Page images
PDF
EPUB

that a big German navy is necessary for the nation's good.

In 1897 a German official was sent to Kiao Chow to report on the harbor works necessary to make the place useful, and on his return he published a book about his journey out and back. Franzius was the name of the author, I think. His whole journey forced his ship to be the guest of England at every coaling station between Naples and Shanghai, yet in the book he has no mention of the service to the world's commerce performed by England. On the contrary, the author dwells upon the advantages which Germans might have if they could avoid British hospitality at Hong Kong and elsewhere. The book is remarkable as being an official expression.

Now, no doubt this and similar works have the effect of stimulating in Germany a readiness to spend money for the navy, but at the same time they encourage notions that are false and mischievous. German trade in the Far East has thriven under the protection of the British flag, just as it has waxed strong under the Stars and Stripes in America. The tremendous strides of German commercial progress in the last thirty years have been the result of honest and intelligent labor by a people well organized for commercial success. The German receives in his schools, and subsequently in the army, a discipline that tells forcibly when he becomes an industrial competitor for the neutral markets of the world.

The German who knows the world understands the machinery by which public sentiment in Germany is manufactured, but those who stay at home do not, and therefore persist in a point of view from which every move of England or America is regarded as a menace to German prosperity. We Americans saw that with painful distinctness in 1898 when war with Spain was declared. Public opinion in America was

divided over the moral phases of that war, much as in England it has been divided regarding the Transvaal. The German Press, however, as though rehearsed for this purpose, burst out with one voice in unexpected attacks upon America and the Americans. From day to day the papers of Berlin proved to their own satisfaction that America would be quickly defeated by the brave Spaniards, who were represented as maintaining the cause of justice against Yankee cupidity. German papers were full of letters from alleged correspondents at the seat of war. At Tampa, however, where the American army of invasion gathered, I failed to discover a single German war correspondent, yet during all that time the German public read daily bulletins, pretending to be first-hand reports from special correspondents. The Government organs of Berlin led the way in this general depreciation of everything American, and as these articles were reproduced in America they caused surprise and pain amongst former friends of Germany. The average American could not understand what motive Germans in general could have for discussing American affairs in a hostile manner. He could understand Germans disapproving of the war, but he could not see why Americans in general should become an object of attack by Government journals.

Then came news that a German Admiral, in the waters of Manila, was not merely showing active sympathy with the public enemy of the United States, but was hampering our work in other ways. Fortunately Admiral Dewey combined sailor tact with sailor courage, and Admiral Diedrichs corrected his behavior when it was made clear to him that he might draw his country into war sooner than had been anticipated in Berlin.

But the mischief had been done. It is well for German official organs now

to tell us that Admiral Diedrichs exceeded his instructions and that Germany preserved strict neutrality throughout. That may be accepted in the Foreign Office, but it does not carry conviction with the people. Two trifles have profoundly modified the relations of Germany with the Anglo-Saxon world. The one was the despatch to Kruger in 1896, the second was the activity of Admiral Diedrichs in 1898. Each of these episodes has been officially explained away as wholly innocent, if not benevolent, in origin, but the great body of the people has not yet fully realized that the explanation is adequate. Whatever our views may be, the mischief has been done, partly by the Government, and partly by the Press of Germany.

And yet from the German point of view we are sinners also-heavy sinners.

The Anglo-Saxon in Germany has not made himself personally agreeable to the casual man he meets. The German raises his hat when he enters a shop. The Anglo-Saxon is a Boer in this respect. He cocks his hat on the back of his head, rams his hands into his pockets, whistles and stares about the streets as though he owned the place. He laughs at everything that does not meet his approval, and gets angry if the waiter does not bring him just what he has been accustomed to in his native land. The German who has travelled and known the Yankee and Briton at home knows how to make allowance for our habitual absence of good manners. But the average German listens incredulously when told that the Briton makes up by honesty and other manly virtues for what he lacks in the way of deportment. Not many years ago I was present at some grand field operations of the German Emperor when a Royal Prince of England was present with four aides-de-camp. Not one of these aides could speak any German, and not one of them apparently knew

the etiquette usual on such occasions. Consequently German officers felt aggrieved by the behavior of this party, and many expressed to me the opinion that these young Englishmen meant to be insulting to Germany.

As to Americans, Germans expect nothing any way. From America they receive usually the genus DeutschAmerikaner, which is three parts Hebrew, three parts German, and the remainder a little of all sorts-a thing which talks very bad German, worse English, and usually wears an American flag in his button-hole. His name suggests German plants and minerals. The United States not having permanent officials, the men who are sent to represent Uncle Sam in Germany are usually those who have devious reasons for desiring the post. The salaries are contemptibly small, yet the post of Consul to Germany is usually sought by such as are connected with the import trade of the United States. About three-quarters of the United States Consuls in Germany are German-American Hebrews, and these do not always succeed in raising the estimate entertained in Germany for the American citizen in general or the American official in particular. There are plenty of Germans who know the truth about England and America, and are shocked at gross mis-statements circulated about us through official organs. But their voices are drowned in a chorus of antiEnglish and anti-American sentiment, which accepts pretty much all that is bad, and raises question marks against any statement in favor of such a thing as an Anglo-Saxon conscience.

To be sure that conscience has had a rather straining time of late, and no member of the German Press has protested against the two last wars more violently than certain courageous political leaders in Boston and New York as well as in London and Manchester. The Spanish war had scant justification

in public law, and I am persuaded that the American Government was hounded into it by a clamorous Press agitation joined with large pecuniary interests. But while that is true; it is not the whole truth; and German public opinion apears to have absorbed only this much of it, and been kept in ignorance of forces even mightier than yellow journals and financial "trusts." There was behind this war party in America a great moral force which was shocked by the persistent misrule in Cuba, and of this no better evidence need be furnished than that 250,000 men should have volunteered for active service without the necessity arising for any exceptional inducements on the part of the Government.

Far be it from me to defend the conduct of that war; it was characterized by incapacity, jobbery and cynical disregard for human life. The Secretary of War was compelled to resign in disgrace, though he left behind him half a dozen officials equally unworthy of public confidence. The officers trained to honesty and military leadership at West Point were almost uniformly ignored in favor of amateur soldiers with political connections, and, in short, I have not yet met an honest American who does not regard the Cuban war as disgraceful to pretty much all concerned, excepting the men who shouldered the rifle and the West Point regulars who bore the brunt of the work, got no promotion, and are now forgotten.

America holds Cuba, and the Philippines as well-contrary to the official program issued at the beginning of the war. There was a time when Uncle Sam would gladly have handed back Manila to any one who cared to accept it; but that disposition was altered when the evidence came that Germany had behaved in a manner which would have robbed this action of all magnanimity. On my way to the Philippines, before

the fall of Manila, I travelled in company with two German Consuls bound for the Far East. Each of them assured me, with heavy thumps on the cabin table, that the idea of America holding the Philippines was absurd, that Germany would not allow it. And to-day I find regrets expressed in German official papers that the German war ships in the East were not strong enough in 1898 to enforce this view. This very attitude of Germany made unanimous in America a public sentiment, which, up to that time, had been much divided on the subject of expansion, particularly in the Far East.

Germans who readily see that the Pole and the Dane and the Frenchman are improved by absorption into the Empire of the Fatherland, do not readily put themselves in the place of the American who believes that Cuba and the Philippines will be better for a period under the Stars and Stripes; on the contrary, his official papers regard it as something presumptuous, that should be resented.

As for the Boer war, England is fighting for the integrity of the British Empire, for the same sort of ideals that animate Germans who justify the successive military movements by which the Prussia of 1807 with 5,000,000 inhabitants has become the German Empire of 50 millions. I will not here enter into legal and technical justification of this war; it is as misty to me as that which preceded the war with Spain, or which preceded the Prussian occupation of Schleswig-Holstein.

From

the point of view of men who hold a vote and not a brief, the war in South Africa is now a necessity. We deplore it sincerely, we honor the courage and motives of the great majority of the Boers we have met; we honor them as we now honor the memory of Stonewall Jackson, or Robert E. Lee, or Jefferson Davis. Grave political errors have been committed, and the followers of Paul

Kruger are not without reason for suspicions. It is a melancholy picture for this generation of lads to hear that Jameson and Rhodes have been popular heroes for acts which ordinarily send men to long terms of hard labor in prison. It is not cheering to find that when thousands of brave English volunteers have been killed in the trenches the first people to profit by victory are a group of financiers, largely Jew and German by the way, who own Johannesburg, and who watch their mining shares rising in London while soldiers in the field are falling never to rise again. The Press does not say much about this side of the war, because the great papers of New York and London are under financial influence; but it is a fact which all Europe comments on, and which leads Germans to think that the British Army, as well as the Colonial Office, is moved by other than moral considerations.

The German has difficulty in piercing this web of hypocrisy, of brutal jingoism and cynical financial reasoning. But if he does, he finds beneath a warm national sentiment which has drawn to the battle-field youngsters from every county and every colony in defence of an ideal-the unity of an The Contemporary Review.

Empire. Germans misjudge us because at this moment they are not inclined to credit us with the same motives they claim for themselves. We ask our German friends to believe that we do not wage war merely because some money speculators and filibusters are interested. We are ashamed of such elements in our national life, and we beg Germans to believe that on both sides of the Atlantic are honest public-spirited men seeking to do good rather than evil. And furthermore wc beg Germans to remember that wherever the Union Jack waves, there German commerce enters on the same footing as that of England, and that the German in Hong Kong is treated more liberally than the Englishman in Klao Chow. England has been the policeman of the Far East for now more than fifty years, and what commerce Germany and the rest of the world enjoy in those waters is owing to British administration, honesty, enterprise and money. The English flag nas carried civil liberty to every colony over which it has waved, and Germany has no reason to think that England in South Africa will depart from the traditions established in Australia and Canada, in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Poultney Bigelow.

AFTER HEINE.

The stars look down from heaven above
When human hearts are breaking,

And mock the foolishness of love
That sets poor mortals aching.

This love, they say, this fatal bane,

To us it cometh never,

And thus do we alone maintain

Our deathless course forever.

Pall Mall Gazette.

THE VOGUE OF THE GARDEN BOOK.

In

There is a species of literature which has lately attracted serious attention amongst us, and must, therefore, be reckoned with as one of the instructive or entertaining forces of the day. It is not a new thing-it has existed for a couple of hundred years or more-but in its present shape it is new, and in a larger degree than formerly it is attractive to the reader. The garden book of a century and more than a century ago was emphatically a book on gardening; it was crammed with cultural instructions; it abounded in technical details. The garden book of this present century was also, until lately, entirely instructive; it cared not to amuse; its aim was gardening and nothing more. the eighties there were indications of an approaching change in the purpose of garden literature, and the last halfdozen years have seen this change stereotyped into its present featuresless instructive, perhaps, but certainly more entertaining than the old. There can be no doubt about the demand for this latest form of floricultural work, and we may tremble at the thought that this demand will probably bring upon us within the next few years a perfect avalanche of garden diaries, written to supply the public craving, which appears to express itself very plainly in its appreciation and encouragement of the new fiction, as it may fairly and truthfully be termed.

I think that to Mr. Alfred Austin belongs the onus of first successfully sending forth this style of literature in the guise of a gardening work. There were other writers immediately preceding him who were influencing the change, but he, I think, was the first who frankly and determinedly and successfully altered the scope of the garden book. He used his garden as a

him

place in which to talk with his friends, and it is a record of these conversations which he mainly gives us in his prose writings. Mrs. Earle followed quickly with the same departure from old traditions, but with a different object, or, at any rate, a different result. From her we chiefly learn the art of cookery, as from Mr. Austin we learn -or should attempt to learn-the art of conversation. And so the thing has gone on for half a dozen years. Some writers choose birds for a main subject; some choose friends, or Men of Wrath; some, books; and all under titles which lead the public to suppose that it is buying a gardening bookgardening books being a craze of the moment-when it is simply buying a diary written in or suggested by a garden.

In so far as the object nowadays is to amuse rather than to instruct, there is no harm in the change. There is plenty of room for this as well as for the orthodox horticultural volume which will never be really superseded. But the mischief will come when the ordinary Miss, in a fervid desire to contribute to the world's enjoyment, flies to a garden and writes within its prescriptive recesses her journal intime for publication's sake-a diary which will represent her gentle, simple soul, with its aimless efforts at floriculture, and its pretty, unnecessary thoughts on men and books and things, which we shall feel that we have somewhere heard before, or even read before. This is assuredly the kind of book we shall get, and it is essentially the kind that this sort of work should not be allowed to fall into, if it is to have any permanent value.

We should begin by a clear understanding of what form the garden book

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »