PRINCE BULOW IN ENGLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 270, 7 November 1908, Page 3

PRINCE BULOW IN ENGLAND.

'TOO SENSITIVE AND CREDULOUS " " A MESH OF FALSEHOOD." For years now—back to almost any time since the Franco-Prussian war- - England and Germany have been trying to find out what is wrong with themselves, whether it is Anglophobia in the one, or Teutophobia in the other that is the cause of perennial irritation in both. The problem has puzzled them so much that quite lately both have come to the conclusion that there is nothing wrong at all, or if anything, that it only affects the other. Mr. Balfour, Mr. Lloyd George, the Socialist party, and everybody that counts for anything in England have expressed their belief that war between England and Germany is so improbable and inconceivasle as to be ruled out or the question. Herr Bebel, for Germany, while holding the same opinion, takes

the stand that the preparations whi.-h have been matte"by each of the countries out of fear for the other have created such a tension that it is quite possible for war to break out without much further notice. At the same time he believes that there will be very strong forces to prevent such an event. The Kaiser this week told the world that the peace would never, please God, be disturbed; but he spoke more particularly to reconciled Alsace and Lorrain-. THE PRESIDING ORACLE.

1 On top of all these statements conu-e i the most important pronouncement of all, that of Prince von Bulow, the lin- ' perial German Chancellor. He has been , regarded for years as the man through whom must come in the end the maiu- ' festations of the Emperor's desir*, whether for peace or war, and the statement which he lias made in conversation with a correspondent of the Standard is consequently of supreme importance. Stripped of verbiage and irrelevancy, the statement is a plain, straight-forward one. Prince Bulow deplored at the outset the exaggerated importance attached by many of the news-reading public to remarks made by highly-placed personages, without proper regard being paid to the circumstances under which they arc made. He looks upon the animosity hetween England and Germany as little short of a species of madness, which, if persisted in, can only lead to endless mischief in both countries for the sole benefit of the terti gaudentes. He is most anxious to do all in his power to put an- end to it, but in this respect bis power is necessarily much restricted. With regard to naval aggression, it,would be much more excusable if Germany were the one to fear attack by the other. GERMANY'S DARK BACKGROUND. He says:—"You (the English) have never known an invasion since the time of William the Conqueror, and I can assure you, not for the first time, and not as' German Chancellor, but as one gentleman, to another, that nobody of any sense or influence in Germany dreams of picking a quarrel with England, much less of such an insane idea as invading But for us Germans there is far more tangible reason for apprehension, through our exposed geographical position, let alone our dark historical background. It is only a hundred years ago that this very spot on which we stand formed a-part of a French department. The ' towns of Bremen, Lubeek, and Hamburg, were 'nos bonnes villes de Bremen, Lubeek, et Hambourg,' under the sway of the French empire. Eleven young Prussian officers were tried by court-martial and shot at Wesel for defending their own country. In other • words, our people have s'till a vivid historical consciousness of national disaster and disgrace, against a recurrence of which our army is our onlv safeguard." THE VOLATILE ENGLISH. The Chancellor goes on to say that Germans were accustomed to associate with the French character such outbursts of excitability as had lately appeared in the British press, but since the war of 1870 the French had been much more sensible in such matters. The'spirit of suspicion and hate disclosed in a certain article in the Quarterly Review was. hardly leas intense in its "animosity towards Germany than sundrv diatribes of Emile de Giradin and Edmund About just prior, to the outbreak of the war with France in 1870. "It is quite a revelation to in", continues the Chancellor, "to a steady and sterling people like the English give vav to such sentiments as are evident here, and we can only hr.pe and trust to the political genius Uncommon sense of the English people, to rectify this morbid feeling of their own independent volition." FORGETS THE HEREROS.

Prince Bulow, continuing his ciiticisMi of the article in the Quarterly Reivew, says he was astonished to find in a hidi-class and influential periodical such

uncalled-for hostility, misrepresentation and ignorance of German affairs. As for the German army being the terror of Europe, he says:-"Germany, as you well know, is the only one of the flre.it Powers which has waged no war for the last thirty-seven years. Tn the course of this period Italy has lieen at war with Abyssinia, the United Sta.*s with Spain, Russia with the Japanese. France in Tunis. Tonkin and Madagascar. England I need scarcely refer I" in detail. But. somehow" or other, people take upon themselves to make assertions with regard to us which they would not dream of making in the ease of other countries." The Chancellor forgets all about Germany's dep'orable and protracted campaign- against the Hereros, and Germany's part in the sack of Pekin_by the Allies. THE GRABBING OF TERRITORY. A certain German writer, Heinnck von Treitschke, is said to have stated that the British Empire had been created largely at the expense of Germany. PriiieVTßulow considers this non-ense—-not onlv since Treitschke is a warm idnii'rer oTtne English people, but in face of the bald fact that "England is the one country which possesses no territory whatever that once belonged to Germany, particularly that the little island of Heligoland has now come back to Germany. The British Empire, on tho other hand, includes possessions which once did belong to several other countries, such as France, Holland, Portu-

gal, and Spain. Far from Treitschke having been imbued with hatred of I England, the very reverse is the ease."| THE NAVAL BUGBEAR. But the statement that most roused the ridicule of the Chancellor was one that in a certain number of years EngI land will only have a slight margin of

supremacy over Germany. "Yes,"* rejoined the distinguished German, with impatience, " in two hun- . dred years, and not even then." , It i- untrue, the Chancellor says that

the German navy is being increased with accelerated rapidity. All the | battleships now in course of construe-1 tion are merely substitutes, though naturally of a superior class, for the ami-1 quated ships of the Sachsen and Sieg-| fried V-'lass, which never deserved the name of battleships. It is untrue that new and larger naval programmes are being brought forward. The cruisers

whicl. apprar in the schedule of 11)00 were already provided for in 1000, but fur special ' reasons their construction was delayed, f u reducing the life of id battleship Germany had only folluw-d other nations in meeting the demands' of modern technical conditions. It had.

moreover, been stated in the House nt Comnions that the British Admiralty estimated the life of a battleship at not more than fifteen years. \s for the complaints. that had boon made of the strength of the flernum yiottenverein, Prince Bulow said it must not be forgotten that the mercantile marine of Germany was the second largest in the world, and as (iermaii interests beyond the seas amounted 0 £8(10,000,000, there was naturally a .troii" desire to have a navy proportionately strong to protect her commerce 'The Hermans inclined naturally to the formation of leagues on the slightest provocation for all manner of purposes, and if one thing more thin another could have contributed towards the flourishing of the Flottenverein, 1 was the constant nagging attention 1. had received at the hands of the Knglisli '"""woM-H WAR IIF.KHHT.AII; Prince. Billow declares emphationlh

that there is no foundation «'»<<<•.■;;<"' for the statement that Orinan hostility to England becomes stronger by compression, and that a «'ar with England, would be the most popular war Gorman} vol- u-i»ed Ho cannot understand whv the" Knglisli take serioii-dy certain | reprehensible cartoons in fiernian comic papers while the infinitely «}<«<■ ™* production- of 1-e Tim-. «' 1...-1. 1- - .nelllv on the French boiileiai.N. ale em.rt. he -iul. personally expressed lo Count Herbert Bismarck the gml.timo of Inland to bis father lor the loyal ,„.„„,;,■ i„ which Germany had cd English aims in Kgypt.

The Inst sentence marked by Prince Bulow in the article referred to was this: " Heedless Chauvinism will not avail England." And the Chancellor had written in blue pencil in the margin: "In dcm ganzen lugcn-gowebe und chaos von bloodsinn das einzige riclitige." (The only correct statement in this mesh of falsehood and chaos of nonsense").