OUR GUESTS OF LAST YEAR.

Madame Braun, I regret to say, was ill and absent from Berlin. Dr. Müller-Furer, of the Kreuz Zeitung, we also missed, much to our regret. But there were very few who came to England whom we did not rejoice to meet again in their own land. I was simply overwhelmed by the gratitude and enthusiasm expressed by our visitors when they spoke of their visits to Windsor, to Stratford, to Cambridge; and many and affectionate were the inquiries after Mr. Weinthal, whose absence from the party was as universal a subject of regret in Germany as it ought to be a matter of shame to a certain London clique.

The success achieved by this first effort at a better understanding encourages a kindlier estimate of human nature. There is an old story which describes how a bitter feud between two schools was ended. The boys serious used to pelt each other with stones, and many injuries were inflicted. But one happy day it occurred to one school to substitute apples for stones, and from that day the quarrel ceased. Last year we began to pelt the Germans with apples, and now they pelted us with peaches.

HOW WE WERE ENTERTAINED.

From everyone, from the Kaiser on his war-horse down to the villagers on Lake Chiemsee, we heard everywhere the same story, the same hearty assurance of kindly welcome. Whatever we did in England last year the Germans did this year, and did it better. And they did other things of which we had not thought. We did not provide them with three special opera performances, we did not improvise village festivals, or have fair maidens pelt them with roses as they sat at lunch. They gave

Kladderadatsch.]

us portfolios in which to store our newspaper cuttings, and heaped souvenirs upon us wherever we went. Steamers and buildings were beflagged in our honour, cannon thundered salutes. Choral societies, hundreds strong, sang to us as we went down the Rhine. A picked quartette sang us songs of the Lorelei. Military bands played by the hour, brazen trumpets sounded martial fanfares in our honour, and at Hamburg the square in front of the Rathhaus, where we dined, was illuminated with coloured fire. The King of Saxony received us, and lunched us in his castle at Pillnitz; the Prince Regent of Bavaria received us in the Schloss at Munich.. The Imperial Chancellor devoted two hours to receiving us at a garden party. Courtiers and Ministers, burgomasters, and Chambers of Commerce vied with each other in doing us But nothing touched us more than the honour. rustic welcome which we received from the villages at Prien and at Stock, on Lake Chiemsee. It was so simple, so hearty, so delightfully unconventional and sincere.

A GLORIFIED PICNIC.

The picnic side of the visit came out almost to the exclusion of politics at Dresden, Munich, and on the Rhine. As for the dining and the wining, I prefer to let those speak who are connoisseurs, which I am not -preferring a glass of good Löwenbräu to the famous vintages of Rhine and of Moselle which were lavished upon us. The beauty of the decorations at Munich was in keeping with the reputation of the art capital of Germany. From Bremen to Köln we passed through a succession of wonderful Rathhauses, of which everyone had a distinct character of its own. We visited Goethe's house at Frankfort, were

taken to the Dom, the only church in the programme, we had a musical free and easy, a kind of smoking concert and supper, in the Reichstag, and a mid-day review at Potsdam; were shown over the charming palace of the late Empress Frederick at Friedrichshof, were whirled over the motor race track near Homburg at forty miles an hour, were taken round the most interesting restoration of a Roman frontier fortified camp that I have ever seen, and at last, after a breathless fortnight in which, a good German said, "It is difficult to see where you find time to wash your faces," the visit came to an end.

ON THE RHINE.

The jolliest, rollicking excursion of all was that on the Rhine, when the two fair nieces of the Burgomaster of Coblentz came on board, and added by their gaiety and beauty to the charm of the day.

One of the surprises of the visit was when a high-class concert of instrumental music of an hour's duration was interposed between us and dinner at the Rathhaus in Cologne. At intervals during dinner and after dinner the male Gesangverein sang German songs. One of the customs new to us was that of interposing toasts and speeches between courses, instead of waiting till the dinner was over before beginning speechmaking. It is a very good practice when the speeches are short, and a very bad one when they are long.

THE GERMAN NEWSPAPER OFFICES.

The newspaper offices which we visited impressed us all with the ample and airy accommodation provided for everybody, from the editor to the stokers. The new offices of the Münchner Neuesten Nachrichten were a journalistic palace. An English editor-proprietor said as he left, "I have just rebuilt my premises. I feel ashamed to put my foot inside my new building now I see what the Germans are doing." Very interesting also were the offices of the Lokal Anzeiger in Berlin, which some of us visited. At the Kölnische Zeitung we were magnificently entertained by the proprietor, and conducted in two parties through the whole of the wonderfully complete premises, which may be called the Printing House Square of Germany.

IMPRESSIONS OF GERMANY.

On the whole the German cities which we visited were a revelation to many of us. For my own part, coming fresh from the inconceivably bad pavement and unkempt streets of America, I was immensely impressed by the clearness of the air, the absence of smoke and grime, the neatness of the houses, the absence of squalor, and the municipalisation of everything. When I reflected upon the soot and smoke and grime and general untidiness of some of our manufacturing towns, I felt as if on leaving Germany I were returning to a rabble of dirty barbarians pigging together in smoky hovels.

A FRANCO-BRITISH-GERMAN REUNIÓN.

After the visit was over I came home by the Hague. At Scheveningen I met Mr. B. Goldbeck, who gave me a copy of a letter which he wrote to the Times in October, 1905, appealing to the editor to take the lead in promoting an Anglo-German reconciliation. The Times did not respond-did not even insert the letter, but it may be worth while reproducing Mr. Goldbeck's suggestion here :—

And why not give a tangible form to such initiative in convening an International conference of journalists, at which the political representatives of the most prominent English, French and German papers would be invited to assemble, with a view to endeavouring to remove the existing antagonism, the numerous misunderstandings and all these stale and erroneous opinions of bygone days, each and all of them so prejudicial to the universal harmony. Is there any reasonable obstacle to the organisation of such a conference, and, on the other hand, would a meeting of men of such high culture and intellect not offer every chance of success?

IN PRAISE OF THE GERMAN ARMY.

I conclude this very rapid and discursive summary of the impressions of a most delightful tour by quoting the speech I made at the Chamber of Commerce, Berlin, in praise of the German army :

It is much pleasanter to exchange compliments than insults, and our relations with each other will not suffer if we tried to see the best there is in each of us, instead of constantly dwelling upon that which we most dislike. I will try to practise what I preach, and so, as a peace advocate and a sworn enemy of militarism, I have thought it my duty to devote my speech to the praise of the German army. I admire that army more than all the armies of the world. And for this reason. It is the only army in the world which for the last thirty-five years has never been employed in the hideous work of war. Within that period all other armies have let loose Hell on earth. The German army has kept the peace. And if I love the German army because I love armies that are not used in the battlefield, so I find in my love of the Germany army another reason for loving peace. One of your Prussian Kings is credited with the saying, "I hate war. It spoils my soldiers." So when I think of that marvellous monument of human skill and national sacrifice, the German army, I feel as I do when I survey the British fleet-I shrink with horror from the thought of exposing it to the certainty of injury-the possibility of destruction on the battlefield. Of course, I do not deny that armies and fleets must in case of the last necessity be prepared to go forth cheerfully even to certain doom, but all that I plead for is that they should be regarded as much too valuable an investment of national capital to be exposed to risk of destruction until the most careful and painstaking efforts have been made to ascertain whether there may not be some more rational, some more humane mode of settling the difficulty than by staking the naval and military assets of the nation on the gaming table of war.

STEPS TOWARDS THE FEDERATION OF THE WORLD.

I end as I began, by paying my respects to the German army. I admire it because it has rendered unnecessary the maintenance of any other army within the limits of the German Empire. Nothing gives me more delight than to see how the old fortifications, necessary at a time when one German State fought against another, have been replaced by beautiful parks and pleasure gardens, wherein your children play in peace and gladness. To me it is a prophecy of what is coming when the armed anarchy of a world split up into forty-six sovereign and independent States becomes a single great federation with but one army and one navy to maintain order and enforce the law. Nothing im pressed me more during this visit than the sight of the Bismarck monument at Hamburg. There stands the giant keeping eternal watch and ward over the sea-gate of the great Empire which he helped to found. He was no Peace hero, but a man of war from his youth up. But he was the instrument chosen to fulfil the prayer of your national song

Dear Fatherland, sweet Peace be thine.

By his statesmanship the frontiers fringed with cannon disappeared from within the limits of the Fatherland. No longer now German seeks to take the life of his brother German. What Bismarck did for Germany some still greater Bismarck has yet to do for the entire human family.

WHY NOT AN ANGLO-GERMAN ENTENTE?

BY SIR KINLOCH-COOKE AND OTHERS.

SIR CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKE writes in the Empire Review in enthusiastic terms of the English editors' visit to Germany, and the treatment accorded the visitors by persons of every degree, from the Kaiser down to the poorest peasant. He speaks very strongly in praise of the value of the interchange of visits between the two countries in dispelling misunderstandings and creating better feeling, and he concludes by advocating another entente cordiale-that of Great Britain and Germany.

A FEELING OF GOOD FELLOWSHIP.

As to the genuine feeling of good-will in Germany towards this country he has returned with no doubt whatever. He says:—

It was open to us to ask what questions we liked of anyone and everyone, and I know many of us seized the opportunity that awaited us. No views were pressed upon us. We put our own questions, and without hesitation the answers were given. At least, that was my own experience. I speak of things as I found them, and all I can say is that from first to last the keynote of every speech and every conversation was friendliness to this country. That there is a genuine feeling of good fellowship on the part of the German Government I have no doubt whatever, and that this feeling is equally strong throughout the country I can testify with the same confidence.

None of the party is ever likely to forget the warmth of the popular reception which greeted them as they steamed up the river from Dresden and down the Rhine from Coblentz to Cologne.

THE FOLLY OF A POLICY OF PIN-PRICKS.

A greater misunderstanding than that Germany desires to pick a quarrel with us, he says, there could not be. It is to the interest of both nations that any such erroneous impression should be dispelled with as little delay as possible, and he ventures to recommend a still further exchange of visits as the best means to accomplish this most desirable end. He protests strongly against the folly of a continuance of a policy of pin-pricks :

A foreign policy of pin-pricks is a fatal policy; at the beginning it may pass unnoticed, but, as in the case of Great Britain and Germany, if pursued it must lead to misunderstandings, and, unchecked, it may have even more disastrous consequences. I would, therefore, invite those of my countrymen who seem to see wrong in every step taken by Germany which does not exactly accord with their own views to consider the case in all its bearings, and to be just if not generous to the aims and aspirations of a nation which, like ourselves, is actively engaged in promoting civilisation in distant parts, encouraging the progress of the world's commerce and the spread of educational influence at home.

Sir Clement Kinloch-Cooke rejoices at the forthcoming visit of the German Emperor as likely to place an official seal upon the improved relations

between the two peoples. It only remains, he says, for the newspapers of both countries to do their part. OUR FRENCH ENTENTE NO BAR.

MR. EDWARD DICEY in his chronique of foreign affairs in the Empire Review is equally emphatic as to the necessity of arriving at a good understanding with Germany. Recent events, he says, have tended to dispel in our country the notion of hostility between Great Britain and Germany, propagated by the French Press, and supported by a section of our British Press, which derives its information about Germany from Parisian correspondents :—

On our side the British public have begun to perceive that our entente cordiale with France, though popular with this country, might easily lead us into a difficult position if any attempt were made to exaggerate its importance.

We must not allow our philo-French sympathies to impair our friendship with Germany. We have no intention or desire of isolating Germany either in Europe or elsewhere, and he welcomes the forthcoming visit of the Kaiser to England as being more likely to convince the German public of England's desire for friendship than any number of diplomatic

assurances :

It is an instance of his Majesty the King's great knowledge of foreign politics and of his close acquaintance with foreign courts that he should have selected the present moment to invite his Imperial nephew to pay him a visit at Windsor Castle. And if, as there is every reason to believe, this royal visit should take place shortly, it will do much more than any number of International Conferences to establish permanent friendly relations between our respective countries, and to remove an impression in the German mind that the treaties recently concluded between England and Spain and between France and Spain for the mutual protection of their possessions in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic were dictated by hostility to Germany. The impression is utterly erroneous. But it is not absolutely unreasonable from a German point of view.

A NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION OF GOOD-WILL. MR. SIDNEY Low and Mr. Bunting, writing in the Contemporary Review, bear equally emphatic witness to the cordiality of German friendship. "That we were the objects," says Mr. Low, "of popular, unforced, unaffected, perfectly genuine and spontaneous exhibitions of friendship, not one of our company would deny." He replies to those carping critics who say that this was all due to official "inspiration," that even on that assumption the demonstration of good-will and the desire to be on friendly terms were highly significant. The Kaiser did "all that a great gentleman" could do to convince them that he was cordially glad to see them. Does anybody imagine that the splendid popular demonstration at Cologne was "inspired"? he pertinently asks. "Could you gather ten thousand or twenty thousand people in front of Victoria Station because the Foreign Office wished to impress a party of foreign visitors?"

All this talk about a "trap" seems to him extremely ridiculous:

If a

It assumes not only that the Germans are scoundrels, but that the English are fools. No one supposes that the fixed lines either of German or of English policy will be altered by ceremonies and civilities. But the misunderstanding, of which we have heard so much, is due mainly to a vague distrust. man keeps on saying that he knows you do not like him, that you regard him with envy, hatred and uncharitableness, what better course can you adopt than to ask him to your house, entertain him hospitably, treat him generally as you would an old and favoured friend? If, after all this, he goes away growling that he is quite sure you are only pretending, and that in your heart you hate him worse than ever, you would be quite justified in dismissing him as a wrong-headed fellow with whom there is no reasoning. German officialdom, from the highest official of all, did certainly evince marked friendliness to us, and we have no right to regard this conduct as a base, and also a peculiarly absurd, plot.

QUENCHING THE FIREBRANDS.

Will any permanent results ensue from this striking manifestation of international good-will? That, he replies, depends mainly upon the Press, and to an especial degree upon the Press of Great Britain. The "misunderstandings" of recent years have been mainly due to nonentities on one side of the sea making too much of nonentities on the other. This is a field in which real service might be done by the responsible persons charged with the control of our great newspapers :—

They might insist that their readers should be properly instructed as to the real quality, character, and significance of the anti-English and anti-German writings and speeches brought to their attention; and they might well omit to bring to their attention at all those which represent nothing but the vanity and folly or the malignity of quite obscure individuals.

Mr. Low protests against the ridiculous practice of supposing that everything printed in a German newspaper is "inspired." It would, indeed, be easier to work the British Press than the German owing to its excessive concentration in London. Instead of pinpricking and irritating the Germans, he concludes, let us try to understand them and enter into their feelings.

A POLICY OF CLOSE FRIENDSHIP.

In

To all this Mr. Bunting adds a hearty amen. the future, he says, it is clear that our policy is friendship, close friendship, without bitter Press attacks or blind suspicions. Let us take counsel together, he urges, and be friends. We have ourselves settled matters with France and Spain, and hope to do so with Russia; let us include Germany in the bond. The great mass of the German people, as well as the German Government, have shown that they are very wishful, and even anxious, to be on good terms with England. The reception accorded to the English editors was a great demonstration of friendship. Mr. Bunting, like all the other members of the party, was deeply impressed by the evidence he saw of the greatness of the German people :

Not their mere economic advance, though the evidences of that leap to the eyes of the most casual tourist on every hand. Much more than that: it is the strength and determination with

which they have taken in hand those problems of city life with which we ourselves are beginning to struggle. Their municipalities are whole decades in advance of ours; the good order, the cleanliness, the intelligence of their town populations are manifest even in the external aspect of the towns. Municipal trading, municipal ownership, municipal control over land and public services are conspicuous, and conspicuously successful; they are the commonplaces of town life.

THREE FACTORS OF SUSPICION.

Mr. A. G. Gardiner, Editor of the Daily News, writing in the Albany Review, says :

"If official Germany was attentive, popular Germany was enthusiastic in the highest degree. Our progress through Saxony, Bavaria, and down the Rhine had all the circumstances of a great popular festival. No one who witnessed it could doubt the generous warmth of the German people towards England and the English.

At the same time, Mr. Gardiner found a certain suspicion of Great Britain universal and deep-rooteda conviction that this country is actively and definitely unfriendly to Germany. The factors of this suspicion are, first, the incendiary Press in the two countries, a factitious Press campaign which has no popular backing; second, the feeling that King Edward is the executive officer of the British people and the inspiration of our foreign policy; and thirdly, the conviction that our friendships are directed towards an unfriendly isolation of Germany. Consequently Germany, he finds, is wedded to militarism. The editors, he says, had no contact with the vast body of opinion represented by the Social Democrats. They were profoundly impressed with the extraordinarily favourable condition of the country socially and administratively considered. Germany presented an object-lesson of Home Rule in perfect operation. Mr. Gardiner also notes the educational fervour of the German people, and their advanced municipal collectivism.

A DANIEL COME TO JUDGMENT.

Even the editor of the National Review cannot wholly resist the evidence presented by the English editors! In the July issue he says:

The British editors who have recently visited Germany emphatically affirm that the mass of the German people are animated by similar sentiments, are strongly wedded to peace, and are equally averse from adventure. We can well believe it as regards the Germans generally. But it is not the German people who are responsible for the sense of unrest pervading Europe, but the German Government, which has managed to make itself an object of suspicion and alarm to all its neighbours.

ADMIRAL C. C. PENROSE FITZGERALD, in the United Service Magazine, writes an alarmist article on a national army and blue water school, and concludes:—

A well-known French proverb tells us that the sea acknowledges but one mistress; but if that mistress is confined to the back parlour (ie., the North Sea), in consequence of there being no army capable of repelling invasion, someone else will surely take her office; and not even the fantastic theories of a militant peace-maker like Mr. Stead, nor the polite platitudes about disarmament of amiable foreign statesmen with their tongues in their cheeks at a Hague Conference, can absolutely ensure that we shall always be friends with everybody.

DISARMAMENT OF THE PRESS.

A GERMAN PROPOSAL.

THE Deutsche Revue for June prints an article with the above title by an anonymous writer, which the editor thinks will be of interest to the British journalists who visited Germany last month, since it was the visit which suggested the idea for a disarmament of the press in both countries.

WORLDLY WISDOM IN DIPLOMACY.

The writer thinks the work of bringing about an understanding between German public opinion and the Island nations has made but little progress in the last few months. Political essays in newspapers, he says, are not free from the reproach of treating political questions too scientifically. What is Foreign Policy but worldly wisdom applied to nations and States, and their relations to one another? As in private life, would it not be better for the press to avoid the discussion of topics which cause differences of opinion between nations, especially when it is desired to bring about a closer union between those nations? The sphere of influence of the English press is in England, as that of the German press is in Germany. Admonitions and warnings in the press which have to cross the Channel seldom exercise a favourable influence.

THE JOURNALISTS' PLAIN DUTY,

The duty of all friends of peace, the writer repeats, lies in the country of each, and it is partly of a prohibitive and partly of a positive nature. In the prohibitive sense people should rather suppress inflammable material, but in the positive sense they ought to endeavour to disperse prejudices. How far Englishmen favourable to Germany have succeeded in gaining a hearing in their own press the writer is unable to say, but he thinks the wind does not blow from a favourable quarter. He says it should be possible for the disturbing elements to have more intimate intercourse with their German friends, and when occasion offers they should help to disperse the distrust which is the real cause of the ill-feeling. They should show that the conditions of existence of the German Empire do not rest on a policy of expansion and aggression, but on a policy of consolidation.

APPRECIATION AND NOT CRITICISM.

To bring about a beneficial change in Germany, thoughtless pens must cease their constant repetitions about England's superiority over other nations, and the recurring complaint about her self-seeking policy. Let Germans guard against anything which may undervalue or wound the English character. How much better it would be to study the excellences instead of the weaknesses of other nations, for at home it is instructive and abroad it has a conciliatory effect.

The cords which poets, thinkers, and artists have spun between the green isle and the heart of Europe

cannot be easily broken. Should such a thing ever happen, it will be the beginning of the end of European culture. What must happen to disperse the causes of friction, real or imaginary, material or moral? he asks in conclusion. Perhaps the surest thing would be to condemn to silence those dangerous elements on both sides who regard a war as inevitable.

THE KAISER AND THE FALL OF COUNT WITTE.

AN article in the first June number of La Revue throws some light upon the causes that brought about the fall of Count Witte. It contains the text of a confidential report drawn up by the enemies of Count Witte and forwarded to the Kaiser with a view to destroy the favourable impression made upon the Emperor by the Count. An editorial note explains the circumstances under which the report was written.

WHY THE REPORT WAS WRITTEN.

After having concluded the Russo-Japanese peace, says the editor, Count Witte was proclaimed the saviour of Russia, and the Kaiser, with his characteristic juvenile enthusiasm, received him at Berlin with honours rarely accorded to a Russian Minister. On his return to St. Petersburg Witte assumed the reins of government, and the favour with which he was regarded at Berlin made it practically impossible for his enemies to undo him. At last they decided that he must be overthrown at any cost, but to bring about his dismissal by the Tsar it was necessary to make the Kaiser change his favourable opinion. The confidential report, the text of which was transmitted to the Kaiser, was the means employed to accomplish this end.

AS PAINTED BY HIS ENEMIES.

Witte is described in this secret report as a man who, notwithstanding his fifteen years of power, still retains all the qualities that most men lose when saddled with the responsibility of administration. He is incomparable in bringing about the downfall of a dangerous rival, but he has no real constructive ability nor any conception as to the real needs of his country. It is pointed out that he had signally failed in the task he had undertaken of tranquillising the country. had been unable to form a cabinet of any definite views. The anarchist press was demanding that he should openly declare whether he was on the side of the proletariat or of law and order. His "comrades" taunt him with his marriage to a Jewess, and, add the writers, he is frankly despised. He is entirely lacking in the calm and dignity of a true statesman. He is in the name of liberty disabling the Government from fighting the revolutionary movement, and is organising, involuntarily perhaps, a veritable terrorist army. Such is the portrait of Count Witte as painted by his enemies for the purpose of accomplishing his overthrow by undermining the Kaiser's confidence in his ability and strength of character.