people find a subterranean lake. Thus the British Navy
is really national because it is natural; it has cohered out of hundreds
of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before Chaucer's time and
after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing; as artificial as a
constructed Alp would be in England. William II. has simply copied the
British Navy as Frederick II. copied the French Army: and this Japanese
or ant-like assiduity in imitation is one of the hundred qualities which
the Germans have and the English markedly have not. There are other German
superiorities which are very much superior.

The one or two really jolly things that the Germans have got are precisely
the things which the English haven't got: notably a real habit of popular
music and of the ancient songs of the people, not merely spreading from
the towns or caught from the professionals. In this the Germans rather
resemble the Welsh; though heaven knows what becomes of Teutonism if
they do. But the difference between the Germans and the English goes
deeper than all these signs of it; they differ more than any other two
Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. Above all, they differ in
what is the most English of all English traits; that shame which the
French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it is certainly mixed
up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we called shyness. Even
an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being embarrassed. But
a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being embarrassed. He eats
and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a song or a sermon or
a large meal to be what the English call "out of place" in particular
circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious, they have no
reaction against patriotism and religion as have the English and the
French.

Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern disaster largely arose from the
facts that she thought England was simple, when England is very subtle.
She thought that because our politics have become largely financial that
they had become wholly financial; that because our aristocrats had become
pretty cynical that they had become entirely corrupt. They could not seize
the subtlety by which a rather used-up English gentleman might sell a
coronet when he would not sell a fortress; might lower the public standards
and yet refuse to lower the flag.

In short, the Germans are quite sure that they understand us entirely,
because they