It is fairly evident that the present German Government understands this frame of mind quite clearly, and is extremely anxious to keep it from the knowledge of the German peoples.  Every act or word from a British source that suggests an implacable enmity against the Germans as a people, every war-time caricature and insult, is brought to their knowledge.  It is the manifest interest of the Hohenzollerns and Prussianism to make this struggle a race struggle and not merely a political struggle, and to keep a wider breach between the peoples than between the Governments.  The “Made in Germany” grievance has been used to the utmost against Great Britain as an indication of race hostility.  The everyday young German believes firmly that it was a blow aimed specially at Germany; that no such regulation affected any goods but German goods.  And the English, with their characteristic heedlessness, have never troubled to disillusion him.  But even the British caricaturist and the British soldier betray their fundamental opinion of the matter in their very insults.  They will not use a word of abuse for the Germans as Germans; they call them “Huns,” because they are thinking of Attila, because they are thinking of them as invaders under a monarch of peaceful France and Belgium, and not as a people living in a land of their own.

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.” ...