GERMAN HATRED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1941, Page 3

GERMAN HATRED

FEELINGS TOWARDS BRITAIN.

Relying on personal observations of Germany and the German people, the Earl of Onslow in a letter to “The Times” raises a protest against the idea that Britain's conflict with Germany is merely one with Hitlerism and Nazism, and to say that this particular creed is in.no way new. I first began to reside in Germany in 1894, he writes, and lived practically entirely with Germans, who spoke to me with the utmost freedom about the relations between England and Germany. They made no disguise of their hatred toward us, not personally—for they were civil enough to me—but nationally. They explained the reason at length. They felt that during the Napoleonic wars Germany had had to bear the brunt of the fighting with France, although they recognised that we also contributed to the final victory, but whereas we, during those wars and in the eighteenth century and later, amassed a large section of the vacant space in the earth, Germany got nothing. In the seventies, when Germany had become united after the war and the Germans looked out of the window upon the world, they saw all the best places on the earth taken up by the English, Canada, South Africa, East and West Africa, the West Indies, Malaya, Australia, India, New Zealand were under the British flag; the Red Sea and the Mediterranean were dominated by the British Navy; our influence extended over the Persian Gulf, and, as if that were not enough, an English-speaking race dominated the whole of North America. And so the Germans hated us with a bitter hatred and still do. They think we have done them out of their share of the earth. The idea of ousting us certainly does not emanate from Hitler. It was as strong in Germany 50 years ago as it'*is today, so that we should not look upon the Germans as a friendly race to ourselves, temporarily dominated by a gang of wicked men, but recognise the fact that Germany is our bitterest enemy, and the issue has now to be fought out to a finish.