Their world-wide experience it is, perhaps, which has made the English quick to appreciate the virtues of other peoples.  I have never known an Englishman who travelled in Russia without falling in love with the Russian people.  I have never heard a German speak of the Russian people without contempt and dislike.  Indeed the Germans are so unable to see any charm in that profound and humane people that they believe that the English liking for them must be an insincere pretence, put forward for wicked or selfish reasons.  What would they say if they saw a sight that is common in Indian towns, a British soldier and a Gurkha arm in arm, rolling down the street in cheerful brotherhood?  And how is it that it has never occurred to any of them that this sort of brotherhood has its value in Empire-building?  The new German political doctrine has bidden farewell to Christianity, but there are some political advantages in Christianity which should not be overlooked.  It teaches human beings to think of one another and to care for one another.  It is an antidote to the worst and most poisonous kind of political stupidity.

Another thing that the Germans will have to learn for the welfare of their much-talked Empire is the value of the lone man.  The architects and builders of the British Empire were all lone men.  Might is Right; but when a young Englishman is set down at an outpost of Empire to govern a warlike tribe, he has to do a good deal of hard thinking on the problem of political power and its foundations.  He has to trust to himself, to form his own conclusions, and to choose his own line of action.  He has to try to find out what is in the mind of others.  A young German, inured to skilled slavery, does not shine in such a position.  Man for man, in all that asks for initiative and self-dependence, Englishmen are the better men, and some Germans know it.  There is an old jest that if you settle an Englishman and a German together in a new country, at the end of a year you will find the Englishman governor, and the German his head clerk.  A German must know the rules before he can get to work.

More than three hundred years ago a book was written in England which is in some ways a very exact counterpart to General von Bernhardi’s notorious treatise.  It is called Tamburlaine, and, unlike its successor, is full of poetry and beauty.  Our own colonization began with a great deal of violent work, and much wrong done to others.  We suffered for our misdeeds, and we learned our lesson, in part at least.  Why, it may be asked, should not the Germans begin in the same manner, and by degrees adapt themselves to the new task?  Perhaps they may, but if they do, they cannot claim the Elizabethans for their model.  Of all men on earth the German is least like the undisciplined, exuberant Elizabethan adventurer.  He is reluctant to go anywhere without a copy of the rules, a guarantee of support, and a regular pension.  His outlook is as prosaic as General von Bernhardi’s or General von der Golt’s own, and that is saying a great deal.  In all the German political treatises there is an immeasurable dreariness.  They lay down rules for life, and if they be asked what makes such a life worth living they are without any hint of an answer.  Their world is a workhouse, tyrannically ordered, and full of pusillanimous jealousies.