28th Dec.
Unper the above heading a writer in a recent number of the British Review asks a question which is very pertinent at the present time: "What is the meaning of the abuse lavished on England by the German Press?" He shows that it must not be believed, though there is a strong belief to that effect in England, that the German Press as a.whole relies for its inspiration on the government. he leading newspapers in Austria and Germany as in England are very prosperous concerns, written with great ability, well supplied with telegraphic and other news, and deriving their profit from their sale and their advertisements, not from any Government subsidy. "'I'his being so, we, may take it for granted that the German papers as a body are not likely to join in an organised vituperation of England and England's policy, unless they felt convinced that systematic attacks on this country would, to say the least, not be distasteful to their public."
'The writer goes on to ask why, then, German' sentiment is unfavourable to England. We cav cordially agree with all his reasons why Germany and England should be good friends in the present and future as in the past. Tu institutions, in religious, political, and social ideas, as well as in race and language, Germany and England are more nearly akin to each other than either of riem is to any other European nation, Germans, as we are all aware, are the only foreigners who become really Anglicised by residence in England; and though the English residents in' the Fatherland are relatively few in number compared with the German sojourners in England, they adapt themselves to German life fur more easily than they do to that of other countries." We English residents in China need no outside assurance of the readiness with which Germans and English amalgamate when brought into contact. {0 Hongkong and in every treaty port we are always working shoulder to shoulder in business as well as in our hours of recreation, and most of us have as valued friends among Germans as among our own fellow-countrymen, 'To most of us out here, if not to all, the attacks of the German Press on England and the English Press on' Germany—for there are, of course, two sides to the picture—are as -mnoaccountable as they are unreasonable. The keenest competition in business happily does not necessarily carry with it avy personal dislike to our competitors, The writer in the British Review rapi does not hesitate to say that the normal feeling of the British public is one of genuine goodwill towards Germeny, and he holds that it is a not "unnatural feeling of jealousy that prevents this feeling being reciprocated. "The English nation is strangely blind to the fact that the power, the prestige, the naval supremacy, the fre institutions of England, her immunity from revolution, and her insular security, are all causes up of new ones. At present in the British possessions all over the world the German manufacturer has precisely the same chances as the English, but the ill-considered babble in England of Imperial Zollvereins and Protective of offence to our neighbours."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.