The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1915-01-31
! of Bernhardi, though he might prac-

| of Bernhard, though he might prac-
| tice it.
As the peacock tail achieves its splen-
doris without pigment, so Britain has
achieved her empire without imperialism.
Absent mindedy she has acquired a fifth
of the globe, laundering, as Joseph Cham
berlain pointed out. into some of the best
parts of the earth. and impeaching her
empire builders as often as she rewarded
them. Give, Warren Hastings Rhodes
were all censured in the House of Com
mons.
1t took an outsider, Disraeli, even to
discover the empire, and all Chamber
lan's exhortations to think imperially
broke themselves against an invincibe
nsularity. Only yesterday a powerful
section painted to cut away our colonies,
those colonies for which Germany would
battle the world in blood. 1t may be
urged that subconsciousness SO deep
amounts to stupidity. But prefer BRAIN
less Britain to Goddess Germany.
This is not to deny that Britain pos
sesses conscious militarist minority. es-
pecially in the shape of poets physically
disqualified. like the lame schoolmaster
Tyrtaeus, from military service.
Machiavellian foreign policy imagined
by the continent is myth. 1t was not
even continuous till Hardings came to the
foreign office to carry out the Edwardian
plan of isolating Germany and this policy
was merely defensive and apprehensive.
1t is Germany that has refused Mr..
Churchill's reiterated overtures to reduce
ornaments. Her responsibility for the
present war is as clear to everybody
except Mr.. Shaw-as her surprise at Eng
lands taking a hand in it. Irritated by
the attempt to paint Germany as a wolf
and England as a lamb Mr.. Shaw paints
England as a lion, with Germany, ap-
parently, as the lamb. In truth, Eng
land Is a gorged lion and Germany a
hungry wolf. The one wants repose, the
other blood
Subconsciously as John Bull acquired
his empire, he is morbidly conscious of
any attempt to rob him of a single sterile
inch, and like the old squire whose
aneestnrs have annexed common land, he
regards any examination of his title
asphemous The Prussian
junker appears to him a land grabbing
paivenu. But it must be admitted that
the satisfaction of his tenantry-their
readiness to die for hints almost a
retrospective justification for his pro-
pictorial paternalism.
That Germany might we'll be conceded
some of his uninhabited land is a propo-
stion the Daily Chronicle allowed me to
make in London in 1918, and the Neue
rreie Fresse III VIENNA But the Berl1ner
Tagebiatt would not print it because of
the 'corollary that Germany in her turn
must give back Alsace and Lorraine.
If force is thus markedly proclaimed as
the sole arbiter-if the Germans indorse
Herr Harden's dithyrambs on the will
to power'-then no theoretical justifica-
ton. no titanic grandeurs of effort or
sacrifice can cleanse Germany from the
guilt of high treason against mankind
For Germany can catch up with Britain
only by rolling back the planet And
tEat involves rolling 1t back to a bar
barism that combines the era of the cave
men with the latest deviries of science.
Vain for Germany to cry that it Is Rus
STA which is the enemy of civilization
The Cossack is only wild beast; the
German is willful beast
The Briton is a beast neither by nature
nor by design.