War and Germany._

We are most of us old enough to remember the torrent of calumny and
insult which was showered upon us in the day of our temporary distress
by the nation to whom we had so often been a friend and an ally. It is
true that other nations treated us little better, and yet their
treatment hurt us less. The difference as it struck men at the time may
be summarized in this passage from a British writer of the period.

"But it was very different with Germany," he says. "Again and again in
the world's history we have been the friends and the allies of these
people. It was so in the days of Marlborough, in those of the Great
Frederick, and in those of Napoleon. When we could not help them with
men we helped them with money. Our fleet has crushed their enemies. And
now, for the first time in history, we have had a chance of seeing who
were our friends in Europe, and nowhere have we met more hatred and more
slander than from the German press and the German people. Their most
respectable journals have not hesitated to represent the British
troops--troops every bit as humane and as highly disciplined as their
own--not only as committing outrages on person and property, but even as
murdering women and children.

"At first this unexpected phenomenon merely surprised the British
people, then it pained them, and finally, after two years of it, it has
roused a deep, enduring anger in their minds."

He goes on to say: "The continued attacks upon us have left an enduring
feeling of resentment, which will not and should not die away in this
generation. It is not too much to say that five years ago a complete
defeat of Germany in a European war would have certainly caused British
intervention. Public sentiment and racial affinity would never have
allowed us to see her really go to the wall. And now it is certain that
in our lifetime no British guinea and no soldier's life would under any
circumstances be spent for such an end. That is one strange result of
the Boer war, and in the long run it is possible that it may prove not
the least important."

* * * * *

Such was the prevailing mood of the nation when they perceived Germany,
under the lead of her Emperor, following up her expressions of enmity by
starting with restless energy to build up a formidable fleet, adding
programme to programme, out of all possible proportion to the German
commerce to be defended or to the German coastline e