ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVII, Issue 81, 4 August 1915, Page 4

ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCES.

Some weeks nc» tlie Christehuivli Pr<" -> «'»' some of the essential differenees l»el ween lingland and Germany, with special reference to liie wonderful energy and

fckiU witb uhicli Germany—frankly ignoring all the canons of civilisation and morality—is devoting her resources to the prosecution of the war. We suggested that the advantages—real and apparent—which Germany enjoys in this respect, are advantages Britain is well without, for, in order to have them herself Britain, would have to be a Germany, or, rather, would have had to he a different Britain from what .she is. The same point is excellently made b.v the Westminster Gazette in one of its issues received by this week's mail. It is a point well worth emphasising afresh. The Gazette reminds the English public

that the wonderful organisation of Germany has its weakness as well as its strength, "To be organised as Ger-

mans, we must be Germans in nature and disposition, with the same submissiveness to the ruling power, the same readiness to hand our consciences and our lives into the keeping of an unquestioned superior authority. We .should have •to blot out the greater part of our history and be made over again, and made different. In that way, and that way alone, could we have purchased the advantage with which Germany started in this war—the advantage of ; \ long preparation For a secret policy of agge.ss.ion engineered by a supreme military caste." But a nation which has grown up in the belief that individual freedom and self-discipline are better than State paternalism and State discipline, has moral reserves which Germany must lack. To become equal to Germany in actual military force is a mere matter of time and mechanics, and when the British machine is as .strong as the German machine, those moral reserves will overwhelm the enemy.