What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the WarWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the War
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
World War, 1914-1918; World politics
In Great Britain there is to this day so little hostility for Germans as
such, that recently a nephew of Lord Haldane's, Sir George Makgill, has
considered it advisable to manufacture race hostility and provide the
Hohenzollerns with instances and quotations through the exertions of a
preposterous Anti-German League. Disregarding the essential evils of the
Prussian idea, this mischievous organisation has set itself to persuade
the British people that the Germans are diabolical _as a race_. It has
displayed great energy and ingenuity in pestering and insulting
naturalised Germans and people of German origin in Britain--below the
rank of the Royal Family, that is--and in making enduring bad blood
between them and the authentic British. It busies itself in breaking up
meetings at which sentiments friendly to Germany might be expressed,
sentiments which, if they could be conveyed to German hearers, would
certainly go far to weaken the determination of the German social
democracy to fight to the end.
There can, of course, be no doubt of the good faith of Sir George
Makgill, but he could do the Kaiser no better service than to help in
consolidating every rank and class of German, by this organisation of
foolish violence of speech and act, by this profession of an irrational
and implacable hostility. His practical influence over here is trivial,
thanks to the general good sense and the love of fair play in our
people, but there can be little doubt that his intentions are about as
injurious to the future peace of the world as any intentions could be,
and there can be no doubt that intelligent use is made in Germany of the
frothings and ravings of his followers. "Here, you see, is the
disposition of the English," the imperialists will say to the German
pacifists. "They are dangerous lunatics. Clearly we must stick together
to the end." ...
The stuff of Sir George Makgill's league must not be taken as
representative of any considerable section of British opinion, which is
as a whole nearly as free from any sustained hatred of the Germans as it
was at the beginning of the war. There are, of course, waves of
indignation at such deliberate atrocities as the _Lusitania_ outrage or
the Zeppelin raids, Wittenberg will not easily be forgotten, but it
would take many Sir George Makgills to divert British anger from the
responsible German Government to the German masses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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