LEARNING.

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 68, 14 December 1918, Page 7

LEARNING.

TWISTED POE PROPAGANDA. Something .in conclusion must lie said ■about learning. The same , thing applies here as elsewhere. Germany was a very late-comer in most fields, and her contribution has been, not discovery, but comparison, collection, arrangement. It has not as a rule been Germans who have enlarged.the bounds of learning, just as they did not explore our planet. The most important advance due to a German is Bopps discovery of the relationship of the Aryan languages,; it was a line example of the comparative method, but the method itself had been already discovered and applied, in another lipid, by Cuvier in France. It was not German's who opened up the endless vista of the palaeolithic ages, who discovered Sanskrit and read the , hieroglyphics and cuneiforms, who founded Egyptology and Aβsyriology,. who excavated Nineveh and Susa and the Smnerian cities, who enlivrged Greek.history by the- excavation of Delos and Delphi, ami countless other sites, who revealed an unknown civilisation at Xiiossos and Phaistos, who discovered the Mediterranean race. For loiig Germany could only boast of two excavations, that of Cwliue at Olympia nnd Pergamo'n; for America roared Schlienianii, though lie was German by blood. It is only quite recently, at Babylon and Boghaz Kavoi, that Germany has begun to take her share in the work. But: while others found and published most of the inscriptions which have, revolutionised Greek history, it is Berlin that is collecting them into a Corpus; and that again is typical of the country whose best work consists of books based less on original work than on encyclopaedic knowledge, such as Boeckh's "Public Economy uf the Athenians," and is done not by, individuals, but rather by groups about n master. The world is impressed by the fact that there are twenty scholars in Germany to one olsewhere. But the number of firet-rate men is as limited as elsewhere. Many are morely secoiTd-rnte; and those who have had lo wade through the dreary wilderness of mere repetition crossed with subjective wilfuliiess exhibited by second-rate German work ;iro not likely to be impressed by mere numbers. Hero again, if you seek ideas, you often find that the German mind is rather destructive than constructiv. , . Nicbuhr is typical; he destroyed much rubbish, but could not build on the foundations ho cleared. The encyclopaedic mind should do well in history, up to a point. -No one donies that German history contains great nnmes, and no doubt Eanke was tho first in modern times lo make it clear that history must be entirely objective, though some of the Greeks, within their limitations, were aware of this. But if Rnnke tnlight that history must be objective, it is the last thing that his countrymen have practised. Take the greatest of them all. Mommecn (though his fame rests on the "Corpus" nnd the "Domische Stattsreeht" rather than on the history), and one sees the limitation!!; lie is « German. His Caesar is not history, but as naked, .propaganda as Treitsqhke's "History of Prussia"— an apologia for Ihe Germnii Kaisprtum; hie defence of Rome's breach of faith in the Cnudino Porks business, which onco shocked the world, is now f-cen in its inevitable relation lo German thought. And I his is the weakness of Germany to-day—propaganda; learning and everything else is twisted to serve its turn for Germanism. Kthii'ilciry. fur pxiininli , . has Income prnnafiandn for Iho Nordic nice, and that nol mcrclv through Chnmherlnin's iimatpiir absurdities; olii-i-ial sliilistir-i liiivo Iv'ii made -In serve the same end. And Goimiiu treatment of contemporary history has been nuroly lomlencious. It will bo. Ion? before German learning recovers from (he blow dealt it bv Iho manifesto of 'lilt. Tho D n onlp in lOni'land foolishly dreamt, that science and learning in the hvontii-lli century had heroine international. Ihat the world's learning was cm , , a thine at which all worked, regardless nf nationality, for tin' .«nki> of knmvlndep itself. As Ypgnrds Germany, wo shall not make Hint mistake again. Chip cull ?pp now on what Germans base their claim lo niHiirnl suwvinrlv. so far as it is based on nnvtliin<r but more racial nrrognncp. Germans Imvo follnwpil in other men's trucks nnd gnthcred ill) (itl)Pi' nipn'i tlpwuls: hut Ihcy claim Hint by sn dninsr l.liov lun-p .h-hu «-p,i =..ii..,pi«' n.,,| l;ii;iwlpd<.'«. Hint they have, by elaboration, combined work, lifted culture , nn tn anotbpr tilnne, no longer individualist but collective,