The Dominion. SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1915. A GERMAN BUBBLE PRICKED

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2450, 1 May 1915, Page 6

The Dominion. SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1915. A GERMAN BUBBLE PRICKED

The news that Professor Haeokel has decided to sever his connection with the Rationalist Pres3 Association is not likely to cause .consternation in Britain. The Association will no doubt be able to 'get along very well without him. The cablegram announcing his resignation informs the world that he will retain his veneration for his friends in Britain and tho colonies, but, politically, he must despise England. His British "friends" will probably treat his veneration for • themselves with the same indifforence as his'hatred for their country. These German professors take themselves very seriously. _ They seem to think* that the British Empire is going to whine and worry merely because they choose to renounce the honours conferred on them by British Universities, or to withdraw' the light of their countenance from British literary and scientific _ associations.. They have succeeded in persuading themselves that Germany ib the creator and upholder of modern civilisa-tion,-and that her professors' form tlie final court of appeal on all disputed points of scholarship. It must be admitted that British scholars are in some measure responsible for the prevalence of this form of Teutonic conceit. They have been altogether too ready, to sit at the feet of the Germans, and have been inclined greatly to exaggerate the magnitude of tho intellectual debt which the world owes to Germany. This bubble of Teutonic pretensions was recently pricked by,-Professor A. H. Sayce, the distinguished Oriental archaeologist, in a letter to' the London Times. He expresses astonishment that British scholars and politicians should still be found speaking of "our intellectual debt to Germany." It is time that we ceased to tab> German bluff and bluster at its facw value, and Professor Sayce has performed a useful task in placing tho actual facts before the British public. He admits that in literature Goethe is entitled to pla-ce in th'S front rank. Heine was a ; Jew, who regarded ■ Germans as barbarian?, while Schiller was "a milk-and-water Longfellow." Professor Sayce goes on to say that "in philosophy there are Kant and Hkoel, but Kant was more than half Scottish in origin, and it is difficult to say what the Hegelian philosophy would have been had the German language been more cultivated." Coming to his own departments of study, Pitofessor Sayce remarks that tho decipherment of the Egyptian and cuneiform inscriptions has been due to French and British scholars. "The German can laboriously count syllables and words and pile up volumes of indices; he can appropriate other men's discoveries in the interests of 'culture': but • beyond this . . . we get from him only

theories which take no regard of facts, though as ooming from Germany we arc told that they must be regarded as infallible." But what about science? The Germans have tried to make the "world believe that no other nation can compare with them, in the' sphere of scientific achievement. They certainly have done some very useful work in this branch of study, but when their claims are carefully examined we do not find any German names that can be put by the side of Newton, Darwin, .Faraday, Laplace, or Pasteur. Hardly one of the great inventions of modern times—the steam engine, tho telegraph and telephone, the motor-car, the aeroplane, the wireless telegraph—has been "made in Germany." This statement by Professor Sayce is bonic out by Sir E. Bay Lankestbr, oiVj of England's most famous scientists, who says the delusion as to the superiority of the Germans in scientific research is due to "tho irresponsible Rtifch of young, men ttbo hm-'e benefited by. the numerous a&c! welki'g&»'

ised.laboratories of German universities." The late Professor Huxley often remarked upon .the exaggerated nature of the reputation for learning and scientific capacity which the Germans had created for themselves. Sin E. Ray Lankester also states that the late Dr. Ingram Bywater, one of Britain's foremo.it classical scholars, entirely disagreed with the viewthat German learning is of an original and specially valuable character. He attributed the reputation it has secured to the self-assertive methods of German scholars. Britishers have been too ready to take bumptious Teutonic professors at their own valuation. But since the war began they have ceased to patronise us. They hate us instead. Professor Haeckel has resigned from the Rationalist Press Association because he despises our political methods. A cable message which appears in another column states that Profesbor Krao Meyer has vacated his position oh the staff of Harvard University, one of America's principal seats of learning, because the authorities dared to award a prize to a poem which said some severe things about Germany. It seems as if the only sort of freedom acceptable to the German intellectual class is freedom to belaud the Kaiser and the Prussian junkers, and to hate Britain and all things British. The President of Harvard has politely, but firmly, let Professor Meyer know that he is living in a freer country than the land of his birth, and has expressed the hope that all German professors will some day learn to appreciate the principles of academic freedom. Harvard University will not close its doors because it has lost the services of Professor Meyer. The British universities, whose honours have been renounced by German scholars, have not allowed themselves to be overwhelmed' with grief. Now that British scholars have had a glimpse of the German professor as he really is/ they are probably not sorry to part company with him until the discipline of humiliation has brought him to a more reasonable and less overbearing frame.of mind.