CULTURE, TRUE AND FALSE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 177, 5 January 1915, Page 4

CULTURE, TRUE AND FALSE.

GERMANY'S PARADOXICAL. An interesting address On German culture —the real and the false—was given'l by Sir William Mather at Stockport, in his capacity as president of the Lancashire and Cheshire 'Union of Institutes. Sir William addressed himself to the paradoxical position of Germany, which, he said, had led the world in educational progress and in scientific research, and had set an example from which every nation in the world had benefited enormously, and yet to-day, by actions utterly antagonistic to her devotion to learning and culture, had shocked the whole civilised world and would make us despair of the world's future if wo had not to sustain us the spirit of the liber-ty-enjoying Anglo-Saxon race. Wliat had intervened to render the German nation at this very moment an object of universal obloquy and censure? It was not education. It was not culture. He was particularly anxious at this time that they should not give the slightest encouragement to the cry that seemed to be in danger of coming, "You see what 'culture' means! Look at Germany, the most cultured nation, and her conduct, , which has put her into the lowest position among civilised nations.' The duty lof English educationalists was now to 1 exalt the name of education and culture, and to lift it up from association with all that was diabolical and abominable and wrong and restore it to its proper place in the higher life of the nation. It was from his early life in Germany that he first got his passionate love for education as being the remedy by which every evil known to man could be overcome. There was in the German development the spirit of self-seeking, of domination, of despotism, autocracy, and uncontrolled desire to rule not only their own people, but the whole world by the willpower of their military oligarchy. Frederick the Great was the chief cause of sowing the tares of Prussian militarism in the fiejd of German intellectual growth. Frederick had left the following tenets to his people:—"lf possible, the Powers of Europe should be made envious for a coup when the opportunity arises." "Examples of broken treaties are fre'quent. If a ruler is obliged to sacrifice his own person for the welfare of his subjects, he is all the more obliged to sacrifice treaty engagements, the continuation of which would be harmful to his country. Is it better that' a nation should perish or that a sovereign should break a treaty?" "Don't be ashamed of. making interested alliances from which ( you yourself can derive the whole advantage." "Don't make the foolish mis- ■ take of not breaking them' when you believe your interests require it." Above all uphold the following maxim:—'To despoil your neighbors is to deprive them j of tlie means of injuring you.'" "When ! he is about to conclude a treaty with a foreign Power, if a sovereign remembers that he is a Christian lie is lost." The tares had borne fruit, but the harvest 1 was now being reaped by the harvesters of the world, and the tares would be ripped out and separated from the wheat of culture, and in the end the cause of righteousness would prevail