by the philosopher Fichte in 1808, when his country was under the heel of Napoleon.  They are not speeches at all, but philosophical lucubrations, discussing in abstract terms the whole subject of the nature of patriotism and of Germany’s right to exist as a nation.  One argument, for instance, on which he lays great stress, is that Germany is marked out to be a great political power because of the peculiar excellence of the German language, which he shows to his satisfaction to be superior to French, Italian, and other Latin languages.  Again, he points out that there is no word in the German language for “character” (Karakter), a word borrowed from the Greek; the reason is, he explains, that there is no need for one, because to have character and to be German are the same thing—­a curious foretaste of the German arrogance of to-day.  Yet these speeches, which, issued in England at such a crisis, would have found no readers, reverberated through Germany and helped to create the self-confident spirit which freed her from the invader.  Then, as now, under the inspiration of ideas which they had accepted from professors and philosophers, Germans fought for the German language and for German culture.  But whereas in 1814 they fought to preserve them, in 1914 they are fighting to impose them.

Just as patriotism in Germany is wholly different from what it is in England, so also is democracy, and all those elements in the national life which feed and sustain it.  British democracy does not depend upon our popular franchise or on any legal rights or enactments.  It depends upon the free spirit and self-respect of the British people.  We have been accustomed for centuries to the unrestrained discussion of public affairs; and we treat our governors as being in fact, as they are in name, our “ministers” or servants.  There is a force called public opinion which, slow though it may be to assert itself, British statesmen have been taught by experience to respect.  It is as true of British as it is of American democracy that “you can fool half the people all the time; and you can fool all the people half the time; but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  But the German people, as a people, lacks this irreplaceable heritage of political self-respect.  It has never yet dared to tread the path of democracy without leading strings.  It has not yet learned to think for itself in politics, or formed the habit of free discussion and practical criticism of public affairs.  This is the vital fact which must be borne in mind in all comparisons between German and British democracy.  The Germans have a Parliament, elected by Universal Male Suffrage.  But this Parliament is powerless to control policy, because the nation behind it does not give it sufficient support.  It is because of the absence of the driving force of a public opinion in Germany that the German people submit complacently to the infringements on political liberty which form part of the normal regime of German life—­the