iar excellence of the
German language, which he shows to his satisfaction to be superior to
French, Italian, and other Latin languages. Again, he points out that there
is no word in the German language for "character" (_Karakter_), a word
borrowed from the Greek; the reason is, he explains, that there is no need
for one, because to have character and to be German are the same thing--a
curious foretaste of the German arrogance of to-day. Yet these speeches,
which, issued in England at such a crisis, would have found no readers,
reverberated through Germany and helped to create the self-confident spirit
which freed her from the invader. Then, as now, under the inspiration of
ideas which they had accepted from professors and philosophers, Germans
fought for the German language and for German culture. But whereas in 1814
they fought to preserve them, in 1914 they are fighting to impose them.

Just as patriotism in Germany is wholly different from what it is in
England, so also is democracy, and all those elements in the national life
which feed and sustain it. British democracy does not depend upon our
popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments. It depends upon the
free spirit and self-respect of the British people. We have been accustomed
for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we
treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our "ministers"
or servants. There is a force called public opinion which, slow though it
may be to assert itself, British statesmen have been taught by experience
to respect. It is as true of British as it is of American democracy that
"you can fool half the people all the time; and you can fool all the people
half the time; but you cannot fool all the people all the time." But the
German people, as a people, lacks this irreplaceable heritage of political
self-respect. It has never yet dared to tread the path of democracy without
leading strings. It has not yet learned to think for itself in politics,
or formed the habit of free discussion and practical criticism of public
affairs. This is the vital fact which must be borne in mind in all
comparisons between German and British democracy. The Germans have a
Parliament, elected by Universal Male Suffrage. But this Parliament is
powerless to control policy, because the nation behind it does not give it
sufficient support. It is because of the absence of the driving force of a
public opinion in Germany t