ART. XIV.-FOREIGN OPINION. ODERN journalism has, in these latter days, fulfilled MODE 'O wad some power the giftie gi'e us To see ourselves as others see us!' and has proved, only too conclusively, that our neighbours on the Continent see us, at present, in an extremely disagreeable light. In no previous epoch of our history, it may probably be said, has there occurred so general an outburst of animosity against this country. The fact is patent: the causes are not equally clear. The average Englishman is apt to attribute the prevalent feeling to mere envy and malice; to detestation of free trade, parliamentary government, the Protestant succession, and other national palladia; to colonial disappointment and commercial jealousy. Such reasons may account for much, but they hardly suffice to explain the hostility of the cultivated and intelligent. It is at least interesting, and may be important, to ascertain the reasons which influence persons whose opinions we are bound to respect, even when those reasons are not convincing. We need hardly remind our readers that we do not hold ourselves responsible for the statements made or the views expressed in the following articles, but the names of the authors are a sufficient guarantee that the thoughtful element in their respective countries is duly represented. GERMANY.* Amid the angry war of words to which the hostile condition of public opinion in England and Germany has unfortunately given rise, we recall, like a half-forgotten legend of the distant past, that tremendous moment when Wellington, on the heights of St. Jean, in the late afternoon of June 18th, 1815, expressed aloud his wish that night or the Prussians would come. The hopes of victory were sinking with the setting sun, when, at first dull in the far distance, then nearer and nearer, louder and louder, in the rear and on the flank of the enemy, the thunder of the Prussian guns burst on Wellington's ear, and 'Thank God!' he exclaimed, 'old Blücher is there.' † The great fight was over: the victory that decided the fate *It has been thought advisable to translate this article from the German original. The translation has been revised by Herr Rodenberg. Pierson: Preussische Geschichte,' pp. 152, 154. of the world was won. The English call it the battle of Waterloo, and the Waterloo column on the Waterloo-platz in Hanover preserves the memory of the name. We Germans call it the battle of La Belle Alliance.' In the centre, and on the highest point of the French position, lies a farm called La Belle Alliance. As a memorial of the league which exists to-day between the Prussian and the English nations, of the union of the two armies, and of their mutual confidence, the Field-Marshal has proposed that the battle shall be known by that name.' Thus ran Gneisenau's order to the army; and the triumphal column on the Belle-Alliance-platz in Berlin maintains the memory of it to this day. But, by whatever name we know the battle, the 18th of June, 1815, is a day of glory for Germany and England alike; and both nations link together in undying recollection the names of Marshal Vorwärts and the Iron Duke. The memory of these events was still green in the thirties and forties of the nineteenth century, and the German youth of that day grew up in the glamour of them. They formed the glorious climax of the history-lessons in the schools; and the story of the 18th of June, enthusiastically narrated by the teacher, was drunk in by his pupils with equal enthusiasm. True, a jarring note was even then struck when we were told that the English claimed the greater share of credit for the victory, and that Wellington himself, twenty-one years after it had been won, had in a speech in Parliament uttered words insulting to the Prussian army." The present writer was at that time a schoolboy in Hanover, and can speak of these things from his own recollection. He even remembers seeing King Ernest Augustus-the monarch who overthrew the Constitution, and forced the seven Göttingen professors to resign a 'Stockengländer,' as Treitschke calls him, full of that arrogant contempt for the German nation which prevailed among the more ignorant section of his compatriots, and which led him to remark that no humiliation was too great for a German to put up with.† * But utterances like these of the two English dukes were forgotten in the general admiration which was felt in Germany for England, and which, if possible, grew still warmer when the lad passed from school to university. The British constitution was the ideal of our historical professors; its praises resounded in the lectures of Schlosser, of Gervinus, of Häusser, * Häusser: 'Deutsche Geschichte' (ed. 1869), iv, p. 668, note. and, above all, of Dahlmann, one of the famous seven of Göttingen, who designated the English people as, politically speaking, the most advanced in the world, and was wont to describe the State possessed of English institutions as, simply, 'the good State.' To England our eyes were turned when, in the dreary days of the Reaction and amid the internal divisions of our distracted country, we strove to infuse hope into our bosoms, and to summon up courage for new efforts, by gazing on the spectacle of a great and free nation. It was on the free soil of England that our political exiles, condemned for their conscientious opinions to life-long prison or even to death, found a hospitable refuge until the dawn of a better day restored them to their homes. In later years, when, grown to man's estate, a German travelled to England and to London, he was astounded by the material greatness of the country and its huge metropolis, while an imperishable impression was made upon him by the monuments of a glorious past and the accumulated signs of present opulence. He gazed upon these wonders with no envious eyes; but a feeling of bitterness came over him when the superiority of England was unsparingly pressed home, and when it became only too clear that Englishmen took no pains to know the higher sides of German social life, but derived their idea of Germans from the specimens of the race who frequented the wretched purlieus of Leicester Square or North London. We tried to comfort ourselves with the reflection that, in the days before the Crimean War, the average Englishman nourished a deep-seated prejudice against all foreigners' without exception; but it did not escape our notice that the great London journals, while retailing by the column all that happened in Paris, hardly ever deigned to take notice of German affairs, and, if they spoke of them at all, only displayed their ignorance. To be sure, Germany was not, in those days, particularly interesting; it was, as Metternich said of Italy, rather a geographical expression than a political entity. Buthere we touch the beginning of that hostility towards England which has ever since been on the increase-no sooner did we take the first step towards realising our political aspirations than we encountered the jealous opposition of Great Britain. The accomplishment of our political unity, the longing for which has never wholly slumbered in the German heart, began with the Danish War of 1848, when, against law and against treaties, Denmark attempted to tear asunder two German pro * Treitschke: 'Historische und politische Aufsätze' (ed. 1865), p. 393. vinces and to incorporate one of them in the Danish State. Whoever remembers the time when the song, SchleswigHolstein, meerumschlungen,' * echoed from the Belt to the Alps, as twenty years later did the 'Wacht am Rhein,' needs not to be told how strongly ran the tide of national feeling in Germany. Well, everyone knows what was the end of that first outburst of patriotic emotion. With it rose and with it sank the belief in our future; but bitter resentment mained behind. By the London Protocol of May 8th, 1852, Denmark's deed of violence received the sanction of the Powers. But what the German nation could not forget, though its political weakness compelled it to suffer in silence, was that this humiliation was largely due to the attitude of England. Here, if we would go to the bottom of the matter, lies the root of the quarrel; here was the first convincing proof of what we might expect if we again should dare to stir. re 'In England,' says Sybel,† 'public opinion was, it is true, divided; but the vast majority of Englishmen were on the side of Denmark. The commercial classes saw in the German rising the prospect of an extension of the Zollverein, and in the occupation of Schleswig the first step towards the formation of a German fleet-both, in their opinion, most objectionable things. In Parliament the whole Tory party roundly declared the action of Germany to be a brutal deed of violence.' The treatment meted out to us was in accordance with these views; no wonder that, in spite of the dull lethargy which to outward appearance brooded over Prussia and over Germany, the worm still gnawed at our hearts and allowed us no inward repose. Ten years later, the generation of those who were youths when the Revolution of 1848 and the fight for Schleswig-Holstein came to so pitiable an end had grown up to manhood; and, with the accession of William I to the Prussian throne, the national spirit in Germany began to stir again. A new age appeared to be dawning; the unification of Italy began; and the work was pressed forward amid the sympathetic plaudits of England-that same England which showed so little liking for similar efforts when made by Germany. Italy, to be sure, the question was how to shake off the yoke of ' tyrants'; and what comparison, it was asked, could be drawn between the tyrants' of Italy and the 'six-and-thirty monarchs,' under whose tender care, as Heine sarcastically said, Germany slept so sound? In * 'Schleswig-Holstein, sea-surrounded.' The author was Chemnitz, a Schleswig attorney. + H. v. Sybel: Die Begründung des deutschen Reichs,' i, 225. Vol. 191.-No. 382. 2 P Now in order to sit in judgment one should first understand; but German questions and German conditions form a problem with which England has never taken the trouble to grapple seriously. Perhaps we were regarded as hardly worth the trouble of understanding; or rather, does it not seem probable that Sybel is right, and that, even so far back as the fifties, the extension of the Zollverein, the German fleet-in a word, the competition of Germany-showed itself likely to become formidable? Be that as it may, the growth of Germany has at length made her formidable; and that growth was mainly due to one mighty product of the new age-to Bismarck, in whom all national aspirations were gradually embodied, and through whom they eventually attained their accomplishment. So soon as he appeared, the situation was changed; in the teeth of a violent parliamentary opposition, the military forces of the nation were re-organised and strengthened; the disgrace of Schleswig-Holstein was wiped away; and the very spot where the injustice had been done witnessed the triumph which was to determine the future of Germany. The war of 1866 was the outcome and conclusion of the war of 1864; it laid the foundation of the new German Empire. But what reproaches, what abuse, had we to bear, especially from England, during those critical years! What moral condemnation of the 'Bloodand-Iron' policy! What outcries at the wickedness of the words attributed to Bismarck, Might goes before Right.' As a matter of fact, he never uttered those words; but, supposing he had uttered them, was England, of all states, justified in throwing them in our teeth? Again, it was England whose veiled opposition we encountered, a year later, in the Luxemburg question. Lord Stanley, then Foreign Secretary in his father's third Ministry, would have been best pleased 'had Prussia yielded to the threats of France, and simply retired from Luxemburg'; it was with great reluctance that he consented to the Conference in London, and only with great difficulty that the Treaty of May 1867 was brought to completion, and Luxemburg declared neutral ground, under the collective guarantee of the signatory Powers. As to the way in which this treaty was regarded in England, let us again quote Sybel, who says: * 'A most unpleasant incident occurred in the English Parliament when the treaty was laid before it by the Government. In the Lower House, a Radical member, Mr. Labouchere, maintained that the Government had thrown over the great principle of non-intervention, |