chain armour of the Crusaders and wearing the
turban of the East, brings before one's mind at
a glance the pageant of history in the Dark
Continent. In the South of Africa, where there
are already 180,000 Mussulmans (Malays and
Indians principally), the white clergy are taking
serious note of the insidious spread of Moham
medanism. So far the prosielytising is confined to
poor whites. In that part of the world they have
realised the disability of colour, and are trying to
reinforce their already mixed blood with white.
But in this portion of the Continent, where the
blacks outnumber the whites by four to one, and
where emigration is at a standstill, where the blacks
increase at a ratio far greater than that of the whites,
it is obvious that the white man must look to his
laurels if he is to maintain his precarious footing
upon the high and healthy table-lands of South
Africa. Ethiopianism, introduced by American
negro missionaries, some few years ago, has already
taught the Kaffir the value of combination. Once
he becomes a convert to Islamism, the danger will
be very great !
I am not suggesting the sensational idea of a
Holy War being preached in Africa; it is to the
slow and insidious growth of a religion which is
essentially suited to the black man that I wish
to draw attention.
In the North and in the South of Africa one
already hears every Friday the Mohammedan prayer
— " God make their wives widows and their children
orphans, and give their possessions to be a
possession to the follower of Islam. Amen."
The position in Asia, according to all that one
i6

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
hears, is developing on the same lines of race
antagonism. It is true that the white races have
often deserved nothing but hatred in Asia.
" Rapine, murder, and constant appeal to physical
force, chiefly characterised the commencement of
Europe's commercial intercourse with China. It
was not u-ntil they had fully earned the title that
the Europeans acquired the disagreeable appella
tion of foreign devils. In the eyes of the Chinese
the goal at which all Western barbarians aimed
was war and robbery."
Those words are not my own, but those of a standard
English authority. In China, in Japan, in India,
too, when the hungry servants of John Company
went out "to shake the pagoda tree," intent mostly
on loot, England, in common with other European
nations, has earned the hatred of Asia. For the
sins of the past against Asia we should be penitent,
and we should resolve not to offend again. But
we cannot allow that the proper penalty is the
destruction of Christendom by armed Asia; and,
that peril threatening, we must prepare to meet it,
not aggressively, but defensively.
To-day Japan is, considering population and
resources, the best armed nation in the world. But
China moves along the path Japan has trodden. The
old plans for the Imperial Chinese army provided
for the formation of thirty-six divisions of troops,
with a peace standing of 360,000 men and a war
footing of 1,500,000. The coming of the Republic
has in some respects made the future policy of
China uncertain, but it has cast no doubts upon
the intention to arm. Now, there are the makings
of many Japans in China if it follows the same
17

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
warlike policy. Multiply the Japanese army of
600,000, its fleet of over 300,000 tons and 125 guns,
by eight or nine, and that is the possible China
of the future. And that "new China" is being
sedulously preached by native priests, schools and
newspapers, by merchants and pedlars. So urgent
is the pressure of the new spirit of nationalism that
the women are drawn into the movement : and one
hears of public meetings of women in China to
assert the national dignity !
The Asiatic, fully awake in the case of Japan,
quickly preparing in the case of China, stirring un
easily in the case of India, where the Mohammedan
part of the nation is always suspect of possible
adhesion to a pan-Islamic movement, presents to
European civilisation a problem which is made the
more difficult because Europe has set up so many
outposts in and near Asia. A policy of Asia for
the Asiatics is theoretically reasonable, practically
impossible. England, Russia, France, the United
States, would all have to begin a great and perilous
retreat. The white Dominions of Australia and
New Zealand would have to be sacrificed in that
retreat : and then the final result would only be
to bring the Asiatic peril to the Ural Mountains.
It is not possible to think that awakened Asia,
having recovered its own, would refrain from
reprisals. Once upon a time the Asiatic was con
tent with a good master, and India, under modern,
enlightened British rule, was his ideal. Now the
Asiatic, with the example of Japan before him,
aspires to liberty, to equality, to mastership.
It is this race question, the Black Peril brooding
over Africa, the Yellow Peril brooding over Asia,
18

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
that constitutes the strongest of reasons why
Christendom should abandon all artificial quarrels
and unitedly make ready to cope with the stirrings
which threaten its very existence. It must not be
understood that a white alliance is to embark on
a war of aggression against either the yellow races
or the black races : a preservative understanding
is what the situation calls for.
The white man is the standard-bearer of civilisa
tion. It is not altogether a pleasant position for
him. It brings more kicks than halfpence. "The
white man's burden," Mr. Kipling calls the work
of leadership which has been assigned by Fate
to the European, and a burden it assuredly is. The
position of the white man towards the coloured man
seems to be that he must accept the responsibility
of trustee for the coloured man, and at the same
time sternly insist that all control in the ultimate
issue is vested in him, the dominant white.
That does not seem, on the face of it, a logical
position. It seems to mix sympathy and tyranny.
Yet one can see no other course. It would have
been simpler if we could have maintained the system
by which Nature set the various races apart, but
it is too late to-day to think of that. The white
man has settled in every continent; he comes
into contact with the coloured man at every turn ;
the coloured man is in one place his neighbour, in
another his subject, in another his servant, seldom
in these days his slave. The white races must
accept the position as it stands, and the only sound
principle on which to work is that of the white
man's basic racial superiority, the system, in fact,
of the British Raj in India. 19

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
But that principle is now being attacked, by
the growth of education and of familiarity with
the maUriel of white civilisation among the coloured
races ; by the doubts beginning to spread and to
be expressed among white people as to the sound
ness of the white instinct of race superiority ; and
by the changing conditions of trade, manufacture
and warfare, which tend to bring the coloured man
to a level of efficiency which equals that of the white
man. But, above all, it is being aittacked by the
growth among the coloured races themselves of re
sentment against any assertion of white superiority.
This growth does not represent a harvest of
thought springing from a new seed. Rather it
is the revival, in favourable circumstances, of
old, long-cherished ideas. We of the white race,
generally speaking, have a conviction of race
superiority, and can justify it completely in our
own minds by an appeal to history and literature.
Many of the coloured races have just as strong a
conviction of their superiority, and can probably
justify it after their own fashion. The Turks speak
of Europeans as dogs. The Chinese and the
Japanese have at heart the deepest contempt for
the white. The arrogance with which a negro
boxer holds his court and exacts slavish deference
from "white trash" is probably no more than the
flowering in him of an instinct, the seed of which
is in all his race.
The coloured man has never accepted the white
man as a superior. When an opportunity offers
he is always eager to contest the claim to over-
lordship, and sometimes the fortune of war favours
him. The Persians were beaten back from Greece,
ao

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
but the Huns, in the fourth century, raged to the
very south of Europe and almost stamped out the
embers of the Roman Empire. In the seventh cen
tury the power of Islam swept over so much of Africa
and Europe that Christian civilisation was almost
extinguished. It was in a.d. 622 that Mahommed
went to Medina, when Islam actually began. In
637 Jerusalem had fallen to the Crescent and Egypt
in 638. By 732 all North Africa had been con
quered, Spain subjugated, and the Moors had
crossed the Pyrenees to threaten France. If they
had not been beaten by Charles Martel (a German
prince, by the way ) at Poitiers in 732 a.d. the Koran
might to-day be taught at Oxford and Cambridge —
to quote Gibbon's picturesque illustration of the
imminent danger to Christendom at that juncture.
Eight centuries later the peril to civilisation was
renewed, when the progress of the Turk was not
stopped until he attained the walls of Vienna. The
tide of war retreated a little from that point, but
left him in possession of Constantinople and heir
by conquest of the last fragnlent of the Roman
Empire, forming Turkey-in-Europe, the theatre of
a war which is the latest illustration of the danger
to the white race of disunion among the great
European- Powers.
Thus on three occasions since the birth of Christ
the coloured races have seriously threatened the
supremacy of the white races. On none of those
occasions were they in as favourable a position for
such an effort as they are to-day. Since the
eighteenth century the whole tendency of invention
and progress has been towards a levelling of the
difference in efficiency between the white and the
21

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
coloured races. In the industrial arena, ingenious
machinery tends to make the worker a "hand";
and a yellow or brown "hand" can aspire to be
as good as a white "hand" in attending to a power
loom. In military organisation weapons of pre
cision tend to make the coloured man firing from
a trench at i,ooo yards as valuable a unit as the
white man in the same position. In the domain
of medicine the coloured races are beginning to
claim equality. During the great war between
Russia and Japan the medical service of the
Japanese army established a record for efficiency.
All circumstances seem to conspire to make more
vivid the threat of an attempt on the part of the
coloured people to secure a racial readjustment.
Owing to our modern medical system the coloured
races increase a6 they have never increased before.
The knowledge of the use of the railway removes
most of the danger of famine, which used to act
as the most severe of checks on their growth. Our
rifles, artillery, warships, explosives are copied, in
some cases improved upon. In destructive power,
at least, the coloured races begin to approximate,
man for man, with the white races. And the recent
success of the Japanese in confronting and defeating
a great white nation, in securing the honour of
an alliance with another great white nation and
thus winning a place among the Powers, stimu
lated the coloured races. Their triumph is talked
of in China, in India, in Africa, in every place
where the white man claims to be the superior
because he is a white man.
In spite of the growing assertiveness of the
coloured man, the white man makes no consistent
22

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
change in his attitude. His actions are spasmodic
and without logical basis. The Japanese seemingly
have shown that they can fight by sea and land
as well as Europeans; the Japanese are therefore
generally 'treated as equals, though some white
countries still refuse them admission to their terri
tories. The Chinese, who are, on the whole,
superior to the Japanese, but have not yet organised
themselves thoroughly for military and naval
aggression, are treated with a full measure of the
old contempt. The warlike tribes of Hindustan are
kept in tutelage under the white Raj.
The position seems to be that the white nations
refuse to think upon the formidable case which is
presented to them by the resurrection in the coloured
races of an old ambition, at the time when new
inventions tend to bridge, from a fighting point of
view, the gap between black and white. There is
neither a " White League " to safeguard European
civilisation against possible peril from the coloured
races, nor a general agreement to recognise a new
state of affairs with new treatment of those races.
Logically, the British treaty with Japan should have
been followed by a general European evacuation
of Asia (including the departure of the British
from India) and the repeal of the Anti- Asiatic
immigration laws of the various Dominions under
the British Crown. But logic and the inevitable
consequences of certain actions are lost sight of.
With one hand the white man gives friendly greet
ing to a coloured ally ; with the other he represses
the desire for self-government of another coloured
people on the ground that, being coloured, it
must be kept in tutelage. This policy, or rather
23

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
want of consistent policy, must lead to a race
struggle ; and the struggle may lead to a catastrophe,
with Europe divided as it is to-day into two camps
seeking to make out of an artificial grievance a
cause for war.
The situation calls for a White League to pre
serve Christendom, whilst securing justice and
sympathy for the coloured races. The actual step
proposed in some quarters (blinded by this fatuous
talk of a "foreign situation," which demands inter-
European hostility) is that white races should bring
coloured troops to fight with them against sister
white races. I quote from "What Germany
Wants " on the subject :
"In all the circumstances, would not France be
justified in using any means in beating back the
aggressor in open war? Surely it is not for
Germany to prescribe for France how and by what
means France would fight her. Surely the excep
tional state of ferment in which Europe finds itself
through the German ' nightmare ' will justify
almost any means to end it. I recommend
England and France to boldly use Colonial troops,
fresh froni their several dependencies, for the
natural defence of their two seats of Government —
London and Paris. What could be more natural
than that the members of the two Empires should
call in their forces and concentrate them at the
Empires' respective capitals ? If the African, the
Indian, and the Indo-China subjects enjoy the
privilege of belonging to either of these two great
Empires, why not employ them for the Empires'
defences ? And where is that defence more wanted
than at the great seat of each Empire's govern
ment ? The central key to the conservation of the
whole fabric of an Empire rests in the protection of
its capital. 34

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
" Sentiment and nonsense by the thoughtless and
the apathetic may create objections, but the serious
ness of the case would excuse the action — if excuse
were needed — for the employment of coloured
troops. These coloured Colonial troops would make
stalwart defenders of fortified or strategical posi
tions. Many of the British Indian regiments, under
British officers, would hold any grim position
against a like number of troops of any class or
colour in the world. Why should Great Britain
hesitate to employ for home defence say 200,000
of picked Indian troops ? The efficiency, discipline,
and valour of these troops are unsurpassed any
where, and from a financial point of view their
employment would mean a big saving. With such
additional safeguards to home security, English
men might sleep soundly in their beds."
This can hardly represent any serious body of
thought : madness has surely not so far infected
the statesmen of any European country. But what
the extremists rave about to-day the sober-minded
may be prepared to accept to-morrow. If the theory
is accepted that Europe must be divided into two
hostile camps, all follies and infamies are made
possible, even the bringing of the Coloured Peril
into our very homes in the shape of mercenary
armies, as the Carthaginians did in the days which
preceded their downfall.

25

CHAPTER III
THE SOCIAL PERIL
Sir Thomas Browne in his day had no uncer
tainty of economic faith when he wrote :
"Statists that labour to contrive a common
wealth without poverty take away the object of
charity, not understanding only the common
wealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecie
of Christ."
But the world has moved since he put on paper,
for the delight of the future, the thoughts on
religion and society of an English gentleman
in the seventeenth century. Statists to-day have
very little else to think about save the various
schemes put forward to contrive a "common
wealth without poverty."
It is the age when "we are all Socialists" to the
extent that we all, or nearly all, recognise that the
need exists for such measures of social reform as
will afford the poorer classes better chances of
happiness. Some would make the poor"'better off
by attacking those who are richer, and confiscating
what they consider to be "surplus wealth." Others
would strive for the betterment of the poor by
26

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
constructive rather than destructive measures, make
for equality by raising the level of the lowly rather
than by dragging down the powerful.
It is not my intention to discuss here systems or
methods of "social reform," but to insist on atten
tion to the fact that a very general social discontent
exists and has to be reckoned with by statesmen of
the day when they are indulging in their favourite
sport of calculating "the balance of power." Our
civilisation amuses itself by manufacturing an arti
ficial necessity for a wicked war, whilst it is
threatened from without toy an irruption of the
coloured races, and is confronted from within with
the perils of social revolution.
There is an almost exact analogue of the position
to-day in the state of the Roman Empire when it
was threatened by barbarian incursions on its far
boundaries and by internal dissensions in its home
territories. There is an almost exact analogue in
our indifference to the peril. Yet here is enough to
occupy all the wisdom we can summon to our aid
in the settlement of the issues between classes.
Civilisation has given votes to the inasses of the
people, has given them enough knowledge to
enable them to read, even if it has given them but
little real education. Now the people want to know
what they are going to get out of their votes, and
they use the "education" which has been given
them to discover that some people have more
pleasant times than they have, or can hope to have,
under present conditions. But their education does
not seem to help them towards discovering any
clear and satisfactory reason why it should be so.
The net result is discontent. 27

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
There are reasons, of course, but it needs more
courage than the ordinary to seek to put forward
those reasons as all-sufficient and as perraanent.
The best that most of us can do is to acknowledge
that social conditions are not what they should be,
that betterment should be steadily sought, but that
patience should be practised in the search of that
betterment, because it must be a matter of trial and
experiment and because the ideal social condition
cannot be built up in a day.
Now the danger of this attitude is that it is very
difficult indeed to persuade people to be patient when
they are suffering under what they regard as injus
tice, whilst people who are clearly in a much better
case than they slowly devise remedies. It is a
fairly obvious thing for the poor and discontented
to say : " That is all very well for you ; you are
enjoying the good things of life ; it is not well for
us who are deprived of many things to which we
think we are entitled and are asked to go down to
our graves without ever having sat at the banquet
of life; reform that will offer a harvest next
generation is useless to us; we want something
now." The movement known as "Social Democracy,"
but which better deserves in some of its manifesta
tions the title "Anti-Social Democracy," usually
adopts this tone. It wants "Socialism in our
time," equality now. It refuses to see any warrant
for unequal social conditions and any reason for
patiently awaiting a slow readjustment. Men of
the working classes with a capacity for leadership
organise this social discontent, to the stage at which
it sometimes threatens the very existence of a
28

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
nation. More dangerous still, the Catilines of a
community, the disappointed or the outcasts of the
well-to-do classes, who see a short cut in social
discontent to the power or to the riches which a
settled order does not offer them, "embrace the
cause of the proletariat," as the phrase goes, and
become the most dangerous of demagogues. The
fact that they are men of some "birth " gives them
authority, conscious or unconscious, even among
the revolutionaries who have declared war against
all class distinctions. Their education helps them
in their appeals. Their despair as renegades and
deserters spurs them on to extremes. Their want
of sincerity makes them careless of the expedients
they must adopt.
The social discontent, the just social discontent,
of the great masses of people to whom civilisation
offers nothing better than a precarious foothold,
nothing more alluring than a life in which to-day
must be spent in earning bread to gain strength
for the work of to-morrow, is one of the great perils
of Christendom. It is not allayed by pointing out —
though such is the truth — that the chief thought of
the majority of the governing classes and the
possessing classes is to-day honestly directed
towards a solution of the problem of poverty. Dis
content is fostered and inflamed by the sincere and
earnest indignation of honest leaders, who see evils
clearly but see the relations between cause and
effect dimly, and by the dishonest and evil work
of selfish conspirators, who put their hands wilfully
to a wicked agitation for the sake of personal gain,
to retrieve their fortunes, to gratify their ambitions,
or to relieve their ennui. In every European nation
29 D

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
you may see these people at work. To every nation
they bring a degree of peril.
I see no reason to make a bogey of "Socialism."
Taking it in its broad meaning. Socialism is the
cultivation of the social instinct. That began when
the prehistoric father learned to think a little of
the welfare of the mother of his child at a sacrifice
of his own convenience. It passed to another stage
when the communistic instinct began to teach that
the tribe could work more powerfully for order than
the family, and the nation than the tribe. It will
reach its final happy stage when civilisation has
been so perfected that no man will wish to do evil
or injustice to another. It has had its trials, its
defeats and its apparent victories. The machine-
made Socialistic State of present-day theorists has
been achieved again and again in various parts of
the world and has seemed to promise perfect happi
ness to a people. But always it has failed, whether
it was in Greece or China, prehistoric Japan or
Peru, The sound conclusion seems to be that the
ideal Social State must wait for the ideal citizen,
and that we must progress patiently, with such
speed as is possible, but without destruction or
disorder, towards that goal.
Socialism in its real meaning has, then, no terrors.
But the Socialism which is the actual fact of the
day, a Socialism which seeks to attack the existing
social order by revolution, is a deadly peril, the
more deadly because it has genuine wrongs for its
basis and can appeal with seemingly unanswerable
arguments to the grievances of some and the
sympathies of others.
Consider the phrases of the Socialists, the terms
30

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of their confessions of faith. Saint-Simon founded
French Socialism in the late eighteenth century on
this principle : " The whole of Society ought to
strive towards the amelioration of the moral and
physical existence of the poorest class. Society
should organise itself in the way best adapted to
attaining this end." What could be more admirable
in sentiment ? Nor would one quarrel with Louis
Blanc's declaration that "the State should be the
banker of the poor." Proudhon, who could commit
himself to the wild statement that "Property is
Theft," yet expressed his aim as being "to realise
a science of society resting on the principles of
justice, liberty and equality, a science absolute,
rigorous, based on the nature of man, and of his
faculties, and on their mutual relations." That is
an aim with which all must be in theoretic agree
ment. In England Robert Owen had the most
admirable ideas, and attracts our sympathy even
against our reason with his theory that the chief
cause of social discontent is the putting of the human
body into competition with machinery, an idea which
Ruskin shared. But his schemes of social regenera
tion were proved impracticable by the test of
experience. Socialism, considered by its phrases, does not
alarm. But when it is sought to give those phrases
a real effect by peaceable means, then Socialism
proves futile, and it is found that we must hasten
slowly towards the millennium, that human nature
as well as human institutions must be modified on
the way. Thus the Australian Labour Party, which
was started on a platform of "Socialism in our
Time," has learned since that so wild a degree of
31 D 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
haste is impossible ; it moves towards the Socialistic
State, now that it is in power, with a delibera
tion suggestive of conservative statesmanship,
and it finds itself in consequence bitterly attacked
by an extreme Socialist party. The only evil
of this peaceful sort of Socialism is that it
makes promises and arouses hopes which it cannot
fulfil ; and this is apt to cause more discontent than
it allays. The Socialism which takes in its propaganda the
form, not of peaceful political action, but of revolu
tion and disorder, usually appears in the begin
ning as an agitation which is not avowedly
Socialistic, but is anxious only for "social reform,"
The agitation for this " social reform " founds itself
on class antagonism, and seeks power or popular
applause by laying down that hope of betterment is
bound up in the destruction of some class or interest.
That contains the seeds of the revolutionary
Socialism which threatens on the larger theatre
of Europe a return of the excesses of the French
Revolution, The talk of the "overthrow of the
bourgeoisie," of the "destruction of private
property," of the downfall of family life and the
substitution therefor of general promiscuity with
phalansteries for the maintenance of such children
as might be born, are but the last phrases, and the
inevitable phrases, of the gospel of social discon
tent which is to-day being preached in every country
of Europe.
To grapple with the peril of social war, even if
there were no threat of racial war, seems to me
a far worthier task for a Christian State than the
fostering of national jealousy to the point at which
32

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
internecine war is openly talked of as necessary.
The social unrest is not, as some try to believe,
a passing phenomenon of the day. It is not merely
here a strike for a penny a day more wages, here
an agitation for a small extension of the franchise.
It is a movement as wide as the world itself, rooted
deep in legitimate grievances and in genuine
aspirations for a reconstruction of the fabric of
society. Some reconstruction must come; for
civilisation has put books into the hands of the
many, has given them votes so that they may control
the State through Parliaments, and the consequences
have to be faced.
The consequences will never be a social equality,
a levelling of all classes, a mechanical State Social
ism, for that is against human nature as it exists
to-day, and against any conception of human nature
that we can form. But it is likely that there will
be a greater equalising of opportunity and of
reward, more charity towards weakness and failure,
a more complete recognition of human brotherhood.
That is supposing a peaceful and wise policy of
social reform develops its reply to social discontent.
But there is another possibility, another prob
ability in the opinion of some pessimists, that social
reform will not keep pace with social discontent;
that patience will fail the poor, that, goaded by
their own sufferings and deafened by the rash
words of the educated classes who are to-day the
chief mis-leaders of revolutionary parties, they will
pulldown the pillars of our temple of civilisation
and involve us all in a common ruin.
I do not hold with the pessimists who imagine
that this is the probable outcome of the wonderful
33

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
experiment which European civilisation is making,
for the first time in the history of the world, that
of carrying on a State in which the poorest have
full political power, in which the aristoi can hold
their leadership only with the consent of the manual
workers of the community. I have faith in the
power of the white races to solve this problem as
it solved other problems in the past. I believe that
most of the evil conditions which defile our civilisa
tion to-day are directly due to the over rapid transi
tion from the feudal and semi-feudal conditions of
a century ago to the machinery epoch, with its
enormous changes in the relations between Capital
and Labour.
But the task calls for all the wisdom of Europe.
It is not a task calling for repression and harsh
ness, but rather sympathy and patience. The aris
tocracy — and I mean by that the proved best of
the community, whatever their birth — ^must give to
it an attention which is earnest, which is sincere
and undiscouraged by ingratitude and misunder
standing. The worst course they can pursue — ^and
that is the course which they seem bent upon now—
is to prove to the poor that they, the leaders of the
community, have so little real faith in civilisation
that they are prepared, for no obvious reason, to
plunge Europe into a desolating war which in
volves the risk of "relapsing into barbarism," to
use Lord Rosebery's phrase.
The gigantic and ever-growing expenditure on
armaments, an expenditure which has in some cases
no real reason of security, but is founded on arti
ficial and dishonourable jealousies, that in itself
is a standing rebuke to the leaders of European
34

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
nations when they go to the discontented masses
with pleas for patience in face of the slow progress
of social betterment. The actual accomplishment
of the fratricidal struggle for which we are appar
ently preparing, a struggle with nothing to justify
it but a sense of wounded amour-propre, would
almost give the social revolutionaries justification
for saying that a system of civilisation which can
come to no better result than that is not worthy of
consideration. The need for joint European action to meet the
peril which the social revolutionaries may bring
upon civilisation has already been solemnly urged
on one occasion, and, curiously enough, upon a
British monarch by a German monarch. In 1848
the King of Prussia wrote to Queen Victoria :
" Most Gracious Queen and Sister. . . . God has
permitted events which decisively threaten the peace
of Europe. ... If the revolutionary party carries
out its programme, ' the sovereignty of the people, '
my minor crown will be broken no less certainly
than the mighty crowns of your Majesty, and a
fearful scourge laid upon the nations; a century
of rebellion, lawlessness and godlessness. , . . God
has placed in your Majesty's hands, and in the
hands of the two Emperors and in those of the
German Confederacy and in mine, a power which,
if it now acts in union and harmony with reliance
on Heaven, is able, humanly speaking, to enforce
with certainty the maintenance of the peace of the
world. . . . The power I mean is ' the power of
united speech.' In the year 1830 the use of this
immeasurable power was criminally neglected. , . .
On both knees I adjure you, use, for the welfare
35

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of Europe, Engelland's England. With these
words I fall at your Majesty's feet," etc.
The occasion of that letter was such as to justify
the alarm which it showed.
The year 1846 began with a political revolt in
Galicia and other parts of Austria. There was a
marked economic element in the strife. In Bohemia,
especially, the riots were envenomed by class feel
ing, Milan revolted and forced the Vice-Governor
to sign decrees handing the Government over to
a Municipal Commune. At Venice a Republic was
proclaimed. There was an insurrection in Berlin,
marked by savage fighting between people and
soldiers. There was a rebellion in Holstein and a
Republic, and insurrection in Baden. In Vienna
worker-battalions stormed the Government offices
and the Minister for War was murdered. Rome
and Sicily were drawn into the general convulsion,
and there was a ferocious insurrection in Roumania.
The whole of civilised Europe seemed to threaten
dissolution. That crisis was surmounted. It may,
however, recur at any moment. The causes which
made it are still in existence. The party of revolu
tion watches its chance. In 1874 Mr. Bebel, leader
of the German Socialists, threatened in the
Reichstag . . . : "Before many decades pass
' war to the palace, peace to the cottage, death to
want and idleness,' will be the battle-cry of the
whole European proletariat." In 1905 the same
speaker declared: "The struggle in Russia chills
the marrows of our rulers. They have a deadly fear
that it may cross the borders. They say to them
selves that if that is possible in Russia, where there
is no organisation, what may happen in Germany,
36

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
where we have politically enlightened masses, and
an organised proletariat ? "
The peril is not confined to Germany. We have
had a taste of it in England, with the "Syndicalist "
strikes of 191 1 and 1912, Reviewing the position
after those strikes, the author of "The Tyranny of
Trades-Unions" declared: "Staggering under
repeated blows, bewildered, almost blind, civilisa
tion faces to-day a conflict the issue of which is no
less than its preservation or its destruction. ' Labour
troubles ' have ceased. The time has come of
' labour attacks ' on the very fabric of society. Out
of the safeguards for the workers' welfare which
humanitarian thought designed have been forged
weapons which are pointed at the heart of the com
munity with deadly intent. The Trade Unions,
misled by the twin evils of Socialism and Syn
dicalism, march against society, taking different
points of attack, but with a common aim of destruc
tion. One type of leader promises the murder of
civilisation with some cloak of legality. ' I shall
hang you,' as Judge Jeffreys is alleged once to
have said to a prisoner at the outset of his trial,
' but damme, I shall hang you legally.' The other
type of leader of the forces of New Unionism seeks
no such cloak. He is openly out to achieve a great
ruin and would light at once the baleful fires of
anarchy. We are actually threatened with the ruin
of the civilisation that has taken so many centuries
of thought and effort to build up. The crisis
demands clear thinking, courageous thinking. We
must get out of the atmosphere of vote-seeking
which to-day more than all else obscures the minds
bf national leaders." 37

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
The writer went on to show from facts culled
from contemporary history in Great Britain, in the
United States and in Australia, that no measure of
"social reform," however courageous and far-
reaching, had proved of any avail to dam the tide
of revolutionary attempts to subvert society by
means of strikes.
In this matter Europe should be united, for dis
union gives rise to the greatest of perils, that of
social war.

38

CHAPTER IV
the BRITISH-GERMAN KINSHIP
In the two preceding chapters I have sought to
give my impression of the actual perils which face
Great Britain and the rest of Europe in regard to
two grave matters. The argument intended in each
case was the same : that the present is not a time
to indulge in a search for trouble. There is trouble
enough near at hand without looking for more.
And always I had in view the fact that a large party
in Great Britain, assisted by a large party in Ger
many, is to-day preaching, directly and indirectly,
like Crusaders declaring for a Holy War, that
England and Germany must fight for the supremacy
of the world; that, sad though the necessity may
be, we must prepare for the inevitable.
To combat that wicked idea two things are neces
sary : the first is an examination of the world
position to see if there is likely to be a clear ring
for such a struggle, so that it may at least be under
taken without fear of further disasters ; the second,
an examination, without prejudice and without
passion, into the antecedents of and the present
relations between Great Britain and Germany, to
see whence arises the " necessity " for this struggle,
39

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
which, if it is to be entered upon at all, would entail
the gravest risks upon the white race.
At what period of history did an irreconcilable
antagonism arise between England and Germany ?
What racial antagonism exists? What territory
have we seized from Germany, or what has Ger
many taken from us that we need to fly at one
another's throats?
Inquiry will show that, in addition to the general
reasons for a European entente during a period of
grave anxiety, there are many special reasons why
the German nation and the British nation should
be particularly cordial in co-operation and friend
ship. It will be seen that in striving to make a
quarrel between these two, the politician and the
publicist are defying both reason and fact.
Going back to the beginnings of our race we
can see that we are very close cousins to the
Germans. From the north land which is now
mostly within the confines of the German Empire
there sprang originally all the great European
nations of to-day ; but we are more Teutonic than
most other European peoples. That area which is
now covered by Germany, Denmark, Holland and
Southern Scandinavia was the cradle of the Nordic
Aryans, who sent wave after wave of colonisation
southwards. They peopled, among other lands,
the Grecian peninsula, where Homer's "blue-eyed
Achaeans " supplanted an older race, and were
responsible for the Grecian civilisation and for that
system of Government which, through its offshoot
the Roman Empire, established itself over nearly
all Europe and predominates in Latin Europe
to-day. 40

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Europe, in short, owes its civilisation in part to
the Gothic system, which is pure German, and
in part to the Greek system, which was German in
one of its origins but was profoundly modified by
early contact with Egyptian culture.
The polity of the Latin race to-day approximates
rather to the Greek than to the Anglo-Saxon
system, and that of the German race to the Gothic
system. Of that Gothic system in its beginnings we have
been left good pictures by Tacitus : and it appears
as a very engaging sqcial state, full of vigour and
rough virtue, even if it be a little coarse and cruel
in some of the details of its life.
The Gothic people were governed by kings
chosen from a kingly family, not by a direct suc
cession of the eldest sons, for the best scion of
the house was elected. Generals shared the
authority of the king, and kept their power by their
courage rather than by titular authority. A citizen
could not be flogged, or chained, or punished by
the king or general ; the power of punishment was
left to parliament and to the priests as representa
tives of the gods. Women took a large share with
men in the functions of government. All small
matters the chiefs decided; all important business
was settled by a free parliament of the citizens.
The lead in these assemblies was taken by the king,
or a chief famous either for lineage, for valour, or
for eloquence. If his views were not agreeable his
voice was drowned in clamour : to put it in the
modern way, he was "howled down."
There was no regular and certain way of con
vening this parliament ; the people would only come
41

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
when it suited them. Parliament tried offenders
against the laws, punishing by death or fine. Arms
were carried by all. Courage and skill in battle
were the paths to nobility. The people did not
build cities, but lived in small, scattered villages;
each man surrounded his house with a great space
of ground. The women were chaste, and any
violation of the marriage contract was punished by
death. Slavery was almost confined to those taken
in war, and its bond was not irksome; the slave
was the "humble friend" rather than the chattel
of his master.
One may see in Tacitus's description of the
Germans the British polity of the present day.
We have refined a great deal : we have changed
the nature of very little. Indeed, our system of
government is now more Gothic than that of
Germany itself, for in Germany the power of the
king has reached a degree incompatible with the
German ideals of the times of Tacitus. A system
of close organisation, admirable in some of its
results, has involved a degree of sacrifice of
individual liberty which is foreign to the Gothic
idea of democracy. But the Anglo-Saxon race,
with its passion for parliamentary government, its
respect for the influence of public meetings, shows
in every detail its Gothic origin. In social life, too,
the same origin may be traced.
The Englishman is still no lover of cities, though
he has built the greatest city in the world. His
longing is always for a house "surrounded with as
great a space of ground " as he can afford. Every
Englishman, somebody has said, is an island. And
British women still uphold that Gothic virtue of
42

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
which Tacitus tells, making their country a little
laughed at for "prudery," but none the less respected
for its old-fashioned German virtue,
A rnodern writer ^ has given a good analysis of
the character of those Teuton forbears of the Anglo-
Saxon and the Germans.
"A certain hard rationality and grasp of facts
mark the mentality of the Teutons. On land or
sea they view the situation, realise its opportunities,
their own strength and the opposing odds : with
definite and persistent purpose they move, they
fight, they labour. The quality of purposefulness
becomes clearer as they emerge from the forest
obscurity of their origins into the open light of
history. The general characteristic of Teutonic
emotion is its close connection with some motive
grounded in rational purpose.
"While these Teuton peoples were driving
through their conquest, and also fighting fiercely
with each other, their characters and institutions
were becoming distinctly Anglo-Saxon.
"In spite of the general Teutonic traits and
customs which the Germans, east and west of the
Rhine, possessed in common with the Anglo-
Saxons, distinct qualities appear in the one and
the other from the moment of our nearer acquaint
ance in their separate history and literature. So
scanty, however, are the remains of German heathen
dom that recourse must be had to Christian publica
tions to discover, for example, that with the Germans
the sentiment of home and its dear relationship is
as marked as the Anglo-Saxon's meditative mood.
Language bears its witness to the spiritual endow
ment of both peoples."
Now I am not so foolish as to attempt to argue
that because people are relations therefore it is
Mr. Henry Osbom Taylor in "The Medieval Mind."
43

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
impossible and unnatural that they should fight.
Experience shows that some of the bitterest of
quarrels are between relatives, and the lawyers have
a saying that, for real to-the-death litigation one
must have two brothers disagreeing about a clause
in a will.
I am aware that very many of the things which
are put forward as reasons for disagreement between
the Germans and ourselves are just the signs of the
characteristic stubbornness that we have in common
because we are relatives, and of the same stock.
We resent one another's virtues. We, in England,
find it a little disconcerting to see that another
nation has some of the qualities which we would
rather think were exclusively ours by some special
dispensation of Providence. They, in Germany, are
sometimes vexed at what they call the "of-course-
you-can-never-be-like-us " attitude of the British
people. I think it will always be certain, however
good the terms of friendship that the British and
German peoples can establish, that there will be
now and again a civil growl between the two of
them, just as the dearest of men friends reserve the
right to think the other fellow a bit of a fool in
some particular way.
But I wish to call attention to the fact that the
English and the Germans sprang from the same
stock because of the particular quality of that stock,
its "hard rationality," its "grasp of fact," its
"quality of purposefulness," its love for a motive
"grounded in rational purpose." Those words I
have taken from Mr. Taylor, a writer who was
teaching no political or other lesson, who was simply
making a scientific and, I think, skilful study of
44

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the mental attributes of our common ancestors.
The qualities distinguished are exactly those we
need if we are to examine sanely the wicked attempt
to make bad blood between England and Germany.
What rational purpose, what quality of purposeful
ness, is to be served if the two great, kindred Powers,
the strongest respectively on sea and on land, stop
the work of civilisation to fight to the death about
an idea, a bogey?
There is no material benefit to be gained from a
quarrel. There is naught to be invited save disaster.
Relations like to growl between themselves (and to
rush to one another's help to prevent the intrusion
of any outsider), but they pull together when their
material interests are mutual. And that has
actually been the history of the Anglo-Saxon rela-.
tionship for all the centuries of the Christian era
down to the present day. Sir Harry Johnston,^ in his
discussion of "The Problems of Germany" (to
which I am indebted for much light on the subject),
carries the record of the kinship between the British
and the German peoples from the earliest ages down
to our own times :
"In some respects," he writes, "the earliest and
the most complete German colony was England :
and the settlement of England and Eastern Scot
land by Saxons, Jutes, and Angles, beginning in
448, ended in the seventeenth century by imposing
on Great Britain and Ireland a population pre
dominantly German in origin, character, and
language. It has even been thought by some
ethnologists — deriving the idea from Tacitus and
from other suggestions in Roman descriptions of
1 " -Views and Reviews," by Sir Harry Johnston.
45 E

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Scotland — that the Caledonians were of German
or Scandinavian origin, and that the Teutonic
invasion of Great Britain had begun before the
Romans came there.
"Apart from the historical Norse and Danish
settlements in Scotland, Ireland, Man and England
— settlements which have contributed a most im
portant and valuable element to the Irish population
— the Germanisation of all these countries — ^and
additionally of Wales — was continued and intensi
fied during the reign of the Plantagenet Kings by
the importation of ' Flemings ' (really Hollanders
and Frisians, for the most part), who were planted
in East Anglia, on the Firth of Forth, in South
Wales and in Eastern Ireland, mainly for the
purpose of introducing useful arts and manufac
tures. The Frisians, of course, spoke a kind of
continental Anglo-Saxon, which survives as a living
language in Dutch and German Friesland to the
present day; whilst the Hollanders (one people
with the Flemings farther south) were none other
than modern Franks, descendants of those Franks
who retained their Low-German speech instead of
adopting the romance dialects of Gaul. When the
term ' Flemings ' went out of use in England in
the sixteenth century, it was succeeded by the word
' Dutch ' (Duitsch, Deutsch), which was at first
applied to all the German peoples. High and Low,
without distinction, but in the next century became
restricted tb the natives of the United Provinces of
Holland, Friesland and Zeeland.
"The Dutch were helped to gain their independ
ence from the Spanish Empire by German princes
of Nassau, A descendant of these, virtually the
President of the Dutch Republic, became King of
England and Scotland, and conquered Ireland
mainly with the aid of Dutch, German, and Danish
troops. The Dutch persons of his household
became important members of the British nobility,
and under the reign of William III. the English
-. 46

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
language adopted many Dutch words; the
English Navy, English industries, commerce,
architecture and horticulture borrowed many excel
lent ideas from the painstaking Hollanders, The
English King's stedhoudership of the United
Provinces invol-ved him in continental wars, with
the German Holy Roman Empire as his ally,
German troops were taken into British pay and
rendered right good service in our foreign expedi
tions. For example, Gibraltar was captured by a
German Force under Prince George of Hessen-
Darmstadt, with the support and co-operation of
the British Navy.
"The accession to the throne of the House of
Hanover renewed the Germanisation of England
and of the British Empire generally. Under
George I. the only standing army in England was
a German force. Whenever Britain found herself
henceforth engaged in foreign and colonial wars,
German soldiers were recruited or subsidised to
reinforce the very slender British Army, the bulk
of which had to be kept at home till the middle of
the eighteenth century to repress Jacobinism.
There is scarcely one of our possessions beyond the
seas acquired during the eighteenth century which
has not at one time or another witnessed the land
ing of German troops in British pay. The part
played by the brave German soldiers in the war
which followed the rebellion of the United States
is well known, and practically led to that German
colonisation of the United States which has had
such huge results — a quota of 13,000,000 in the
United States population of to-day speaking
German and being of German descent.
"So it was likewise in the Napoleonic wars, the
Germanising of the British Army being facilitated
by the union under one monarch of Hanover and
Britain, There were German contingents in nearly
every foreign war of importance down to the
Crimean War, the last over-seas fight in which
47 E 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
German troops took part as a portion of the British
Army. Moreover, few of these contingents, when
these wars were over, returned to Germany. Some
of them settled down in England, their names by
some slight change soon assuming an English
sound; others went out as colonists to Australia,
New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the West
Indies. "The marriage of Queen Victoria gave a fresh
impetus to the Germanisation of Britain. Notable
Germans were more or less directly brought to this
country's service by those far-seeing helpers of
England, Leopold and Albert of Saxe-Coburg.
They explored unknown lands for the British
Empire, founded colleges of music and chemistry,
schools and museums of art, studios in philology,
ancient and modern, improved both theatre and
drama, extended horticulture, and assisted to make
Kew Gardens and the Herbarium what they are
and have been to an Empire in which economic
botany is a matter of necessity, not a pretty luxury
as some of our home-bred statesmen have imagined.
Glance through the eminent names which have
become famous during the nineteenth century in
British Colonial and Imperial history, in British
exploration, biology, metallurgy, painting, music,
journalism, banking, law-making and expounding,
soldiering and seamanship, and note how many are
of recent or immediate German extraction."
It is indeed the bare truth that both in the de
velopment of the Empire abroad and in the govern
ance of England itself, Germans have done great
service to the British race. They have shown in
the clearest of all ways that they have looked upon
the British as a kindred race by sinking their own
nationality in ours and becoming loyal subjects of
our power. England and its Dominions have wisely
welcomed and honoured these men, and no lists of
48

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
notables in any part of the British Empire could
be made without including some of German birth
or German extraction.
On their part the British people have cordially
reciprocated the feeling of kinship up to a period
which may certainly be set within the last twenty
years and perhaps within the last ten years. We
have fought side by side with the Germans on many
fields. We have never fought against them. Our
royal houses have intermarried, and, for a long
period of time, the same rulers had sovereignty
over territory both in England and in Germany.
Without our sympathy the present German Empire
might never have come into being, though it is
difficult to imagine that any circumstances could
have smothered the ardent aspiration for national
life which the German race has cherished in the
harshest of circumstances. But it can be said with
certainty that, without help of England, sometimes
given in men and money, sometimes in moral
support, the German Empire would have had to
encounter far greater difiiculties in its struggle to
throw off the yoke of a foreign conqueror.
There is a record of 1,400 years of Anglo-German
kinship and friendship. Since the days when the
Angle and the Saxon and the Jute compulsorily
colonised England and set the Celtic population to
be a " fringe " for ever after — a handsome, decora
tive, poetic, eloquent fringe, but still only a fringe.
England and Germany have rowed in one boat,
have pursued the same ideals of government and
order, have helped each other often, have hindered
each other seldom. To-day they have the same
essential kinship. To-day they have the same com-
49

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
munity of interests. They stand together for
humanitarian ideas, for good order in government,
for clean private lives. They are confronted
together by the two great menaces of the day, that
of the coloured races breaking bounds, and that of
the lowly masses losing patience and seeking some
relief by revolution and anarchy from a position
they are being taught to look upon as intolerable.
Together England and Germany may meet all perils
in safety. But they are being urged to forget com
munity of interests and to fly at each other's throats.
No reason can be found in history up to our own
times to justify a surrender to this urging. Let us
look a little more closely at the records of the last few
years, to see if an indication can be found there of
any reasonable cause why Great Britain and
Germany should not be friends.

50

CHAPTER V
SOME FACTS OF RECENT HISTORY
Up to recent times relations between Germany
and England were animated by cordial friendship.
To-day our favourite attitude towards Germany is
that of the American wife to her husband : " Now,
my dear, whatever you are going to do, don't."
The corresponding German attitude is a rather
heavy assumption of the air of a young and
vigorous man towards a greybeard, whose limbs
and, alas ! too, whose mind are showing signs of
weakness, who sees things in his sleep, things that
do not exist.
"What is that you have in the bag? " asked an
impertinently curious stranger of a man coming
down a hillside in India.
"It is a mongoose."
"And what do you want with a mongoose ? "
"My brother, who lives on the plains, has been
drinking and sees snakes. The mongoose is to kill
the snakes."
"But, foolish fellow, the snakes he sees are not
real snakes." SI

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
"And, impertinent fellow, this mongoose is not
a real mongoose."
That absurdity recalls, both on the British and
on the German side, the reasons given for mutual
animosity. The British folk see a German menace,
which, far from having any real existence, is as
shadowy as a drunkard's hallucinations. The Ger
man folk reply to one bogey with another. Just as
on our side of the water the existence of the German
Fleet has no other reason for being than " to wrest
the trident" from British hands, on their side of
the water it is as clear as clear can be that the first
task of the British Fleet is to attack the German
mercantile marine. For what other purpose should
we build Dreadnoughts or Invincibles except to
send to the bottom those ten-knot tanks in which
the thrifty German trader carries much of his over
seas commerce ?
When one comes to examine the cause of this
antagonism in thought and in speech, which has
no basis in fact and is an imaginary mongoose on
one side and an imaginary snake on the other, it
is quite easy to find an explanation offered in almost
any newspaper that devotes attention to the subject.
In fact, it is quite easy to find half a dozen explana
tions, all equally plausible and all founded on a
close knowledge of diplomatic secrets. " Diplomatic
secrets " seem to be matters of very general know
ledge among publicists. All the explanations, how
ever, seem to result from a growing fear of antag
onism between Great Britain and Germany and
shed no light on underlying causes.
For example, a "first cause of all the trouble"
is found in the German naval expedition to China
52

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
under Prince Henry, in 1897, after the murder of cer
tain German missionaries in the Celestial kingdom.
The naval expedition certainly had an unpleasant
passage. Whether by accident or malice, or because
diplomatic usage made this really necessary, British
coaling stations en route seem to have treated the
German Fleet in hardly friendly fashion. It was
kept on short commons of coal. If the purpose had
been to rub in the lesson that Germany was very,
very weak at sea, and that, in the event of overseas
operations being necessary, it would be absolutely
dependent on British courtesy and friendliness, such
a purpose could not have been better served, I
think that many Germans took it in that way and
that the incident gave the first fillip to the demand
of the German people for a place on the sea.
But, whatever the true facts- of the incident may
be, whether Great Britain acted with merely the
necessary strictness of diplomatic usage, or really
did indulge in the unwise mischievousness of being
unnecessarily rude to a friendly Power the amour-
propre of which had been deeply committed in that
expedition by the German Emperor's famous
"mailed fist" speech, has little to do with the case.
The whole affair was a result, not a cause. There
had to be a state of irritation existing for England to
act in this manner — if it did act in this manner — for
Germany to think that Great Britain had so acted
and to resent the fact. The same may be said of every
other incident which is put forwaird as an explana
tion of Anglo-German antagonism. What one
wants to arrive at is why two nations which sprang
from the same source, which had been accustomed
to be companions in arms for centuries, which had
53

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
often drawn their rulers from the one stock, between
which there had been no quarrel as to territory, or
dynasty, or any other of the usual causes of hos
tility, should quite suddenly, in defiance of the
counsels of their wisest men, in defiance of their
clear mutual interests, set themselves to nag each
other, to look upon each other as inevitable
antagonists. The root of the whole trouble is probably to be
found in that element of our faulty human nature
which makes it a very difficult matter for two friends,
one of whom is rich and one of whom has been poor,
to preserve their old amity when the poor one sud
denly rises in the world. Under the old terms the
relationship was easy. The rich friend had a huge
respect for the poor friend, wondered constantly
why, with all his excellent qualities, he was not in
a far better position, took the greatest care that in
his relations with him there never was allowed to
intrude the slightest hint of patronage, which, in
the circumstances, would have been ungentlemanly.
On his side the poor friend found himself treated
with delicacy and with kindness. He was conscious
of the benefits he received, and he was also con
scious, and very gratefully conscious, of the care
which his friend took to avoid any assumption of
superiority. But a change comes and the poor friend is sud
denly enriched. His talents begin to be recognised ;
his perseverance and character win their reward.
Then the old friendship is subjected to a severe
strain. Human nature is imperfect, and it is in
evitable that the rich man A, though he tries hard
not to, will resent a little his friend's success in life.
54

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
He has to readjust his views a great deal. The
thought is bound to occur to him that now B will
not want his friendship. He makes up his mind
to be keenly on the watch for any signs that B may
give to indicate that change. He rather expects that
B will begin to show arrogance. Every action of B's
is examined in a new light. Whereas any circum
stance which seemed to be untoward was formerly
dismissed because B was a friend, now every in
cident is liable to be misinterpreted. If formerly C
had come with a bit of malicious gossip about what
B had said, or was supposed to have said, he would
have been sent away with a snub. Now he has a
hearing. On B's side dividing thoughts are also breeding.
When his change of fortune becomes apparent he
probably resolves at the very outset that, above all
things, it must not be allowed to interfere with his
respect and regard for A, He is more keenly con
scious than ever of all the good turns of the past.
Perhaps he makes up his mind to go and see A
and explain. Then he recognises that would be
foolish, that it would prove the existence of a feel
ing of change, which is just what he wishes to
avoids He decides that he will constantly be on his
guard, so that his manner may always show that,
though he now be nearly equal to A in riches, his
mind is the same, his respect or regard for his
friend the same.
That picture does not represent in every detail the
exact course of Anglo-German relations during the
last few years, but it represents closely enough the
real cause of the division of sentiment which has
been created. If we are magnanimous we will gladly
55

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
help a poor friend in misfortune, but we find it
difficult to see our friend's fortune beginning to
rival our own. And the transition stage between a
humble friend and an equal friend is one calling
for much more delicacy of feeling and aplomb than
our German friends can claim. The best definition
of a gentleman is "a man who in all circum
stances is sure of himself." That sureness is a very
hard thing to maintain intact for the years of good
fortune during the years of misfortune, especially
for a nation. Individually, the German is a gentle
man just about as often as the Englishman or
the Frenchman. Collectively the German nation
finds it hard to be quite the gentleman in
all its international relations. It is apt to be
a little conscious of its new power, a little self-
assertive. "We Germans used to be poor, and
disunited, and trampled upon. Now we are very rich
and very powerful, and who will dare to tread upon
the tail of our coat ? " That is too often the German
attitude. To put it in two sentences. England still treats
Germany as a poor relation. Germany is so afraid
that its new greatness will not be recognised that
it is constantly and aggressively advertising it.
It does not require any knowledge of diplomatic
secrets to understand, and to sympathise with the
frame of mind on both sides. And it is easy to
see how dangerous that sort of thinking can be.
It is all very childish; it is not the attitude of
grown-up men. But it is human nature, and with
so much at stake we must combat human nature.
Great Britain must recognise that Germany is no
longer a poor relation. Gennany must make up
56

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
its mind that its greatness has been sufficiently
advertised and is fully recognised. On both sides
there must be some forbearance. That should not
be impossible for the two greatest and wisest white
nations when the issue is the preservation of all
that they cherish. After all, it is the wildest of
follies to prepare for a desolating war because A
is " so fearfully patronising " and B " so terribly
aggressive." That is really all the trouble. Everything else
is a symptom of that trouble. A Vienna corre
spondent of the Daily Telegraph set himself to
explain it the other day, in a very able series of
articles, "Anglo-German Discord and its Origins."
-He traced it no further back than 1900, putting
aside the theory that it was caused wholly by
incidents of the South African War.
"The history," he writes, "despite its obvious
interest, is not altogether a pleasant one. There
has been an abundance of misunderstanding, due
in some cases to crude mistakes and blunders in
policy. It would appear, also, that the ambitions
of some prominent men have not been conducive
to the peace of the world, while, of course, changes
of government in Great Britain have made some
difference as to the general trend of foreign policy.
The salient fact, however, is that, whereas up to
about 1900 the international relations of the various
European Powers to one another were of one con
sistent and specific kind, some time after this date,
and progressively for the next few years, the whole
of the so-called balance of power underwent a,
tremendous change. Before 1900 the enemies of
Great Britain— or, if the word be too strong, the
rival Powers — were France and Russia, and especi
ally Russia. Russia was supposed to be desiring
57

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Q large extension of its power to Asia, and threaten
ing in various ways the integrity of the Indian
Empire. France's colonial activity in Africa was
so vigorous that it was, perhaps, natural for British
statesmen to desire to protect their Colonial interests
in the face of so enterprising a rival. Germany and
Great Britain walked more or less hand in hand
in Africa, in the Near East, and in the Far East.
And the only points which troubled English states
manship were occasional tendencies on the part of
the Teutonic Empire to show a partiality for Russia,
or temporary fits of amiability towards France. On
the whole, the German Foreign Office was con
sistently friendly."
The first open "rift in the lute," according to
this writer, was in China, when England and
Germany, having an agreement to guarantee the
integrity of China and to preserve the "Open
Door," Germany did not consider that this agree
ment covered Manchuria, and Count von Biilow
announced :
" There are Powers whose interests in China are
especially economic, and others which pursue
political objects. We belong to the first category.
That is why we concluded the agreement with
England in October, 1900, in order to maintain the
integrity of China as long as possible, on the one
hand, and on the other, not to mix ourselves up
with China beyond the reach of our commercial
interests. The agreement has nothing whatever to
do with Manchuria. We have no national interests
of importance in Manchuria."
But, by this time, the causes of disagreement
which I have suggested had already operated
a great deal. The growing power of Germany was
viewed with great resentment in Great Britain. On
58

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the German side there was a disposition among
some Anglophobes to represent Great Britain as
a senile power, from whose nerveless hands the
sceptre of Empire must soon drop. I have already
quoted some of the stupid, war-making utterances
of British writers. Let me now instance a few on
the German side, printed about this time (1900).
In " Die Abrechnung mit England," by C. Eisen-
hart, Munich, 1900, the writer shows Germany with
its new fleet first destroying the navy of Japan and
gaining a footing in the East. Then, while Great
Britain cripples Russia in Asia for the convenience
of Germany, Germany destroys the British Fleet.
Then the insolence of the U.S.A. is punished by
a complete defeat, Germany's victories resulting
in the acquisition of the best Anglo-Saxon colonies,
including Australia, and in Germany's paramountcy
over Anglo-Saxondom the world over. A fine, bold
programme, truly !
Another writer, in Deutschland beim Beginn
des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1900),
declared :
"We consider a great war with England in the
twentieth century as quite inevitable, and must
strain every fibre in order to be prepared to fight
that war single-handed. The experience of all time
shows that colonial Empires are more fragile and
less endurin.g than continental Empires, We do
not require a fleet against France or Russia ; let
them even ravage our coasts in case of war. We
require a fleet only against England."
Again the Koloniale Zeitschrift (Jan. i8th, 1900) :
"The old century saw a German Europe; the
new one shall see a German world. To attain that
59

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
consummation two duties are required of the present
German generation ; to keep its own counsel and
to create a strong naval force."
That, however, was the foaming of irresponsible
journalism. There was none of this war-talk in
the mouths of the rulers of the nation. When the
present German Emperor came to the throne,
Germany's relations with England were very
cordial. Queen Victoria spent some time in Berlin
and interviewed Bismarck. In 1888 an Anglo-
German Agreement concerning the East African
disturbances was signed, under which a joint
blockade was undertaken. In 1889 the German
Emperor visited England and was made an
Honorary Admiral of the British Fleet. Some of
his utterances regarding England about this time
should be recalled :
" If the British nation possesses a fleet commen
surate with its requirements, it will be regarded by
Europe in general as a great factor for the
preservation of peace.
" Following the example of my father and grand
father, I shall always, as far as it is in my power,
maintain the historical friendship between these, our
two nations, which have so often been side by side
in defence of liberty and justice. My aim is, above
all, the maintenance of peace, for peace alone can
give the confidence necessary to the healthy develop
ment of science, of art, and of trade. Rest assured
I shall continue to do my best to maintain and con
stantly increase the good relations between Germany
and other nations, and that I shall always be ready
to join with you and them in common labour for
peaceful progress, friendly intercourse and the
advancement of civilisation." 60

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
For some time after 1890 Anglo-German relations
had been distinctly friendly. British foreign policy
accepted as its cardinal maxim a friendly attitude
towards the Triple Alliance. It was sometimes sug
gested that Great Britain should definitely join that
Alliance. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was understood
to favour that. But the balance of opinion was
that it was better for Great Britain to be in the
position of a "flying buttress," supporting the
Alliance from without. In 1893 Berlin and London
made friendly arrangements in regard to Africa,
But 1894 was a bad year, a year of mischievous
newspaper war, arising out of a slight conflict of
opinion in regard to the Congo. The opening of
1896 saw the incident which is most favoured for
citing by the mischief-makers of the two nations.
On Christmas Day, 1895, the German Consul at
Pretoria notified his Government that " mischief was
brewing " at Johannesburg. On December 30th
the Germans in Pretoria called upon the German
Government for protection, and the Consul craved
permission to summon German sailors from
Delagoa Bay to Pretoria. On Jan. ist, 1896, the
Jameson Raid took place, and the German Emperor
wired to President Kruger :
" I express to you my sincere congratulations that
you and your people have succeeded by your own
energy, without appealing to the aid of friendly
Powers, in defeating the armed forces, which,
as disturbers of the peace, invaded your country
— in re-establishing order and in protecting the
independence of the country against attacks from
without." 61 F

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
This message raised a furious outcry in Great
Britain : and that outcry was justified. The
German Emperor was on that occasion guilty of
a "blazing indiscretion," probably making a con
cession against his own better judgment to the
jingo party in his own country. But, whatever
concession he made to them in words, his actions
were steadily pacific. The unhappy South African
War followed and, during that anxious time, the
German Emperor's attitude was not one of hostility.
On this point I shall quote the Daily Telegraph's
special Vienna correspondent again, lest my own
words be held suspect of pro-Germanism :
"When the South African War began, and
England found herself isolated in Europe, it was
natural that her statesmen should attempt to make
such combinations with foreign Powers or, at all
events, with one foreign Power, as might prevent
her from running too grave risks on the Continent
while her troops were engaged in South Africa.
At the back of all the diplomacy exercised over the
Samoan question loomed the menace of the Boer
War, casting its shadow over English diplomacy,
and involving our country in misapprehension and
obloquy on the Continent. But Mr, Chamberlain
could undoubtedly see for himself that his efforts
to secure friendliness for England were by no
means wholly unsuccessful. What he asked for
from Billow and the German Government was a
public expression of sympathy with Great Britain.
That, however, was more than the German
politicians could grant. In October, 1899, all that
could be obtained from Berlin was a re-affirmation
of their correct and loyal attitude. They intended
to be absolutely neutral. They had every desire to
maintain their obligations towards Great Britain, but
to expect anything more from them than this correct
62

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
attitude — to expect, in other words, some open
manifestation of good feeling, such as would involve
a direct partisanship for England — was to make an
impossible demand.
"The truth was, of course, that, while the German
Government were not altogether unfriendly in their
attitude, the German people and nearly the whole
of the German Press were prodigal in their attacks
on Great Britain's "rapacity" in South Africa. If
Lord Salisbury's Government asked for some
manifestation of sympathy, the answer that Biilow
and others gave was that public temper in the
Fatherland absolutely precluded any such course.
One curious incident, not generally known, super
vened at this period, A request was made by fhe
British Foreign Office that the German Consul in
Pretoria should take over the representation of
English interests during the war. To this a polite
but absolutely definite negative was returned.
Throughout Germany, and, indeed, throughout
Europe, such a step would have been construed as
indicating a secret understanding between Germany
and Great Britain.
"Nevertheless, there was nothing of the nature
of misunderstanding. I daresay I shall not be
believed when I say that actually in Black Week,
that is to say, during the course of December, 1899,
when everything was going against the success of
our arms, and when reverse after reverse seemed
to prove that we had undertaken an enterprise too
great and to difficult for us to carry through, the
German Government made definite overtures of
friendship. Such a thing would be declared to be
intrinsically absurd. That, however, does not
prevent it from having actually occurred. I have
documents before me to prove that on December
1 6th, 1899, the German Government, through the
mouth of their accredited agents, declared that they
were prepared to hold aloof from every Continental
group directed against England, and also from all
63 F 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
collective action which would cause embarrassment
to England, if German interests — presumably
German interests in Africa — were duly considered
on the part of Downing Street."
Perhaps some light is thrown on this matter by
what the German Emperor said in the famous inter
view which appeared in the Daily Telegraph in
1908. It will be remembered that Kaiser Wilhelm,
arguing with the prejudices of the English people,
said that the German Government had been invited
by France and Russia to intervene in the Boer War
in order to stop further hostilities. The moment had
come, so it was declared, not only to save the Boer
Republics, but to humiliate England once and for
all. According to the German Emperor the sugges
tions of France and Russia were put aside by him
because Germany had no intention whatsoever of
embroiling itself with Great Britain.
That puts the matter of the European position
during the South African War in a very different
light from that accepted to-day by the average
British writer on foreign politics. His view — a view
which is dinned into the ears of the British people
day by day — is that Germany was actually at the
head of an attempt to form an anti-British com
bination, a combination which would have been
formed but for the overwhelming strength of the
British Fleet. The actual truth is that Gennany
stood in the way of a European alliance against
England, and was actually our shield at a time of
the gravest possible anxiety.
That fact should be kept in mind rather than the
bitterly unfair German Press criticism of the British
people during the war. After all, that criticism
64

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
could be matched from the French Press, and,
except in grossness of figure, also from that section
of the British Press which was opposed to the wai
with the Boers.
The necessity for the South African War is not
here under debate, but we must recognise that it
was easy to misunderstand and to misrepresent our
motives, and that we could hardly expect from
foreigners a benevolent consideration of our case.
The one fact which can survive all the bad language
of the crisis is that the German Emperor acted at
that time as a friend of England and of European
peace. And, whilst the memory of all these South
African incidents was still fresh, the British Govern
ment found it possible to co-operate cordially with
the German Government in the Far East, and to
come with it to that agreement regarding the " open
door," which, in the opinion of Dr. Morrison, of
Pekin, has proved the most valuable factor for peace
in China.
The incident in 1900, when Germany was credited
with "flirting with Russia" to our disadvantage,
did not interfere seriously with that agreement. In
view of the absence of any alliance, or even any
entente between England and Germany, we could
hardly expect an absolutely single-minded devotion
to our views and to our predilections. We reserved
the right to " flirt with Russia " ourselves. Just now
we are flirting so desperately that there are anxious
inquiries as to whether our " intentions " are really
serious. We must not take up the offensively
superior attitude to Germany that it must be content
with our patronage and half-friendship and give in
return the devotion due to a jealous mistress,
65

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
But that has been our attitude — the attitude of
the patron to the poor relation ; and it has led,
step by step, away from the natural path of peace
and safety whi^h an alliance with Germany pointed
to, along the perilous expedients of the alliance with
Japan and the present "understanding " with France
and Russia, the results of which will be discussed
further on.
One word on the personality of the Kaiser.
The German Emperor, known as " The War Lord,"
or " He of the Mailed Fist," is in reality the peace
maker of Europe. But England has long been
reluctant to acknowledge this because of his unfor
tunate action at the time of the Jameson Raid. I
may mention as a sidelight on his real sentiments
the description given to me by my friend Mr, Alfred
Beit, not long before his death, of an interview he
had in 1905 with his Majesty, The Emperor sent for
him, and, in the course of what Mr, Beit described
as a most interesting conversation, said : " Now,
Mr. Beit, I want you on your return to England to
do all you can to assure your friends and everyone
you know of my desire to be friends with England.
I know you have much influence with your friends,
and I want you to do everything in your power to
make them believe in my friendly intentions towards
England," Mr. Beit died before he could carry out his
Emperor's wishes ; at that time he was already very
ill. A patriotic German, as well as one of the greatest
Imperialists Great Britain has known, his death
was an irreparable loss to both countries. Working
in combination with Mr. Cecil Rhodes, he was re
sponsible for much valuable aid in furthering the
66

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
great work of Mr. Rhodes in South Africa, but his
naturally modest nature always kept him in the
background. But there is no doubt that the names
of those two men should go down to posterity
coupled : while Mr, Rhodes had the imagination,
the prophetic vision of the seer, Mr, Beit supplied
the executive capacity and courage without which
nothing could have been accomplished. There we
have an example of two able men, an Englishman
and a German, working towards a common end
in perfect harmony, and through that not only
acquiring for England the immense territory of
Rhodesia, but placing the Imperial idea on a prac
tical basis.
I think, therefore, that, generally speaking, we
are in error when we look upon the Kaiser as a
European danger. For forty -three years Germany
has not gone to war; during the Kaiser's reign
there have been numberless cases, notably conflicts
with France, when a less prudent and more warlike
man would have loosed war over the whole of
Europe; he has not done so, and it is time that
credit should be given him therefor, that it should
be acknowledged that a ruler who loyally defends
his country's dignity and his country's interests is
not, for that reason, an inveterate and unreasonable
foe of all the nations of the world.

67

CHAPTER VI
SOME "reasons" AGAINST ANGLO-GERMAN
FRIENDSHIP EXAMINED
I DO not suspect that section of the British Press
which carries on an anti-German campaign of
dishonesty and love of mischief. I am even ready
to try to find an honourable excuse for the German
newspapers which carry on a grossly anti-British
campaign. A great deal of the trouble in England,
at any rate, has been set afoot from the best of
motives. At the conclusion of the South African
War many English patriots saw that it was neces
sary for this country to go back somewhat on the
social and political paths which it had pursued since
the "Manchester movement." In particular it was
considered that the divorce of the mass of the people
from a sense of personal responsibility for the
defence of their country was an evil thing, not only
from a military point of view, but also from the
point of view of securing a sturdy and self-respect
ing national character. The movement for some
universal training of the people to equip them for
self-defence was one of the outcomes of the new
spirit. To impress upon them the lesson of the necessity
of that training it was thought advisable to have an
example of the possible need of a great home
defence army. It was felt that the populace would
68

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
never respond to a philosophic appeal to take this
new and troublesome duty upon themselves for the
sake merely of national fitness. The possibility of
a German invasion was put forward, at first politely
enough and without any real offence to German
susceptibilities, as a reason for universal training in
England. That, I think, was the first harmless, indeed
patriotic, though injudicious beginning of the
parade of the German bogey in Great Britain. The
child — that is to say the people — had, for its own
good, to be frightened with a ghost story, and the
choice fell upon the ghost least of all likely to
materialise in the flesh. By and by the bogey that
was created with good intentions began to be paraded
with bad intentions. People came to believe in what
they had imagined. Frankenstein's monster fastened
upon Frankenstein, Instead of a harmless fiction
intended to impress upon England a national duty,
"the German invasion " became a possibility, which
was hurrying a Christian nation on to the mad work
of picking a quarrel with another nation with which
it had no real cause of disagreement.
I cannot pretend to see into the minds of other
people; so I do not know whether the English
Germanophobes created their assumption of a
German invasion for the same reason as one might,
having to imagine a naval war, plan one with
Switzerland, because it seemed then the least likely
of all martial possibilities. But it would be reason
able to believe that it was so. " Does a bull fight with
a shark ? " bluff old Bismarck is reported to have
said when the idea of a war between Germany and
England was mentioned in his presence.
69

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
But the impossible idea of 1900 has come, year
by year, nearer to the realm of the possible. Unfor
tunate mischance has made it happen that step
after step of our domestic policy has been illus
trated by examples drawn from Germany. Germany
has been advancing by leaps and bounds indus
trially under a policy of Protection and sound tech
nical education. Therefore the Tariff Reformers in
Great Britain have been fond of illustrating the
advantages of tariffs by examples drawn from Ger
many. The cumulative effect of these examples has
been to create an impression in the mind of the
British public that Germany is a beanstalk growth,
threatening to overshadow and to dwarf our own.
A subtle sense of animosity has been fostered by
this setting-up of Germany as the wonder child of
civilisation, the child that is always good and always
learns its lessons and tidies its clothes and saves
its pennies.
I remember being admitted once to the confidence
of a small boy who was a very lovable small boy
indeed, and of course sometimes naughty. He, it
seems, had always to suffer under the infliction of
having a neighbouring small boy, named John
Smith, cited to him as a pattern and example. John
Smith never did anything wrong and seemed to lead
an altogether smug and cheerless existence. My
small friend had become sick unto death of John
Smith, and one day, when I asked him what he
intended to do when he grew up, he startled me — I
suppose the virtues of John Smith had been im
pressed on him in a particularly aggravating form
that day — by saying firmly : "I am going to kill
John Smith I " ;o

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
I can imagine many a British citizen harbouring
similar feelings as to the wonderful Germany whose
virtues supply texts for so much preaching, the
Germany which does such wonderful things with
tariffs and with industries.
In Germany, too, domestic politics make it seem
advisable to some publicists to have a bogey ; and
the bogey happens to be England. Take, for
instance, the party of social revolution, which
threatens trouble to the German order. That pictur
esque demagogue, Lassalle (whom Meredith made
the hero of his "Tragic Comedians"), founded the
Social Democratic movement in Germany, With
Marx, Engels and others, he preached "social revo
lution," Karl Marx formed "The International
Association of Working Men," which was the off
spring of a secret society, "The League of the
Just," founded by German exiles in Paris in 1836,
and afterwards removed to London. Their motto
is : "All men are brothers," and the first article of
their faith is "the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the
rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old society
resting upon class antagonisms, and the founding
of a new society ' without classes and without private
property,' " This party of revolution offers the most
serious problem of domestic politics in Germany
to-day. It is strongly represented in the Reichstag ^
and its strength is a growing strength. Since a
chief plank of its platform is anti-militarism, it is
natural that German politicians, seeking to maintain
a sound opinion on defence among the German
people, should hold the Socialists up to scorn as
plotting the ruin of their Fatherland. Perhaps for
' Over one quarter of the membership.
71

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the same reason that British publicists were led to
instance Germany as the possible foe, German
publicists instanced England.
It would have been a wiser policy to have shown
that the Socialist peril was a reason for combined
defensive patriotism on the part of all European
nations. It might have been pointed out, for in
stance, that the " International " once contemplated
moving its headquarters to London, as "England
is the only country in which a real Socialist
revolution can be made." But that course
was not followed. Instead the bogey of an
English invasion was used in Germany, as
the bogey of a German invasion was used in
England, as a counter in the game of domestic
politics.-' But, leaving aside scare cries, which have no object
other than to arouse national patriotism, let us see
what are the actual reasons given in a section of
the British Press for announcing the inevitableness
of a breach with Germany. By far the most in
sidious is the one which seeks to prove that Ger
many will be, against its wishes and against its
better judgment, forced into conflict with England
because "it must expand," and its expansion can
take place only at the cost of British territory or
of the territory of British friends. This argument
looks very powerful indeed until it is examined in
> Many Pan-Germans are obsessed with the idea that England
is plotting the destruction of Germany. Thus, Count Reventlow, •
one of their leaders, actually stated in the " Deutsche Tages-
zeitung " (3rd March, 1913) that England was building " Dread
noughts " nominally for the account of Turkey, in reality for its
own, and using this subterfuge so as to deceive the German
authorities, who relied on the British naval estimates ! This
absurd charge can be referred to the Government auditor.
72

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the light of hard facts. Let us see what are the
actual facts.
The population of Germany has increased from
41,000,000 in 1871 to 64,900,000 in 1910. German
imports have risen from a value of 2,800,000,000
marks in 1880 to 9,700,000,000 marks in 191 1;
German exports from 2,893,000,000 marks to
8,106,000,000 marks within the same period. If the
rate of increase of the population is maintained, it
is argued that there must be some overcrowding and
that German people will be compelled to seek homes
elsewhere. As there are no German colonies to
which they can emigrate, the German people must
see their citizens swallowed up by foreign nations,
or they must try to conquer lands where they can
settle them and where a new German nation may
grow up. Since there are no such lands unoccupied,
German expansion must be aggressive. And of
course it will be aggressive at the expense of Great
Britain, which has so much desirable empty
territory. But whilst Germany had an emigration of about
200,000 a year when it had a much smaller popula
tion, to-day emigration has become very small.
More than a million of foreigners are settled in
Germany, and about 750,000 migratory labourers
visit Germany every year to make up for the
shortage of German labour in German industries.
And there is no overcrowding in Germany, as the
scaremongers would have us believe. The popula
tion of Germany is about half as dense as the
population of England and Wales. There are 311
people a square mile in Germany, whilst there are
635 in England and Wales; and the German land
73

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
system gives accommodation to a far greater number
of people than does the British, with far less devo
tion of useful land to the purposes of sport.
The statement, then, that Germany "must
expand " because it has no room at home for its
own people does not withstand careful examination.
It must be dismissed as a figment of the imagina
tion — believed in honestly enough, no doubt, by
most of those who state it, but still not true. If its
untruth is once clearly appreciated a very large part
of the foundation on which is built up the case for
"an inevitable collision between England and
^Germany " disappears.
There is yet another false statement current on
the same point, and that is that the burden of
armaments is being felt so heavily in Germany that
war must be embarked upon as soon as the alter
native is national bankruptcy. This, again, is a
fallacy. Here is a comparative statement showing
the financial strength of the great European and
American Powers : Government Government
cost per cost per head
Population. head. with debt.
£ .. d. £ s. d.
tinited Kingdom ... ... 45,360,000 i 10 6 216
France  39,600,000 190 288
Germany  65,000,000 119 168
U.S.A  92,300,000 113 128
Italy  34,800,000 12 8 I 3 10
Austria-Hungary ... .„ 51,200,000 10 8 17 10
Russia  163,800,000 91 12 9
Germany, it is seen, is in a far more favourable
position tt) bear further charges, if such should be
necessary, than is either France or England.' Its
non-productive debt is comparatively trifling, repre
senting only a total cost of 4s, 3d. per head of
population per annum. In the United Kingdora
74

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the cost of the public debt is ii5. per head, in
France it is 19s, 8d. per head. The taxation figures
are equally favourable to Germany.
YIELD OF TAXES PER HEAD.
Direct. Indirect. Total
£ •>¦¦ <^- £ s. d. £ s. d.
Germany  i6 9 134 201
France  I 15 4 i 17 o 3 12 4
Britain  I 17 S I n 2 387
With lighter taxation, less debt, smaller cost of
administration, Germany has a very sound financial
position and certainly need not be forced into a
war of adventure by the fear of national bankruptcy.
Going further into the reasons which are set
forth as proofs that England and Germany cannot
be friends, one encounters the statement : " Germany
is building up a great fleet. It can have but one
motive in doing this, an attack upon England."
This recalls the "argument" which the wolf
addressed to the lamb at the stream. Because
Germany wishes to use the sea as well as England,
must that be taken as a proof that it has
murderous designs ? After all, Germany has at
least a billion pounds' worth of property committed
to the care of the sea. It has — not to the same
extent as yet, but still after the same fashion as
England — built up a necessity for foreign trade.
It is largely dependent on foreign sources for the
supply of raw material and provisions. Its imports
of raw materials, &c,, have recently risen frora a
value of 1,863,000,000 marks to 5,083,000,000 marks
(cotton imports from 178,000,000 marks to
561,000,000 marks, wool imports from 206,000,000
marks to 390,000,000 marks, iron-ore imports from
12,000,000 marks to 161,000,000 marks, steel imports
75

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
from 47,000,000 marks to 377,000,000 marks),
German exports have risen to a value of
8,106,000,000 marks. So Germany has become,
with every year, more and more dependent on
foreign customers for manufactured goods and
supplies of raw materials. "Gerraany," writes a
notable Gerraan, " is slowly drifting into the position
of a refiner. We iraport raw materials and raw
labour. We also import capital from those nations
which do not want to run big risks in inter
national finance. We export finished articles,
technical skill and intellectual activity, and take
financial risks with borrowed money. Our foreign
investments are valued at ;^6oo,ooo,ooo."
All this trade and shipping and industry give
Germany the right to say, as Great Britain says,
"An open sea is vital to our safety. We cannot
accept the risk of the seas being shut against our
shipping, for our national prosperity, our very
national existence, is depending every year more
and more upon the sea."
I think the facts as to the German interests which
are comraitted to the sea provide at one and the
same time a good reason why Germany should have
naval power and why it should be so flatly against
its interests to go to war with the greatest naval
power in the world. We cannot expect that self-
respecting German nationalism will accept the
position as it is put by sorae English writers. "Let
Gerraany rely upon our navy for the policing of
the High Seas." If we said that to one of our
own Dominions, if we asked Australia, for instance,
to disband its army and trust to the protection of
our army and navy in case of trouble, the
76

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
reply would surely be a negative, possibly a very
discourteous . negative. German interests at sea
clearly warrant a German navy to protect them.
The growth of those interests at sea is, however,
the best reason why Germany would not venture
upon a policy of aggression against the chief naval
Power of the world. That is the naval position in
a nutshell. There remains no other serious argument against
a firm Anglo-German understanding. If it is not
a fact (and it is not) that Germany's overcrowded
population forces it on towards territorial expan
sion ; if it is not a fact (and it is not) that Germany's
financial despair will force it to raake war as an
alternative to bankruptcy; if it is a fact (and it
is) that Germany has such great interests at sea
that it is alike justified in seeking to safeguard those
interests, and warned against the certain loss
entailed by war with the chief naval Power — what
remains of the case against the friendship between
England and Germany which the best men of both
nations desire ?
There remains only that feeling of resentment
which the Englishman has against his German poor
relation become prosperous; that feeling of
aggressiveness which the German has because he
is conscious that he is " newly rich " and fears that
everyone wishes to snub him in consequence. That
is not material enough to build up a war which
might put the neck of civilisation under the heel
of the Mongol or the negro, which might set loose
unchecked the forces of social anarchy. At least
it is not material enough unless "judgment has fled
to brutish breasts, and men have lost their reason."

CHAPTER VII
SOME TRADE FACTS
The rapid development of Gerraan trade within
the last two decades undoubtedly bears part of the
responsibility for the ill-feeling harboured against
Gerraany in some British quarters. No fallacy of
economics is more generally accepted by those who
do not think clearly than that an increase in
prosperity in trade and production in one country
can be gained only at the expense of another
country. As a matter of fact, a statement of
exactly the opposite nature would come nearer the
truth, viz., that it is impossible for any one nation
to progress greatly in prosperity and trade without
benefiting in some degree all the nations with which
it coraes into relations. But with the fallacy that
what Gerraany has won it must have won at our
expense, there is fed a great mass of ignorant
prejudice leading to national hostility, and that
tribute of admiration which should be given to the
German nation for the wonderful way in which it
has raised its commercial and industrial status is
kept from due expression.
German trade expansion has not been a matter
78

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of robbing anyone else. It has not been a matter
of luck. It has been the reward of sheer hard
work, of consistent educational effort, of solid thrift.
The German has worked longer hours; once a
seventeen-hour day was worked in the German
factories; now the general rule is ten or eleven
hours. The German has perfected his systera of
technical education, so that it is the pattern for all
the world; and he has given a unique degree of
attention to cheraical and general scientific research
work. The reason why most of the raodern
inventions in industrial cheraistry are to be credited
to Germans is not because the Germans have been
lucky, nor yet because the German brains are
superior to those of other European peoples. It is
because Germans are more industrious, more sys
tematic, more awake to the seriousness of life.
German thrift in the early stages of the country's
industrial development was almost painful. Mr,
Sydney Whitman, a close observer, who spent his
boyhood in Germany, writes of that time :
"Material comforts which were the common
property of the well-to-do in France and England
were only known to the few in Germany fifty years
ago. What was luxury in Paris or London was
alraost unknown in Berlin, Dresden, or Munich,
Even after the war of 1870, the installation of some
tiled baths in the Hotel de Rome at Berlin, such
as are to be seen everywhere to-day, created quite
a sensation, and excited the envy of the old Emperor
William, for he had nothing like them in his
palace. In thousands of families, raany of them of
acknowledged social position, roast meat was a
rarity, seen only once a week, on Sunday's bill of
fare. "The traveller who went from England to
79 G 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Dresden, and who smoked a Havana cigar, which
might have cost sixpence in London, was looked
upon in amazement as a millionaire by the local
nobilities." Now the German takes things a little more
comfortably, as he is well entitled to do. But still
he is in all classes far more frugal than the English
man. A well-known English chemical manufac
turer, discussing with me the reason why so much
more research work was done in Gerraany than in
England, said : " In Gerraany you can get any
nuraber of University men who are willing to give
up their time to research work for a reward not
equalling ;^300 a year of our money. On that
they can live, and live comfortably. The English
professional man of the same class would think this
remuneration quite inadequate."
German industry benefits, too, by the German
patriotism which makes military training universal.
The period of military training is two years for the
infantry and three years for the cavalry. All
Gerraan employers favour conscription, which, they
say, "teaches obedience, discipline and regular
habits, makes the raen smarter, prompter and more
alert." This discipline is continued through
industrial life. Thus, in workshops, cleanliness is
enforced : a foreman will send a dirty workman
to the wash-trough. Educational associations are
formed to lecture to workers on political economy,
international law, political history and other subjects,
so that they may become good citizens. Will think
ing Englishmen take exception to this adrairable
system ? Will they not rather give full credit to
Gerraany for initiating it, and strive to see if we
80

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
cannot imitate it, in some respects at least, in our
own country?
After German industry, German thrift and
German educationj the raost valuable factor in the
building of Gerraan prosperity has been English
exaraple and English teaching. This is fully
recognised by most Germans. A recent very
notable public expression of the feeling was at a
meeting held in Munich, when prominent citizens,
such as an Ex-Minister for Education, the President
of the Royal Academy of Science, an Ex-Minister
for Finance, the Chairman of the local Navy
League, the Vice-President of the First Chamber
and others raet to protest that South Gerraany
regarded all talk of an unfriendly relationship with
England as an absurdity. The speakers dwelt
on the fact that England and Germany were each
other's most valuable customer. It was asked :
Would the fair-minded English people resent it if
Germany translated its national feeling into action,
and if, in trying to extend German trade and cora-
merce, it took the necessary precautionary measures
for the protection of those interests, and desired
to be an equal factor in the great questions of world
politics? No ground could be honestly found, it
was pointed out, for a disturbance of good relations
between England and Gerraany. The workraen's
representative at this raeeting said that the Gerraan
workers would be the greatest sufferers if England
fell out with Gerraany. The other day the Cologne
Gazette rerainded its readers that " It was English
men, who, in Germany, first took in hand the con
struction of railways, of gasworks, of traraways,
and of machinery shops, who supplied to those
8i

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
enterprises the ample resources of British capital,
and thus acted as the pioneers of Gerraan material
development." The cotton, woollen and textile
industries were in the sarae way largely indebted
to English pioneers.
Many of the textile firms still trade under English
naraes, and Mulhausen, the cotton centre, has its
Manchester Street as a sign of its old debt to the
English cotton centre.
Before this developraent of Germany had begun,
on the very evening of the surrender of Metz, Prince
Frederick Charles said to the officers who sur
rounded him : " We have just gained a splendid
victory in the military domain; it rests with our
nation to gain an equal success in the industrial
sphere." That may be said to be the beginning
of the German resolve to match greatness in the
warlike field with an equal greatness in the factory
and the laboratory. In 1871 the nation had eight
cities of over 100,000 souls. In 1880 the number of
cities over 100,000 in population was fourteen, in
1890 twenty-six, in 1910 forty-five, seven of which
had over half-a-million people. In ship-building
the progress has been most astonishing. The first
fleet of the North German Lloyd Corapany was
bought in England, because ships were not built
in Gerraany. Now Germany builds for itself and
for other nations.
This trade prosperity does not encourage the war
spirit. Quite the contrary. It is pointed out, on
behalf of Germany, by Dr. Paul Kohrbach : " We
have naturally to take care to avoid war with
England, for in the first place war would land us
in imraeasurable danger, and in the second place the
raethods of peaceable competition have hitherto
82

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
been adequate to win an increasing market for our
industry." A full third of the total of Germany's
foreign commerce is with the British Empire and
the United States. Nor is it a one-sided bargain.
Germany takes from Great Britain a value of trade
equal almost to the total of that taken by Canada
and Australia together, and is a good customer to
all the Dorainions. In its own tariff arrangements
Germany has, of course, been frankly protective.
But it has always treated Great Britain as the most
favoured nation, and has sometimes modified its
tariff in some respects to meet the wishes of this
country. The first of those incidents dates as far
back as Cobden's day in England, when the German
Zollverein i-educed the duties on certain of our
imports. The commercial treaties and tariff charges
of 1868 and 1869 showed the same spirit. General
ising, it may be said with truth that Germany has
given to Great Britain as good tariff treatment as
British Dominions gave the Mother Country, at
any rate before the era of Imperial Preference, i.e.,
it has considered Gerraan interests first and after
wards has been willing to consider British interests
in preference to those of other foreign nations.
Germany has not developed its prosperity at our
expense, does not aira it now as a weapon against
us. But Germany cannot be asked — having given
the hostages to fortune which the development of
its great foreign trade represents — to consent to
leave the guardianship of its sea interests in the
hands of England, especially an unfriendly
England, "Every people struggling to develop
and consolidate its liberty has an unerring instinct
towards the sea," as Lord Lytton said in 1863.
There is, therefore, nothing' unreasonable in the
83

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
attitude taken up by Admiral Rosendahl in the
Deutsche Revue, June, 1909: "A political agree
ment on the basis of the unconditional superiority
of the British Fleet would be equivalent to an aban
donment of our national dignity, and though we do
not, broadly speaking, wish to dispute England's
predominance at sea, yet we do mean, in case of
war, to be or to become the masters of our own
coasts," We must learn to look upon German trade expan
sion in a friendly spirit, as not at our expense (our
own trade has expanded wonderfully at the same
time), and as committing Germany (as we are com
mitted ourselves) to a policy of peace, for war is the
enemy of trade, and as warranting Gerraany (as
we are warranted ourselves) in maintaining a police
fleet on the high seas. In the facts of German trade
there is a rational explanation of the German Fleet ;
and there is the best of reasons against that fleet
embarking upon any aggressive exploits. It is
sheer folly to turn aside from that rational explana
tion and to seek for some fantastic theory of a con
templated German invasion of the British Empire.
When considering the matter of trade in its rela
tion to the national friendship of England and
Germany, it would not be candid to pass over
without any comment the existence of the Tariff
Reform movement in this country. Sir Harry
Johnston, from the Free Trader's point of view,
wrote recently :
"But if any event so unhappy occurred as the
advent to power of a Ministry which imposed differ
ential duties in the customs houses of India, the
Crown Colonies and Protectorates, we should soon
see the attitude of Germany, the United States,
Austria-Hungary, Italy and Japan change towards
84

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
us. It is one of the most important comraercial
interests of Gerraany that the British Erapire over
India should continue. The trade of Germany with
that vast region of Southern Asia has risen to an
annual value of ;^ 15,000,000. Germany knows full
well that if any native rebellion or foreign .war
expelled the British from India, no other European
nation could take their place. I could well imagine,
if Britain were really in serious difficulties over
India, the German Empire coming specially to its
assistance." I do not at all consider that a revision of our Free
Trade systera would be an "unhappy event," I
think rather that Tariff Reform is a very important
part of the work of setting our Imperial household
into better order. But in this raatter I do not wish
to appeal to any one party in British politics, but
to all parties. Conservative, Liberal, Irish and
Labour. And it is necessary to admit that the effect
of our present bad relations with Germany is to
surround with serious difficulties the task of making
any material change in our tariff system. Indeed,
I should view with some misgiving the advent of
a tariff intended to help British trade at the expense
of foreign trade, intended to develop Imperial unity
at the expense of the foreigner's share of trade with
our Colonies, whilst we and Germany are levelling
threats at one another. Once we have established
good relations with Germany that raisgiving will dis
appear. Just as the Gerraan refusal to join in it
blocked the proposed Anti-British European coali
tion at the time of the South African War, a German
attitude of friendliness towards England would
make impossible any coalition which might object
to an Imperialist tariff system.
In the present temper of the British people it is
85

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
quite possible that, if a new tariff policy were
adopted, our politicians would set themselves de
liberately to budget against Germany, translating
into action the mistaken view that Gerraany is our
particular trade rival instead of being (as it is) our
best foreign customer and our co-champion in the
cause of the open door. Such a possibility, however,
need not be imagined in order to establish the case
for the dangers of a Tariff Reform proposal brought
forward whilst we were on terms of enmity with
the one nation which exp>erience proves can in
general circumstances be expected to take at the
time of crisis a view sympathetic to the Anglo-Saxon
world, A good understanding with Germany would
relieve the eventual tension of the tariff change.
That good understanding would not, of course,
involve currying favour with Germany, but merely
due regard for coramon interests after our own
special interests had been safeguarded.
It has been difficult to deal with this point without
becoming involved in questions of British party
politics, from which I wish to be clear in this plea
for peace. But it was necessary to point out a
possible development. Supposing, however, that
Tariff Reform be ignored for the present, the broad
facts, as they stand in 19 13, are that German trade
has progressed, not at our expense, but largely with
our sympathy and help; that German industry
to-day is grateful for that help and shows its grati
tude by "most-favoured-nation" treatment of
England; that German commercial expansion has
at once made a German Navy necessary and made
it extremely improbable that that Navy will be
directed against England. 86

CHAPTER VIII
WTHAT WE ARE LOSING
The chief evil results of the "bad blood " that is
being made between England and Germany are
the present effect it has in diverting European atten
tion frora the real world problems of the day, and
the possible future effect it may have in endangering
Western civilisation. But I am aware that to very
many people the evil which has to be faced in the
future is no evil at all. The Micawber who, having
signed an I,0,U, for a sum allowing an exorbitant
rate of interest in discharge of a debt, exclaimed
joyfully : " Thank Heaven that is settled," finds
something of a sympathetic chord in raost of us.
What can be by any means postponed is not faced.
People are content that an evil should be allowed
to grow, provided that their sons and not themselves
have to bear the ultimate consequences. Prove ever
so clearly that the race peril and the social peril
raust be raet one day and can be met only by a
united Europe, and yet you will find many people
unconvinced that there -is a pressing need to put
a stop to the fostering of unnecessary antagonisms
between kindred nations, which are by birth and
education marked out as joint trustees of civilisa
tion. But proof ol immediate loss is to such a folk
a far more convincing argument. Let then the
87

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
British people and the German people take quiet
stock of the actual loss and inconvenience which
this artificially promoted Anglo-German hostility
involves.
In the first place there is the needless increase in
the expenditure on armaments. Assured of each
other's friendship, both Great Britain and Germany
could materially reduce their defence budgets
without sacrificing anything of their security.^
Apart from that cash saving, one nation would
find an end come to a hemming-in policy which
seeras to thwart it at every turn, and the other
nation would find itself freed from the exactions of
polite blackmailers.
The price which Germany has to pay for hostility
to England is that the warning finger, saying :
"Whatever you are going to do, my dear, don't,"
has to be obeyed, or the risk run of precipitating
a European war. With England standing obstin
ately in the path Germany can raake no safe move
anywhere. Its overseas trade is so important a
part of its national life that it will not go to war
with the supreme naval Power of the world, except
under extreme provocation. Anything short of
actual national dishonour will be faced rather than
war waged with Great Britain, for, in the ordinary
course of events, this may entail the loss of all
German colonies and the blocking for a long time,
perhaps permanently, of those channels of trade
which are so necessary to Gerraan prosperity.
The "don'ts" of Great Britain addressed to
1 Admiral von Tirpitz proved by his speech in February,
1913, that an agreement for the hmitation of armaments is well
within the bounds of possibility, and that he, as head of the
German Navy, viewed the idea with some degree of favour.
88

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Gerraany are alike so general and so particular that
it is reasonable to expect that, if colonisable land
were to-raorrow made available in the planet Mars,
the first international development would be a
British declaration against any German interference
there. It is only to Germany that the British power
holds up its warning finger. Any other nation may
pick up trifles of territory, .and secure release from
irritating restrictions almost as it wishes. There is
no harm seen in France expanding in North Africa,
nor in Russia coming closer to India, nor in Italy
crossing the Mediterranean to make another
attempt at an African Erapire, nor in the United
States ignoring the conditions of internationalism
under which the Panama Canal was built, Ger
many raay look on and see every Power increasing
its foothold, strengthening its position; but any
attempt at Iraperial progress on its own part is
blocked. That is not a pleasant situation for Ger-
niany. Seeing that it exists, and must exist whilst
this artificial tension with Great Britain continues,
I cannot believe that there is any sensible party in
Gerraany but what desires a good understanding
with England, Of course, if we on this side of the
North Sea are stubborn in an attitude of sulky
hostility, Germany cannot respond with constant
deprecatory overtures. National self-respect forbids
that. For Great Britain the position created by the feud
with Germany is at least as hard. In some respects
indeed it is harder. Whilst we hold off Germany
frora legitimate developraent, we are being forced
out of sorae of our possessions, or being forced into
a position which must ultimately involve their loss.
89

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
To put it bluntly, we are being blackmailed on all
sides because any strong Power can threaten that
it will ally against us with Germany. If Russia
wants something at our expense and we seera
reluctant to raake the concession, it is only necessary
for Russia to hint at an understanding with Ger
many, and we raust give way.
At the present moment we have been dragged by
Russia into an attitude towards Persia which no
Englishman can defend in his heart, though some
find it politic to defend it in public because of a
sense of loyalty to our Foreign Minister and because
we recognise that we are helpless to resist any
demand from Russia whilst our hands are tied by
the fancied necessity for being on hostile terms with
Germany. Something of the timidity of old age
seems to be overtaking our counsels, for no one
seems to come forward with the courageous sugges
tion that the wise course is not to go on yielding
to unworthy demands, but to make a bold step
forward and get out of the morass in which hostility
to Germany has sunk us.
Regarding the position in Persia there was a
remarkable letter, dated September 23rd, 191 2, in
The Times from a Moslera (writing frora Christ's
College, Cambridge) regarding the probable out
come of the Anglo-Russian entente upon the fate
of Persia, The results of that entente, as I have
said, are generally looked upon with dislike and
suspicion in England. There is hardly a thinking
citizen of the United Kingdom but that half enter
tains the idea that we are now engaged in strangling
Persia's liberty in the interests of Russia. But it is
argued that we have no option in the matter. In view
90

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of the "threat from Germany," we must submit to
whatever price is demanded of us as the price of
Russian friendship, Inayatullah Khan, in his
letter to The Times, gives the following as his idea
of the real intentions of Russia :
"Russia is compelled to court the diplomacy of
England, her ally, to gain a permanent naval base
in the Persian Gulf, The Englishman, and with
him the British Foreign Minister, laughs the idea
to scorn, but, Sir, we are too near the focus of
recent diplomatic events to be able to judge them
in their normal light. The ' spheres of influence '
have already been defined and agreed upon between
the two Governments, Russian diplomacy has
already taken good ,care to bring Teheran well.
within its own sphere. Indeed, my view of the
Russian projects becomes invested with considerable
vividness when one fails to understand why it is
that the Russians have persistently brought forward
the so-called Persian question into prominence at
a juncture when Turkey is at war with Italy. But
although the Russian move raay not have been
played out in full with the connivance of England,
alas, it appears to have been played in the name of
England !
"The consequences of this and sirailar moves
may not be realised for some time to come. The
equilibrium of pKJwer in Europe renders it imperative
that Russia and France should have their own way
when Italy is seeking to have her own. But when
once the relative position of the Great Powers under
goes a complete metamorphosis, or even a modifica
tion — indications of it have already begun to appear
in the new suggested alliances — one may well realise
what I can well believe now, that the Black and the
Caspian Seas will have once more becorae mere
lakes — Russian lakes this time, as they were Turkish
some three centuries ago." 91

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Events do seem to be shaping in that way, and
clearly such an outcome will be bad for Persia, bad
for England, and bad for the reputation of
European civilisation, whose duty it is to face the
Oriental races, not only with firmness, but with
practical proofs that the old days of robbery and
outrage are over ; and that Europe has no further
intention of looting Asia.
I do not, however, plead for the killing of our
German bogey in order that we may go back to
a Russian bogey. What is needed is a general
European peace — guarded by Britain, the greatest
naval Power, and Germany, the greatest military
Power — so that we may be prepared for any attack,
either from within or frora without. But it is
reasonable to point out the heavy price that we are
being called upon to pay in one quarter because,
by imagining that Germany is our eneray, we put
ourselves in the position of having to agree to every
demand Russia may make. We could stop the
blackmail at once, and stop it without taking any
unfriendly step towards Russia, by coming to a
good understanding with Germany, There would
probably be soreness with Russia in consequence :
certainly there would be no good reason for sore
ness. That country, at the present tirae, is taking
advantage of our difficulties as it considers that it is
justified in doing, and as any nation in dealing with
foreign affairs would consider that it was justified
in doing. It is our fault if we have put ourselves
in the position that we cannot hold our own in
diploraacy. It is the bounden duty of Russian
statesraen, according to the ethics of the game they
play, to take advantage of the opportunity. If the
92

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
opportunity did not exist, there would be no reason
for a grievance. The independence of Persia
would be respected. The Russian move towards
the boundary line of India would be stopped in
graceful recognition of the fact that Great Britain
objected and was strong enough to enforce the
objection. I have some hesitation in citing this next
example, wherein we are being put at a disadvantage
owing to our position vis-d-vis Gerraany, because
it is the fashion in England never to talk of the
United States except with bated breath and affected
huraility. Still, there can be no harra in pointing
out that our good cousins across the Atlantic are
injuring our national interests and offending our
national honour by their threat to set aside
certain inconvenient clauses of a treaty they have
made with us (acting as trustees for the world),
providing that, as regards dues and means of
defence, the Panama Canal should be an inter
national and not merely an American waterway.
We have lodged a half-hearted protest against this
American action, lodged it, if all accounts are to
be believed, because our self-governing Dominions
insisted that some move of that sort should be made.
But no notice has been taken of the protest, though
there is some hope from the new President, And
if the United States condescend so far as to suggest,
through the ordinary diplomatic channels and in the
ordinary diplomatic language, that we should mind
our own business, we shall have an answer following
the usual course frora that quarter : and a possible
contingency is that we shall be allowed to learn frora
the newspapers that the Panama Canal is not any
93 H

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of our business, despite anything an Anglo-
American treaty may have said.
In no conceivable circumstances would there
be a justification for any war-talk between Great
Britain and the United States. The American
Republic is united by a tie of blood which is almost
as strong as that connecting us with Germany, and
also by the ties of a common language. But it is
raeet to point out that it raust be quite as clear to
the United States as it is to Great Britain that in
no circumstances could we move a great fleet across
the Atlantic with a hostile Germany on our flank ;
and this knowledge has its effect upon the American
mind. In the Far East also we are being forced into
a position unfavourable to our national interests
by the fact that this artificial feud with Gerraany
is taken advantage of by other Powers. Some dis
closure of the forces at work was made during the
discussion of what was known as the "Six Powers
Loan " to China, and of the subsequent independent
loan floated by a British firm in defiance of the
British Foreign Office, It was made fairly clear
by that discussion that Great Britain was being
compelled in the Far East to adopt an attitude
which was not consistent with its best interests.
Again the compulsion was the same. Our position
in regard to Germany made it impossible to take
up an independent attitude towards Russia or
Japan. Regarding these Chinese loan negotiations, the
Frankfurter Zeitung published in September, 19 12,
some outspoken remarks by Dr. Morrison, of Pekin
(an Englishman and an acknowledged expert on
94

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
China) as to the unwisdom of the recent change
in British diploraacy there from the old lines of
an Anglo-German understanding to the new con
ditions demanded by a friendship with Russia.
Dr. Morrison pointed out that even a child knew
the reasons of Japan and Russia for entering the
"Four Powers Syndicate" and making it a "Six
Powers Syndicate." "Japan, despite the competition
between its business men and the sharper, cheaper-
living, and more adaptable Chinese, has not aban
doned Manchuria; Russia is less aggressive
because it fears China more. Both countries, by
entering the ' Four Powers Syndicate,' meant to
increase their influence and to hinder the growth
of China's power rather than to further it. The
' Six Powers Syndicate ' owed its origin to the
hopes of Americans to hold both these Powers in
check, and the French approval of the plan placed
China in an impossible position. The co-operation
of British and German investors since 1895 has
given brilliant results, Anglo-German rivalry
certainly exists in the Far East, but it is not much
in evidence. Such co-operation is rauch to be
desired." Dr, Morrison, who is now the political adviser
of the Chinese Governraent, would probably not
agree at all with ray views on the Far Eastern
position : for I would welcome a combination of
European Powers to keep a cautionary eye on
Chinese military development, I think it is bad
"Europeanism " for the White Powers to assist
China to travel along the path which has brought
Japan within the family group of the Powers, But
certainly the Six Powers group, with its inclusion "
95 H 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
of Japan, and its probable purpose of serving the
ends of Japan and Russia at the expense of China,
is a bad thing : and most Englishmen were glad
when it received a rebuff in the London money-
raarket.
In China the unfortunate effects of hostility
between Gerraany and England are very ap
parent. An Anglo-German understanding, with
the United States as a possible third partner, could
meet all the necessities of the position created by
the awakening of China. It could help that
country to develop peacefully ; it could check any
attempt on China's part to organise vast military
forces ; it could maintain the " Open Door," so that
the trade of all the world could enter on equal
terms, subject only to the conditions which the
Chinese Government enforced on all. With such
an understanding there would be no possibility of
any European Power attempting to play a selfish
game in China at the expense of its neighbours, for
England and Germany corabined could bring
irresistible pressure in any quarter and would not
need to fear pressure from any group. As things
stand, the arm of England is paralysed in China,
Haunted by the fear of Germany we dare not take
any steps which might involve the necessity of
sending a fleet to the Pacific. We must stand by
and see Japan and Russia do what they will, even
if the final result is to goad the Chinese to
plunge into a desperate race war, or to put
the vast resources of the Chinese Empire at the
disposal of Japan to be organised for a war uf>on
Europe. In view of the very anxious position in Asia there
96

A FRIENDLY GERMANY : WHY NOT?
has been some disappointment in our Overseas
Dominions in the South Pacific that — again because
of England's frenzied fear of Germany — the proraised
reorganisation of the British Pacific Fleet has not
been undertaken. On the conclusion of our treaty
with Japan we withdrew practically all our fighting
fleet frora the Pacific Ocean. But, at the Iraperial
Defence Conference of 1909, it was arranged that
British naval strength in that ocean should be
restored by Australia organising a navy and New
Zealand assisting the Mother Country in the forma
tion of a squadron at least as powerful as that of
Australia, Now the " Dreadnought " cruiser which
New Zealand was to contribute under that scheme
is ready. But it will not go to the Pacific, It
is to be kept in the North Sea "in view of the
European situation," British naval interests in the
Pacific are still in the hands of the Japanese, the
Asiatic nation to whose citizens Australia and
New Zealand refuse adraission as undesirable
iraraigrants !
In the Mediterranean Sea another lesson is to be
gleaned concerning the general sacrifice of British
interests in all parts of the world because of the
feud with Germany. A little while ago it was
announced that we should have to withdraw our
fleet from the Mediterranean because of the
necessity of further concentration of our ships in
the North Sea. The announcement caused such a
storm of hostile comment that it had to be with
drawn, and explained away. But it represented the
actual need of the situation then existing, of the
situation existing now. If we persist in the mad
policy of nourishing a causeless hostility to
97

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Germany we must face the necessity of evacuating
the Mediterranean,. just as we have evacuated the
Pacific. In due course we shall perhaps have to
fall back upon the corafort suggested in a recent
Punch cartoon, that "at least the Thames is safe,"
The war in the Balkans provides the latest
instance of the evils that follow on the paralysing
hostility between England and Germany, A
" Concert of the Powers " was suposed to be at work
to prevent the outbreak of war. But there was a
distinct air of unreality about their agreeraent.
Neither the Balkan States nor Turkey believed in
their sincerity, for it has come to be recognised that
the might of Europe is powerless whilst its great
naval arm and its great military arm are inclined
to strike at each other.
The events of the last few years, leading up to
that Balkan position, constitute a sharaeful chapter
of European history, and particularly sharaeful was
the wooing of the Grand Turk by the Gerraan
nation and the British nation as rivals for
the favour of a Power which made necessary
the general introduction into our language
of the word "atrocity." There was at
Constantinople a rivalry between two suitors which
would have been comic if it had not been so dis
graceful. "That England was the best friend of
Turkey" was asserted firmly on one side; "that
Germany was the best friend " was emphasised on
the other. Germany won some concessions from
the Sultan, which were flaunted as valuable and
which have since been a cause of some diplomatic
soreness. Whatever their value, however, the
concessions were paid for at too dear a price. The
98

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
rivalry before the Sublime Porte of the two greatest
European Powers has been the root cause of the
miserable state of massacre in the Balkan Penin
sula during the last few years; it is also the root
cause of the war and of its deadly consequences.
There is no need to carry the list further. In
whatever part of the world one may look some
disadvantage can be seen, some loss, some threat
of calamity, because of the theory that Europe raust
nullify its power by dividing itself into two armed
forces, with England at the head of one, Germany
at the head of the other.

99

CHAPTER IX
what we CAN GAIN AND WHAT WE CAN GIVE
Travelling down the East Coast of Africa one
may see different phases of European nationalism
reflected in the colonies of three nations.
Mombasa, the principal town of British East
Africa, gives at the first glance a disappointing
irapression. The place is slovenly. Its adminis
tration seeras to lack system. One feels, on seeing
it, the impulse to begin to "tidy up." The natives
mostly seem engaged in loafing, chattering, sun
ning themselves. The town has no appearance of
being in the hands of a strong government.
" Beastly hole " is a phrase which one quite often
hears. But stay a while, penetrate a little into the
interior, and you will find it necessary, first to
modify, then to alter absolutely your first unfavour
able impressions. The untidiness remains, but
beneath it you will see that work goes on. The
native will work, with a little persuasion, in his
own untidy way. If he is forced to be tidy, that
takes up all his energy and he has none left for
work. If he is allowed to lounge when his task is
TOO

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
done, to chatter as much as he wishes, to keep as
rauch of his old life as possible with just the little bit
of work for the white man superimposed, he gets
to look upon the silent, tolerant Englishman as a
lord of great power, of strange customs, but kindly
disposed towards the black man. He respects and
to an extent he learns to like this English master.
The air of boredom of the English residents is
mostly pretence. They have a real interest in the
"beastly hole" which they are trying to drag up
into a place in the civilised world. Their sense
of duty is strong; and it is no exaggeration to
say that in East Africa the British record is as good
as it has ever been in the long history of pioneering
work. Look into the facts about trade and industry, and
you will everywhere see signs of progress. The
colony is sound at heart : it is not galloping towards
prosperity, but it is moving in that direction, and
in the course of the movement the natives are not
being trampled underfoot. They are not encouraged
to look upon themselves as the equals of the white
man ; marriage between thera and the white race
is regarded as unthinkable ; they raay be accepted
as the white raan's brother in a strictly religious
sense, but they must not presume to think of thera
selves as his possible brother-in-law.
Pass on, now, to German East Africa. At first
sight, Dar-es-Salaam appears ideal. The well-built
town has boulevards lined with trees and paraded
by smart men in uniform. There seera to be no
lounging natives. One raight almost be in a
German city.
But, if we look again, another side of the picture
IOI

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
is revealed. This superficial tidiness and smartness
is not a proof of sound strength. It is rather a coat
of paint concealing crumbling weakness. The
German scientific methods, the German bureaucratic
ideas, the German arabition to turn the native into
a good Berliner, arouse resentraent and effect no
real reforra,
Germany has, without a doubt, organising ability.
It has a closeness and a sureness of scientific method
which make it unequalled in grappling with the
problems of sanitation or of preventive medicine
in the tropics. But the Germans have not the same
knowledge of human" nature as the Anglo-Saxons,
They have not "the way" with the natives, a way
which seeras to raake the Englishraan the ideal
governor of every land on earth except Ireland.
Pass on, now, to the Portuguese settleraent of
Mozarabique, where a Latin race is bearing "the
white raan's burden." It is a magnificent ruin.
There are the relics of ancient greatness, the
evidence of present decay. The Portuguese have
not "kept the colour line," Miscegenation has de
prived the natives of any respect for the white man,
just as in the old days of Greece reverence proba:bly
began to decline when the Olympian gods began
to make a practice of flirtations with mortals; for
marriage implies equality, in a degree at any rate.
No words can be strong enough in praise of the
Boer woraen who have kept this in mind from the
earliest days. Living on the outskirts of civilisa
tion, far reraoved from outside influences, the
instinct of racial purity has never left them. Mis
cegenation, against which the Latin races (on their
colonising record) seem to have but little prejudice,
102

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
makes good government of an inferior coloured race
impossible. Let the record of South America stand
as witness. The Anglo-Saxon and the German
sentiment against mixture of the white race with
the coloured race is the soundest of colonising
principles. The officials in this Portuguese colony are ill-
paid. Few of them draw a living wage. Many of
them have to accept bribes to raeet expenses. There
is no enterprise, no real industry, A decaying
colony festers araid its ruins, and one wishes — if
there were no better fate offering — that the jungle
would come and reclaim its 5wn, giving back to
barbarisra what can never, under present conditions,
become a real part of civilisation.
The coloured people, having lost their respect for
the white people in the Portuguese colony, are
unruly and turbulent. Little wars are always
raging. Intermarriage in no way softens race
hatred. It only destroys race respect.
It seems, therefore, that frora a study of the con-^
ditions of these three insignificant settlements in
Africa one may learn the whole lesson of the need
and the wisdom of Anglo-German co-operation in
the world. The two peoples need each other, can
complement each other, can carry on the work
of civilisation far better as allies than as rivals.
Germany needs to learn from us a great deal :
our way of dealing with people without fuss, of
looking to the essential things rather than to the
good appearance. We need to graft on to our
system something of Gerraan orderliness and
Gerraan method, without imitating German bureau
cratic ways. In fighting sleeping-sickness to-day,
103

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
for example, German work is better than our own.
Indeed, in all the domain of scientific inquiry,
Germany leads us, as it leads the rest of the world.
The orderly patience of the German mind and its
thoroughness are the reasons why.
Imagine a cordial co-operation between England
and Gerraany in all world affairs, and you can see
a limitless prospect of advantage and betterment
for both nations. The British Erapire would benefit
by a general iraprovement of scientific raethods.
Preventive raediclne, scientific agriculture, industrial
chemistry — in these things we need more of the
German spirit. In the past we have had it, after
a fashion," as a free gift from Germany, Scientists
from our kindred nation have left their flag to work
for the betterment of civilisation under ours. The
Germans figure araong our best colonists and, in
every British country, there are great monuments
of the work of distinguished Germans. But since
this feud has been promoted between England and
Germany good work has becorae difficult. The
average German of to-day would feel himself a
traitor if he gave up his own for British nationality.
An alliance between the two nations would bring
back the old beneficial interchange of brains, and
bring it back in a better and a more enduring forra.
The Gerraan Erapire would find, as the result
of an alliance with England, the path open to it
for legitiraate developraent, and facilities given to
it to benefit by our older experience in the work
of Erapire building. Despite its historic continuity
with a great past, the Gerraan Erapire raust be
regarded in a practical sense as a new nation. It
has the faults of a new nation and also its virtues.
104

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Coming to England from South Africa I sometimes
feel that our attitude in the Home Country is that
of old age. So many of us live in the shadow of
the poor-house, show by slackness, by timidity, by
the withdrawing of our raoney for investraent
abroad, that we have lost our faith in England, that
we have a feeling that our country raay be on the
edge of failure. In Germany there is quite a
different feeling. There one finds a joyous atmos
phere compounded of youth and expectancy. Each
national attitude has its disadvantages and its objec
tions, A mingling of both would be ideal.
Perhaps it will be expected that, after this plead
ing for a good understanding between England and
Germany, I should set myself to explain exactly
what sort of bargain I would propose. What are
we to give Germany as a dot on the bridal day?
What should be the return gift of the Germans ?
I deal with this question at the end of this chapter.
Meanwhile I wish to quote certain German opinions
which show that, in the view of some Germans, we
need not be prepared to give very rauch. I sought
the other day the view of a German ^ who has some
weight in his country. "It is needless," he said,
"to talk of territory, of concessions. All that is
needed is for a frank, candid avowal : ' Let
us be friends.' With that all difficulties would
disappear." -
Another distinguished Gerraan ^ was good enough
to develop what is practically the same idea in
more detail. He held that Germany raade no con
ditions of territorial aggrandisement as the price of
its goodwill. It would be content with a friendly
' and ° Private Letters.
105

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
feeling, and with the co-operation of Great Britain
in raaintaining, wherever the question arose, the
"Open Door," so that British trade, Gerraan trade
and the trade of the rest of the world raight meet
there on equal terms. He wrote :
"Germany is dependent on the development of
international markets. The motto, which our
biggest shipping corapany has taken for its own,
' Unser Feld ist die Welt ' (' Our sphere is the
world '), gives the essence of our economic position.
We have succeeded in securing a colonial erapire
of no small possibilities, extending over a million
square miles. This colonial empire raay play
an iraportant part in our future expansion. It is
but thinly inhabited at present, numbering scarcely
more than fourteen millions of inhabitants, amongst
whom there are only about twenty thousand whites.
A wise policy will undoubtedly develop this vast
area, which at present figures but for a small amount
in our export and import list. Though our colonial
trade is rapidly increasing, it comes to but little
more than one half per cent, of our whole comraerce,
"I am convinced that share will increase enor
mously with the developraent of an industrious
native population ; but I am convinced, too, that
our colonies, owing to the presence of that native
population, will never be the home of a new German
nation. Whatever suras we may spend on thera,
they will never attract iraraigrants as Canada or
Australia have attracted them, Africa is a black
man's land, and a black man's land it will remain,
though there are vast tracts on its healthy, high
tablelands, or its more temperate northern coasts,
where white men may thrive and multiply.
"This fact, which is slowly dawning upon our
most enthusiastic expansionists, is undoubtedly
responsible for some of the demands for new lands,
where such partnership would be possible. This
shows clearly enough that colonial expansion on
1 06

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
the lines on which England expanded is out of the
question, and that the future expansion of Germany
is bound up in the development of the world's
raarkets. "There is, however, a growing tendency to close
the free raarkets of the world. I am not speaking
of protective tariffs prevalent in many countries.
We who have always been advocates of such a
policy have no right to coraplain when our neigh
bours take a leaf out of our book ; nor do I allude
to those great countries which, though nominally
dependencies, are quickly growing into nationhood.
I am thinking of those States and semi-developed
States which, for social, political and financial
reasons, cannot stand alone for many years to come,
and the resources of which raust be developed under
European tutelage. Many of thera have lost even
an outward show of independence in the last quarter
of a century. France alone has acquired 250,000
square miles of the Far East. Though Russia has
been compelled to disgorge part of her prey, Japan
is taking her place, and the somewhat easy-going
Spanish monopolies are supplanted by more
efficient American raethods. More striking still is
the evolution of African affairs. In scarcely raore
than a quarter of a century that enormous continent
has been parcelled out among European possessors,
the thinly inhabited homes of the savages, as well
as the great Mohammedan empires, until, with the
exceptions of Abyssinia and Liberia, no inde
pendent State is left in Africa. In Central Asia the
passing of Persia may perhaps be witnessed in a
very short tirae, while Central America, which has
not yet been recolonised in the way of its southern
neighbours, is slowly passing under the tutelage of
the United States.
"The process of redistribution I have just
sketched has given very little to Gerraany. Apart
frora the great partition of Africa, where Germany
got a share too, our nearest neighbour France has
107

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
lately secured new territories extending to nearly
2,000,000 square miles, Japan has secured 82,000
square miles with a population of 17,000,000, whilst
the United States, leaving out Cuba, have gained
130,000 square miles with over 9,000,000 in
habitants. "There is no need for Germany to participate
in every redistribution that may go on in the world.
Her geographical position is this, that her security
is not dependent on new acquisitions. The develop
ment of colonies is a costly process, demanding an
enorraous waste of raen and treasure, which a Con
tinental Power raay perhaps better use for other
objects. As long as new lands fall under the sway
of Powers who foster thera in an intelligent way
and let others partake in their development, the
interests of Germany raay be safeguarded without
territorial possessions,
"We have, however, no guarantee whatsoever
that such a policy will be continued. England and
the Netherlands, like ourselves, may follow a com
mercial policy in their colonies which admits the
stranger under equal conditions, but other countries
are far less liberal. France has been building up
an enormous colonial empire, the comraerce of
which is as rauch as possible monopolised by the
motherland. The United States are following her
example, and Russia and Japan cannot hope to
derive all the benefit they desire frora their de
pendencies if they admit foreign competition. We
are thus placed in a very difficult position indeed.
We are dependent on international commerce for
a peaceful expansion, and we find that the raarkets
of the world may be lost to us, not because we
cannot compete, but because we corapete too well.
We raust either acquire new territories, not because
we want thera per se, but in order to prevent our
competitors from excluding us. Or we raust stop
other nations frora acquiring them and thereby
retard the world's development. Or we must see
108

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
that they are acquired on such conditions only as
will guarantee us and everybody else a fair chance.
" There are undoubtedly raany patriotic Germans
who would prefer the first raethod, as the glamour
of territorial aggrandiseraent has always fired the
popular imagination. But there are few of us who
look upon territorial aggrandisement as the con
ditio sine qua non of our expansion, and none
perhaps in responsible positions who are prepared
to run serious risks for the consummation of these
objects. We have proved that during the Morocco
crisis, and have proved, too, that we are not willing
to stop our competitors from acquiring lands, the
possession of which raay be essential to thera,
whilst it would raean an enorraous responsibility
to us. But we are not willing to be excluded from
all participation in their future development, merely
because our neighbours have to pay more dearly
for the expansion than they expected to do and
wish to recoup theraselves at our cost. We are not
averse to new acquisitions for ourselves, if they
can be got on reasonable terras, but what we must
insist on, and insist on all over the world, is this :
The disappearance of the great independent markets
where we are willing to corapete freely and fairly
with everybody must not mean the end of the policy
of the open door, on which we have always insisted,
for which we have stood side by side with England
in the Far East, We have lately, not for ourselves
alone, succeeded in inducing France to accept it in
Morocco. "Our interests have often clashed with those of
other people who meant to monopolise their dearly-
bought dependencies — of France, of Russia, or of
the United States. Our interests in that respect
have always been identical with those of England,
though for mere political reasons we have often
stood in opposite camps. The consequence was that
there have been many paper agreements as to the
Open Door, which nobody kept and nobody raeant
109 I

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
to keep, because the people interested in their main
tenance could not agree to support them. The
former Congo State would never have dared to elude
the Congo Act if Gerraany and England had been
united. " Everybody in England acknowledges the neces
sity of Gerraan expansion. There is no need of that
expansion taking a territorial character implying
a reshaping of the political world. It can go on
without territorial redistribution, provided care is
taken that our capital, our brain, our labour and
our goods get a fair chance in the world's unex-
ploited territories — a chance which may be disagree
able to those nations that cannot stamp out com
petition, but on which we must insist in the sarae
way as does the United Kingdom, We have no
big colonial empire on which we can fall back and
which could recoup us, if we were excluded from
those great marts, and the open door in the broadest
sense of the word is a necessity to us. Our expansion
is mainly peaceful, and peaceful it will remain, as
long as no artificial hemming-in takes place, which
indeed might produce superfluous, but not less
dangerous pressure,"
Nothing could be fairer than this, nothing more
easy to concede as the basis of a friendly agree
ment. To the " open door " we are deeply pledged,
if we did not actually invent it as a working prin
ciple to bring the territory of coloured races within
the sphere of the European system. These opinions,
however, sincere and representative though they
be, are personal opinions, and we must not forget
that there exists in Gerraany a strong movement,
one of whose objects is to establish the black, white
and red flag in every continent. It is not very
distinct, for it merges in the activities of the Pan-
German movement, one of whose avowed objects
no

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
has long been to extend through Austria over the
Balkans to the .^gean, to Asia Minor and the
Persian Gulf; it dovetails with the Navy League
agitation, for the League is partly defensive and
partly aggressive; it goes hand-in-hand with
General von Bcrnhardi and that brilliant paraph
leteer, Count Reventlow.
The expansionist movement in Germany is not
always self-conscious, and its motive force is often
exasperation rather than ambition ; but whatever
its motive is, it must be taken into account; it
cannot be stifled, it cannot be suppressed. Thus
it becomes dangerous, for it develops a grievance,
a grievance which cannot be remedied. "You
cannot," said Mr. Chamberlain, "stop a storm by
sitting on the barometer." Well, the German storm
need never break if the surcharged atmosphere is
relieved of its superfluous electricity by lightning
conductors. Those lightning conductors are
colonies. I have indicated in the foregoing that it is un
reasonable to say that Germany absolutely must
have colonies, that the pressure of population
compels emigration. Indeed, a splendid case can
be raade for a Germanic Switzerland; it can
be shown that Gerraan art, science, commerce
and industry have prospered for generations and
that they are at their height in these days;
that Germany has, without valuable colonial settle
ments, become one of the great Powers of the world.
It is a splendid case, but it has a flaw : a large
section of the German people does not agree that
Germany needs no colonies, and we must take their
view into account, whether it be sound or unsound ;
III I 2

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
besides, they deeply resent the expansion of Great
Britain; as an Imperial people, desirous of an
Imperial destiny, they feel that they are being de
prived of opportunity, that fair jewels are lacking
which should be in their national crown ; they are
envious ; they ask why our little islands should rule
over India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, have
great settlements, bring up sister nations, spread
the fame of the Union Jack to every corner of the
globe, have watchdogs over every trade route,
Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Aden, Singapore, to hold the
way to the East. And bitterly the Germans ask :
"Shall we, a great white people, be satisfied with
cast-off tracts of desert lands ? "
What can we say in reply? We cannot plead
the splendid case of prosperous little Switzerland,
we who have for centuries fought the French, the
Spaniards, and the Dutch, bought, snatched or
exchanged island after island and continent after
continent. Even our little-Englanders, who con
tend that we would be best without colonies, do not
suggest that we should surrender them. We need
not consider whether colonies pay; that is almost
beside the point, for there is a value not measurable
in cash, which the meanest raust feel in the know
ledge that he lives under an illustrious flag :
Germany can write a Sedan for a Trafalgar and
a Sadowa for a Waterloo (if not a Waterloo for a
Waterloo) on the folds of the black, white and red.
A great German party thinks that Germany
should have colonies ; well, if we are in earnest we
must accept its view, express ourselves willing to
remake the map of the world. With a single excep
tion, I do not suggest that an acre of British soil
112

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
should pass into German hands; no such demand
is implied in the cry for "a place in the sun." With
all respect for German necessities, I ara compelled
as a patriot to maintain that we owe those countries
we have taken under our protection a continuance
of our trusteeship. But there are other lands and
other States whose Imperial destinies are ended.
There are vast expanses of territory now in the
hands of effete Europeans who would gladly shelve
their responsibilities. There are Mohammedan
countries in a state of decay, but great in potential
wealth, Walfish Bay, Angola, the Congo, Asia
Minor and perhaps South America, these are the
signposts to a better understanding.
There is first of all the case of Walfish Bay, a
fine harbour cutting into German South-West
Africa, now in the hands of Great Britain. It would
be feasible for us to exchange the Walfish Bay
area, now of little use to us because we cannot
develop it towards the hinterland, for land in another
part of South Africa; better still we could raake
an exception to the rule I gave above, and cede it
to Gerraany as an evidence of goodwill. The
settlement has no value for us, for it is no more than
a shipping station, which would remain open to
us after we had surrendered it ; if Gerraan South-
West Africa develops it will be starved for the
benefit of the German harbours, while it remains
as one of those sorry reminders that "whatever is
good must be British ! "
It has been said that any British Government
which proposed to surrender Walfish Bay would
be overthrown; also that South African opinion
would veto the idea. As to the first part of the
"3

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
argument, it holds good only if the cession were
gratuitous; if it were part of a large scheme, of
an Angola-Mozarabique treaty by which Great
Britain would greatly benefit, the raass of the people
would not object, Frora a strategic point of view
the bay is of no iraportance to us, for we have a
convenient and better military station in St, Helena,
if we decide to use it again. But, as it is the one
fine harbour in German South-West Africa, with
a good water-supply, it is of great value to the
Germans, The argument that the latter would not
care to acquire Walfish Bay because they have
spent large sums on the development of Liideritz-
bucht does not seem very weighty, and is not the
opinion of the majority of Gerraans,
South African objections are of no great^ iraport
ance, for' the two sections of the population who
give any thought to the matter are negligible
"¦qiian tities. The Dutch, who feel most strongly on
the subject, would object, because they believe that
Germany wishes to seize the whole of South Africa :
thus they would regard the bay as the "jumping-
off " ground of Gerraan ambitions. South Africa is
the most important strategic point in the British
Empire and is to-day the weak link in the Imperial
chain. It has no navy, and is far removed from
home waters; the new Defence Force has the
inherent weakness of being sacrificed to party and
race politics, and there are no fortifications except
the antiquated remains of those erected by the Early
Dutch. In case of war, one ship sunk in the Suez
Canal would again give " the Tavern of the Seas "
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the
importance it had in the Napoleonic period, when
114

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
Britain seized the Cape to protect the route to India.
A strong and friendly Germany as a near neighbour
would undoubtedly create a healthy rivalry in
maritime raatters and at the same time a combina
tion of the two white peoples would make for
strength against the black encroachment.
The objections of the British section in South
Africa would arise frora the natural feeling that
we should guard and keep what we have; but,
again, once it was realised that the cession was
part of a large scheme it is obvious that patriotic
feeling would rise to the occasion. If, in raaking
over Walfish Bay, we stipulated for a strip of
territory to be reserved to us to give the Cape to
Cairo Railway a clear run in British territory, the
British South African objection would immediately
disappear. Another point, of considerable import
ance and not generally known, is that an active
trade in illicit gun-running with the natives of the
interior is at present carried on through Walfish
Bay; through the divided ownership the culprits
are at liberty to indulge in a nefarious traffic,
directed against all white people in Southern Africa,
The cession of Walfish Bay is, however, a small
matter; it would improve our relations with
Germany by reraedying in official circles a chronic
state of slight irritation, but it would not give
Germany the things it wants, a colonial empire,
I believe in a German colonial empire; I ara not
confident that Germany is the ideal coloniser and
reserve the strictures I feel corapelled to raake
on its administration of Gerriian East Africa; on
the other hand, I think that allowances must be
made for a young and inexperienced nation and that,
"5

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
as Hberty alone fits men for liberty, the young
nation must be given a chance. Germany has not
had that chance in Africa, except perhaps in the
Karaeroons, and even there it has not had time to
prove itself in the sense of the descendants of
Wolfe and Clive, It is, moreover, open to question
whether Belgian and South American administra
tions are more humane and more intelligent than
would be the Gerraan ; it is not in the least
open to question that German governraent is
superior to the Portuguese and Turkish equiva
lents. As regards Angola notably, with which goes
Portuguese East Africa, on the opposite coast, it
is evident that Portugal has failed. The glory of
Portugal lies in its great past — in Henry the
Navigator, a prince in whora we feel a possessive
pride owing to his English blood; in Vasco da
Garaa, one of the greatest navigators the world has
seen and a great adrainistrator; in Albuquerque,
the cherished hero of his countryraen, and the long
list of illustrious raen who, in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, led the world in deeds of daring.
And civilisation owes Portugal another debt, seldom
recognised, but so ably pointed out by Mr, Jayal
in his "Vasco da Gama," that of diverting the
attention of the Western world eastwards in the
fifteenth century at a critical time in European
history. But a twentieth-century Camoens would
find it as difficult to sing the praises of the Republic
as of the later Braganzas, The Portuguese
colonies have lain fallow and partly unexplored
ever since they were conquered ; their adrainistra-
tion has been lax, and some say corrupt ; their few
Ii6

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
railways depend on foreign capital; there is no
money for public works, their trade does not
centre round the mother country. Briefly these
poor remains of an ancient greatness, which ought
to be enormously rich, are a monument of ineffici
ency, a source of difficulty and expense, a perpetual
incitement to international strife. For Portugal is
so weak that the Great Powers have often cast
longing eyes on its great possessions, Germany,
Great Britain, France, have often considered Angola
and Mozambique, and if their integrity has been
respected it is because an international war would
have followed on annexation. Of all competitors
I think Great Britain most likely to deal fairly
with Portugal owing to our ancient friendship with
that nation.
There is an alternative to annexation, and that
is purchase. This method has often been mooted,
and, during the last twenty years, currency has
repeatedly been given to the rumour that Great
Britain was about to "lease" Delagoa Bay, or to
be correct, Lorenzo Marques. Well, we know what
"leases" mean, for Cyprus, Kiao-Chao, Wei-Hai-
Wei, Port Arthur, the Panama Strip are "leases."
Those leases are veiled sovereignties. Whenever
the word "lease" or "sale" has been pronounced
protests have arisen in Lisbon, and the ballon
d'essai has been gently drawn down to the flying
ground, but it is conceivable that a serious proposal,
involving the payment of a large sum, consequent
reduction of debt and of taxes, would have been
very differently received.
The serious proposal is that Great Britain and
Germany should jointly purchase or lease Angola
"7

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
and Mozambique. Angola would pass under the
German flag, Mozambique under the British; the
western coast of Africa between Cape Colony and
the Congo would pass to Germany, while Rhodesia
and the Transvaal would at last have the ports so
necessary to a fuller expansion. The difficulties
are not great : they can be solved by an under
standing between Great Britain and Gerraany,
followed by an educational carapaign in Portugal ;
the money question is no question, however large
the purchase price may be, for it would be easy
to raise local colonial loans when Portuguese
minerals and rubber were endowed with the pro
tection of raore powerful flags. In this wise
Gerraany might be given a larger stake in the
Black Continent, while we considerably increased
the power of our South African Dominion. As for
Portuguese reluctance, which is sentimental and
respectable, I pin my faith to the educational cam
paign; and besides, even if Portugal should
not sell the whole of Mozambique, the South
African Union would be content with its natural
outlets. One incidental is immensely iraportant. I have
advisedly used the word "jointly" with regard to
the eventual purchase, because I want Gerraany to
be a partner, not a rival. It is hard to over-estiraate
the value of conferences where British and German
envoys would meet as friends about to conclude a
business deal, frankly exchange views and deter
mine to use their best efforts on one another's
behalf. Cordiality would flow from so clear an
understanding, and I do not think I exaggerate
when suggesting that the suspicious men who
ii8

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
entered the council charaber would leave it fast
friends. Certain difficulties might, of course, arise,
but they are not insuperable. I ara not innovating
when I suggest that we should purchase Mozara
bique, for we already have a right of pre-emption
over Delagoa Bay, which was once offered to Great
Britain and refused. But there has lately been
some talk of the voluntary entry of Delagoa Bay
into the South African Union, the initiative for
which came from the Portuguese possession. Much
of the land there is owned by private individuals
whose home is in the Transvaal or in England;
there would thus be little local opposition frora the
Portuguese. Evidently South Africa would greatly
benefit by the acquisition, for a Transvaal port
would assist the Iraperial scheme of lowering the
cost of living there ; as a result a large white popu
lation would be attracted.
So much then for Angola and Mozambique, But
Angola should not be the limit of German ambition
in the eyes of the nation which controls a greater
number of human beings than any existing Power,
I want Germany to have more than colonial pos
sessions ; it must have a colonial empire ; the fairest
jewel thereof would be the Congo, As is well
known to the public, the ex-Free State was annexed
by Belgium in 1907, and there is reason to think
that the atrocities which disgraced the old personal
regime will not recur under the new administration ;
Belgium is probably fit to govern the Congo, and
I do not suggest that Gerraany should be encour
aged to take by force land now occupied by a
Western race. But the Congo, as it develops, raust
necessarily becorae a growing temptation, and I
119

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
venture to suggest that we should rule ourselves
out of court and undertake to support Germany's
ambition to lease or buy the territory, if this can
be arranged with Belgium, There is no African
competitor save France, and as it cannot be said
we have failed in our obligation to that country,
either in the concession of Morocco in virtue of the
Anglo-French Convention, or in the diplomatic
support we have given it since 1904, I do not see
that France is either entitled or able to oppose the
grant to Gerraany of an influence we think right
to accord that country.
Whether Germany could or would avail itself of
the privilege thus conferred upon it I cannot say;
the concession would have to be hedged in with
provisions ensuring that the "open door" policy
would be adhered to in perpetuity, and that, in the
event of tariffs being imposed, British goods should
be placed on an equal footing with the Gerraan ;
proper protection would have to be given to British
enterprise in the Katanga; raodifications of the
treatment of limited liability companies would have
to be subject to our approval. Briefly, such
measures would have to be taken as ensured cora
raercial and financial equality to British and Gerraan
industry; but politically we should undertake to
raise no objection to the predorainance of Germany
in the Congo ; we should, once and for all, abandon
the dreara of an all-British Africa and accept that
a Gerraan Erapire extending over the whole of
Central Africa would, by giving our neighbours
scope and occupation, prove a perpetual guarantee
of international peace. An incidental British ad
vantage would be scientific colonial co-operation
120

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
with Germany. Herr Dernburg, a former Colonial
Secretary, did us the honour of studying our
raethods on the spot and was, I know, given every
facility when he visited South Africa.
I must deal more briefly with Asia Minor and
South America, for German expansion in these
countries is both a less proximate and a more
delicate matter. As regards South America I
will merely say this : the United States have
erected the Monroe doctrine as a buttress against
encroaching Europe; that is their right, and
if they can maintain it we have not to object,
for we desire no new colonies on the American
continent. But it is the United States, and not
we, who have erected the Monroe doctrine. We
are not pledged to it, we do not respect it, we have
no reason to support it, given especially that the
United States have openly shown their bad faith
and their enmity to us in the matter of the Panama
Canal. Now Gerraany is credited, on very flimsy
grounds so far, with ambitions in Venezuela and
Brazil; let us make it clear in a declaration that
we are disinterested in the matter, that if Germany
wishes to extend its sway in America it is Germany's
business and not ours; let it be understood that
we do not accept the fiction that the Americans
necessarily are our friends and the Germans neces
sarily our eneraies. If Germany wishes, then, to buy
land or to acquire it by force, if even it chooses to
take the risk of a war with the United States, it will
do so without the fear of a hostile Britain in the
rear. Why should we support the Monroe doctrine?
From our point of view it is an instrument of
121

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
despotism ; it has not, by conferring power on the
United States, endowed them with a sense of duty;
it is not Araerican, but foreign warships which
coerced Venezuela; it is not, so far, Araerica that
has ensured the payraent of interest on loans due
to foreign bondholders by Central American re
publics. Besides, tens of thousands of Japanese
have of late years settled in Mexico, in Chili and
Peru, notably in Mexico; no objection has been
raised. Let it then be understood that we should
no more resent a German settlement than a Japanese
settlement, and that if Germany's ambitions develop
towards South America they will not be thwarted
by Great Britain.
Lastly there is the Bagdad railway. As is well
known, this matter has been discussed for many
years. The object of Germany is to build a line
vid Bagdad, from the Mediterranean to Bassora on
the Persian Gulf. The system, now past Eregli and
planned for another 520 railes, involves raany
branch lines ; when it is constructed and connected
vid Ispahan and Teheran, in Persia, with the
Russian line at Merv, it will give Gerraany a special
position in Asia Minor. Let us recognise that
special position, and grant that Gerraany may look
upon the reraains of the Turkish Empire as a
legitimate sphere of influence where it will carry
the blessings of a Western civilisation which the
Turk has shown himself so unfit to apply.
I am well aware that immense difficulties lie in
the way of such "arrangements, that while Germany
must count with the ambitions of its own allies,
Italy and Austria, as with those of the Balkan
States, we have to take into account the suscepti-
122

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
bilities of our friends, Russia and France, For this
reason I do not dilate upon the advantages of the
Asiatic scheme ; it is for Germany to decide whether
it can compensate or dominate, but it is for us to
declare that we have no fundamental objection to
Gerraan developraent in the Near East. I repeat
that we cannot expect Germany to be content with
words, but I do believe that words may do a great
deal tQ reraedy the present unrest. It is better to
say to Gerraany : "This I give you," than to say :
" I will not object if you take this," but we are not
entirely free agents; we have responsibilities and
interests. We must guard the safety of Egypt,
protect the road to India, give fair treatment to
Persia. We cannot load upon our shoulders the
conquest of a German Empire for Germany, though
we can say this : " We shall not raise our hand
for you here, but we shall not raise it against
you. We believe that a Colonial Empire will
usefully absorb your energies and satisfy your
ambitions. We will give all we can and we will
support you in your independent action so that
you may understand that our country is your
friend." Thus, or at least on lines such as these can a new
condition be brought about, when Germany and
Great Britain will no longer distrust each other,
but will understand that neither desires to injure
nor humiliate the other, when both nations will
co-operate instead of competing, or rather when
they will compete in the fields of science and trade
for the proud privilege of carrying liberty, justice
and humanity into regions which knew naught
save poverty, corruption, and anarchy.
123

A FRIENDLY GERMANY: WHY NOT?
These two great nations must join hands if the
true interests of humanity are to be served.
Western civilisation will thus form a bulwark
against the encroaching hordes. Hand-in-hand
Gerraany and England may lead the world to a
realisation of glorious ideals.

The End.

E CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BRUNSWICK STEEET, S.E., AND BUNOAV, SUFFOLK.
124

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 04078 3608

V-.,.

>'-"i^^'

?f^i^'.

*'.¦'

"S ¦ ¦

itH)

¦m^^&.: