. I think we had refused some form of
quarantine that modern medical science considers worse than useless.
The tone of the press all through the Transvaal War did attract some
attention in this country, and since then from time to time we are
presented with quotations from abusive articles about our greed, our
perfidy, and our presumption. I am not writing as a journalist, for I
know nothing whatever of journalism; but as a member of the general
public I believe that we are inclined to overrate the importance of
these amenities, because we overrate the part played by the newspaper
in the average German household. One can only speak from personal
experience, but I should say that it hardly plays a part at all.
Whatever Tageblatt is in favour with the _Hausherr_ comes in every
morning, and is stowed away tidily in a corner till he has time to
look at it while he drinks his coffee and smokes his cigar. If the
ladies of the household are inclined that way they look at it too. But
there really is not much to look at as a rule. These paragraphs about
the wicked British that seem so pugnacious when they are printed on
solid English paper in plain English words, are often in a corner with
other political paragraphs about other wicked nations. At times of
crisis, when the leading papers are attacking us at great length, the
Germans themselves will talk of _Zeitungsgeschrei_ and shrug their
shoulders. It is absurd to deny the existence of Anglophobia in
Germany, because you can hardly travel there without coming across
isolated instances of it. But these isolated instances will stand out
against a crowded background of people from whom you have received the
utmost kindness and friendship; and of other people with whom your
relations have been fleeting, but who have been invariably civil.
Unfortunately the German Anglophobe is a creature of the meanest
breed, and he impresses himself on the memory like a pain; so that one
of him looms larger than fifty others, just as the moment will when
you had your last tooth out, and not the summer day that went before
and after. The truth is, that we are on the nerves of certain
Germans. You may live for ever in an English family and never hear a
German mentioned. You would assuredly not hear the nation
everlastingly discussed and scolded. As far as we are concerned, they
are welcome to their own manners, their own ways, and their own
opinions. If they would only take their stand on these and