The Better Germany in War Time Part 27

The last quotation I shall make from Professor Frankland's address has, I venture to think, very considerable bearing on the possibilities of future friends.h.i.+p:

Notwithstanding the absence of material inducements, I venture to say without fear of contradiction that there is more original investigation being prosecuted in this country by chemists than by any other body of British men of science, and this I attribute to the fact that such a large proportion of our number have either been at German universities or are the pupils of those who have been at these centres of research. Nor are any of us, I am sure, even during this unfortunate crisis, unmindful of the hospitality and inspiration which we have received in the schools of the enemy.

One has met with so much pettiness and folly masquerading as patriotism that it is delightful to welcome such a truly n.o.ble utterance.

The allusion to the conditions of labour in Professor Frankland's address is also important. Most of us regard the German labourer as far too controlled and regulated, but everyone knows that Germany was to the fore in care for the health and well-being of the workman: "As to the factory legislation in general, not only do they afford to children and juveniles a greater measure of protection in regard to hours and other conditions of work than is enforced by the English Factory Acts, but many of their provisions for ensuring the health, comfort, and safety of all workers go beyond the limits which are thought sufficient in this country." (W. H. Dawson, "The Evolution of Modern Germany," p. 332.)

Insurance against sickness and old age were measures that we learned from Germany. They were intended to increase British efficiency and well-being, and our statesmen received every courtesy and help in studying German methods. It will be said by many that we shall not study those methods again. Perhaps not. They may prefer an English method as propounded by Lord Headley when speaking at a luncheon in connection with the Bakery and Confectionery Trades Exhibition held at Islington.

The report is from the _Glasgow Herald_ as reproduced in the _Labour Leader_ (October 21, 1915):

In regard to many industries, the plain fact was that the foreigner lived much more cheaply than the British workman and charged far less for his labour. Where labour, and not machinery, formed a small part of the cost of production we should be able to compete with the foreigner, and that should be the case in high cla.s.s confectionery more than in anything else.

If we were to defeat the foreigner in other industries after the war, it seemed to him that the British workman would have to consent to work for lower wages than hitherto. At any rate, he hoped so, in order that the country might supply itself with necessities without having to go abroad for them.

It seems to me that in this way we should "defeat" not only the foreigner, but the Englishman as well-except the privileged few who could get workmen at low wages without lowering their profits. I remember saying to a Colonial lady that we had gained much from the science of German settlers in this country. "d.a.m.n German science," was her reply. A certain type of employer desires two protections-protection against the knowledge of the foreigner, and protection against the aspirations of the worker. Both the knowledge and the aspirations of others are a disturbance of repose.

At a Nottingham meeting of the Society of Chemical Industry the unscientific character of British methods was again emphasised. So, too, at the Edinburgh meeting in December, 1914.

Princ.i.p.al A. P. Laurie, speaking of paints and colours, said: "There were very few cases among those he had inquired into of a chemical, a colour product, or a pigment which was being made both in Germany and in England in which the German product was not better than that made in this country.... Again, it was admitted that German barytes was better ground than English. Yet an extensive literature on barytes and barytes mining had been published by the Germans, showing exactly how German barytes was ground. They had not found a barytes miner in England who owned a microscope.... The English manufacturer did not believe in or use the man of science.

"Mr. Tatlock, speaking from the laboratory gla.s.s apparatus makers' point of view, said that British manufacturers were finding it exceedingly difficult to replace German and Austrian products.... Professor Henderson had referred to the possibility of people buying more readily goods of British manufacture. They did not find that to be the case. The goods had to be cheaper or better; they would certainly never be bought purely because they were British, and he did not altogether think that they should be bought for that reason."

It is surely clear that the only wise world policy is one in which each nation brings its own particular contribution to the common stock and in no way tries to shut others out.

THE POLICY OF BOYCOTTING THOUGHT.

We find it impossible to shut out German music. "Germany, it must be said to its credit," I read in the daily Press, "is not boycotting foreign art." In the autumn of 1915 the Royal Theatres of Berlin announced Shakespeare's "Macbeth," and "Antony and Cleopatra," and Scribe's "Gla.s.s of Water." "Shakespeare, one hears," writes a reviewer in the _Daily News_, of December 4, 1915, "is still being played in the German theatres. If you go to a theatre in London you are more likely to see a performance with a t.i.tle like 'I _don't_ Think!' or 'Pa.s.s the Mustard, Please!' Shakespeare, to tell the truth, is in England left largely to professors and schoolboys."

A silly crusade was started in this country against German thought in general, a crusade so petty that it made some of us wince for shame. The upholders of creeds joined in hastily, for German investigators had given our beliefs many uncomfortable shocks. We remember how it came about that the President of the Training College in Mark Rutherford's Autobiography could with such satisfaction to himself destroy the "infidel." "The President's task was all the easier because he knew nothing of German literature; and, indeed, the word 'German' was a term of reproach signifying something very awful, although n.o.body knew exactly what it was." The obscurantist and opponent of free thought has shown signs of hope that the German's reputation for awfulness may turn us from his evil companions.h.i.+p into the restful paths of British piety.

The Englishman (especially, I believe, the Saxon element) has too often been p.r.o.ne to make a stronghold of ignorance. This stronghold has certainly in industry proved to be a house of cards, and I think it has proved to be equally a house of cards in religion. It would, indeed, be a disastrous outcome of the war if it led us still more to emphasise our insularity. Unless we are readier after the war to learn from everyone, we shall, as a nation, be mentally moribund. It matters not in the least whether the thought be German, French, Austrian, Swiss, Russian, or any other. Miss Petre, in her "Reflections of a Non-Combatant," has finely stated the wider view:

Thought and learning, art and music, may bear certain characteristics of the country in which they are begotten; but they are also the products of humanity itself, or they would make no appeal to the world at large. The monuments of the German mind are no more robbed of their intellectual value by the national crime of this war than German mountains are robbed of their natural grandeur, German forests of their solemnity, or German rivers of their width and volume.

Any other att.i.tude is extremely likely to degenerate into a petty jealousy that is bred of fear. This is how Mr. H. G. Wells wrote of our att.i.tude towards Germany years ago:

We in Great Britain are now intensely jealous of Germany. We are intensely jealous of Germany, not only because the Germans outnumber us, and have a much larger and more diversified country than ours, and lie in the very heart and body of Europe, but because in the last hundred years, while we have fed on plat.i.tudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at science and art and literature, to develop social organisation, to master and better our methods of business and industry, and to clamber above us in the scale of civilisation. This has humiliated and irritated rather than chastened us.

Such jealousy is a strangely short-sighted mistake. No valuable or lasting peace will come till jealousy is exorcised. There are ominous signs of the possible triumph of a deadly Saxon insularity, but there are other signs that give us hope. When so ardent a combatant as Mr.

Lloyd George can speak well of the services of Germany to the world, all is not lost. It is pleasant to be able to quote these pa.s.sages from an interview reported in the _Daily News_ of January 25, 1916:

"Mr. Lloyd George is not among those who imagine they are doing their country a service by decrying everything German. 'I think,' he said, 'that America and all of us should realise that there were two Germanies before the war. On the one hand, there was the industrial, the commercial, and the intellectual Germany, and in a most remarkable way she had blended the three elements. That Germany was rendering a great service to civilisation. It was conquering the world by the success of its methods and of its example, and that conquest would have proved a very genuine blessing. It would have been the means of saving some of the terrible waste from which most of the social evils of humanity spring. As an ardent social reformer, I freely confess that I myself was learning a good deal from that side of Germany, particularly in the direction of munic.i.p.al and national organisation.'" Mr. Lloyd George goes on to say that the other Germany, the military Germany, had overthrown the Germany from which he had drawn inspiration. Our task then surely is to help to reduce military dominance everywhere and to help to set free that Germany whose peaceful conquest of the world "would have proved a very genuine blessing."

That Germany was, and still is, a Germany of simple hearts, of men and women who can love well. I have talked to many British-born wives of interned men. Over and over again I have heard the same story. "I could not have had a better husband, and the children could not have had a better father." That is why many English wives have already gone to Germany to their husband's families.

It is time we got rid of grotesque caricatures of the German people.

Such caricatures always represent the outlook of war-time, but they do not make for a lasting peace. There is a great German people, and that people and ours should find each other's hearts. I am not so much concerned as to the Germany of brilliant science and industrious commerce. That is good, but there is something better: It is the Germany of loving husbands and true comrades, of true wives and devoted mothers.

It is the heart that rules the world, and we need the true hearts in Germany, England, France, and over all the world to recognise each other. The one prayer for us all in every land in these days surely is, "Lord, that our eyes may be opened!" When we can pray that prayer, we shall begin to see the war to a peace of the heart-the only peace that will not be a "patched-up peace."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: Lieut. Dr. Kutscher writes with obvious pleasure of the _grande loterie de Noel_ shared out by the officers to the children of C. in France. The children's parties went on, too, in the New Year. (_Int. Review_, 10th Aug., 1915).]

[Footnote 41: Cf. p. 161. These are simply examples of the wild pa.s.sions war engenders, and there is not always the sergeant at hand who says "Drop that or I shoot you." One side may be decidedly worse than the other (as seems, _e.g._, to have been the case in the American Civil War), but this does not alter the character of what war does for human nature.]

[Footnote 42: See p. 36.]

[Footnote 43: "An English Girl's Adventures in Hostile Germany,"

pp. 58 and 124. For other incidents see p. 212.]

[Footnote 44: See above, p. 55. For further examples of civilian kindness see pp. 212 ff.]

[Footnote 45: It is disconcerting to one's pride to learn that while the sale of German newspapers in England was entirely "verboten" in 1916, English newspapers may still be readily obtained in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Why are we so afraid of the other side being known?]

[Footnote 46: Cf. p. 169.]

[Footnote 47: The war has greatly increased that number.]

[Footnote 48: My aim is not political, and I do not, therefore, touch upon the many later utterances. The protests, for example, against the unfairness of the Brest-Litovsk Peace have in Reichstag and Press been numerous and emphatic. For such facts the reader should consult the "Cambridge Magazine."]

[Footnote 49: We were allowed to suppose that the Lusitania carried no munitions, the Germans were encouraged to believe that she carried mounted guns. Both views were incorrect. The _New York Evening Post_ (quoted by the _Labour Leader_) published the "manifest" of the number of cases of ammunition carried.]

[Footnote 50: Ernest Poole in "Ca.s.sell's Magazine," No. 42.]

[Footnote 51: This seems unavoidable. "At last things quieted down a bit, but many wounded had to be brought in between the firing lines-dangerous work, as both sides are liable to fire if they are seen."-An R.A.M.C. Officer in the _Times_.]

[Footnote 52: From "The Pageant of War," by Lady Margaret Sackville.]

[Footnote 53: Cf. too p. 108.]

[Footnote 54: "There is no reason to suppose that he had seen Germany." wrote Mr. George Long in Sir William Smith's "Dictionary of Greek Biography and Mythology."]

[Footnote 55: Further, we must remember that "The Red Cross on a white field is not a magic mantle that can ward off sh.e.l.ls fired by an artillerist at a target which he cannot see, nor against flyers dropping bombs from thousands of feet in the air.

'Bomb-dropping flyers are the terror of the doctors and wounded behind the lines,' remarked a doctor to me."-Karl von Wiegand, in the _New York World_, August 17, 1916. ("Cambridge Magazine,"

_Oct_. 7, 1916.)]

[Footnote 56: "Church towers in a flat country are the only observation points, and so they are used, and so they are sh.e.l.led."-Ernest Poole, in "Ca.s.sell's Magazine," No. 42, p.

27.]

[Footnote 57: From "Is It To Be Hate?" (Allen and Unwin), a pamphlet which I wrote in 1915. On many points there dealt with my second thoughts are different, as are those of many others.

We have learned much since then.]

[Footnote 58: The public is extraordinarily innocent as regards this kind of information. It would form an interesting subject for post-war a.n.a.lysis.]

[Footnote 59: Cf. p. 157.]

[Footnote 60: From "Is It To Be Hate?" by the Author.]

[Footnote 61: _La guerre devant Le Palais._ Par Gabriel Mourey.