The Feilding Star, Oraua & Kiwitea Counteis Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1896. GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 164, 14 January 1896, Page 2

The Feilding Star, Oraua & Kiwitea Counteis Gazette. Published Daily. TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 1896. GERMANY AND ENGLAND.

, We in the colonies tind it difficult to realize the dislike the Germans have to the English people. The reason doubtless is we imagine, from the vast benefits as regards providing a home for the German destitute (whether • princes or peasants), and the ready market found in England and her colonies for goods " made in Germany," - that only gratitude sbould be felt and expressed to their benefactors. But in this case, as in others, British kindness has only met as its reward rivalry and hatred. This is the way the Gerf man papers wrote of the position at the first indication of trouble in the - Transvaal : " German politicians must regard it as very tempting to assume an attitude which guarantees to Bussia Germany's neutrality, even if Bussian ambition goes as far as British India. It is a matter of no importL ance to Germany if the French press . closely upon England in Egypt, and - the Russians do tbe same thing in China. The political world is now used to the idea that Bussia and France go together. But why, should 1 their arms be turned against tough ahd warlike Germany ? Why should , hot their ambition bo turned against

rich and unwarhke England 1 Both I France and Russia will find that tbe j latter pays better and costs less." A few days afterwards another paper said : 4 * It is not only tbe consideration tbat the fleet is not quite up to the mark, and that the army is hardly ot any consequence, which forces British Premiers to assume a peaceful attitude. Nor is it the fact that a war might hurt British trade somewhere in the world. The thought how < to provide food hangs like a millstone ' on the neck of a British Foreign Mm- j ister. Amid the crash of the falling j Empire would be heard the agonising , cry of the starving masses. But even : if England maintains at once her command of the sea, the war must pro- '■ duce a small famine. In 1854, when no man-of-war threatened England's maritime roads, because none worth considering existed, the price of bread doubled as soon as the war broke out. What would happen to-day, when England's enemies have fully-developed fleets 1" The writer of the latter has not read Engiish history very carefully or he would know that when England was at her lowest ebb, in the reign of George 111, that great War Minister, William Pitt, was always averse to war, for he recognised all the evils which came in its train ; but for ail that, when he did determine to resist France and the coalition of the other Powers under the thrall of Napoleon, he not only found money to feed the German mercenaries in the pay of England, but to raise the nation to a high pitch of prosperity, as was evinced by the large increase of imports during the continuance of the war. If England could keep her ports open then with all the world against her, she is in a far better position now to do so, in defiance of Germany and her allies — strong as they may think themselves to be. We hope it will not be put to the test; yet should the inevitable happen we have no fear of the result.