ceptions with patient and far-seeing thoroughness, have at least fashioned a people in whom the pride of nationality and the duty of self-sacrifice are an impregnating passion. We in Great Britain, pinning our faith to the moral worth and dignity and capacities of the individual, have proceeded along quite opposite lines. Our system of education is State-blind. Our rulers have gone upon the theory that love of country is an instinct it is superfluous to cultivate, that patriotism, like the domestic affections, can be left to take care of itself, and that our boys will grow into a right view of their relations to the nation as naturally as they grow into trousers. That he is a member of a community, that between himself and that community there will some day arise a question of debts to be paid and services rendered, that citizenship, if it is not to fade away into mere aimless, haphazard aspirations, must be associated with duties of all this, which is hammered into the German boy from his earliest years, the average English youth has but the haziest realisation. He is left to pick up as best he can some notion of his place in the State and of the place of his country in the scheme of world-politics. The consequence is that too often he picks up no notion at all, that his patriotism is uninformed, unintelligent, unproductive, and undisciplined, and that his sense of Empire is limited to a vague spectacular pride of ownership. We have seen in this war the best and the worst sides of our national character and our national system-some three million men, on the one hand, voluntarily enrolling themselves in the Army of Liberty, and, on the other hand, strikes and discontent in the most vital industries, muddle and waste in high quarters, and a depressing average of administrative capacity and political courage and leadership. The cohesion and the unanimity of selfless devotion which Germany has displayed throughout her titanic effort are as much beyond our present reach as are the intelligence and foresight with which she has marshalled and turned to account all her resources of human and material energy. It is a hard but a true saying that if we fail in this struggle it is because we deserve to fail, because our patriotism is neither so intensive, nor so extensive, nor so fruitful as that of our antagonist, because our sense of the State is feebler and our discipline less firm, because we bring to this business of war qualities of mind and spirit that are better suited for the careless, slouchy days of peace. It is indeed a war of contrasts. In their ideas of religion, of freedom, and of the State, in their attitudes towards nearly all questions of morals and aesthetics, in their philosophies of life, in the structure of their societies, in their views on the functions of education, and in innumerable points of manners and social ་ 3 observances, the British and German peoples are not merely opposed, but fundamentally antipathetic. Their Government is an aristocracy of talent drilling a nation of mediocrities who have neither the wish nor the ability to govern themselves. Ours is a democratic system the operative impulse of which works from below. They exalt the State where we exalt the man. In nearly everything that concerns the work of administration they are experts and we are amateurs. They make a fetish of rules and order and flawless efficiency. We are content with a genial disarray and a happy-go-lucky method of meeting emergencies as they arise. Their schools do little but teach; ours do almost everything except teach. It is not a German theory that education has anything to do with character or refinement. They aim at the utmost development of the mind; we are satisfied if our boys leave school with a smattering of knowledge and a still smaller range of ideas and intellectual interests, but broken in to responsibility, with a well-defined code of justice and honour, and the foundations of a strong, manly, and chivalrous character. The German boy is old before his time. Success or failure at school affects the whole of his after-life. Our boys, living largely away from home, romp joyously through their teens without questioning the future and emerge healthily conventional animals, with an outlook on life confined to the curriculum through which they have passed. "The German," says Miss Wylie, "goes into life most often as an adventurer, unarmed, with neither the weapons of inherited faith, nor ideals, nor conventions to assist him in the inevitable battle." Spared the jostling and rough sports of English boyhood, he has hardly an elementary sense of fair play, or of the "things no fellow can do." The streak of brutality, the lust to dominate and humiliate, are characteristics with their roots far down in the Teutonic temperament. Their treatment of women and their attitude towards the sex are such as follow inevitably from these traits. The sweetness and good humour and easy gradations of English life find little parallel in that land of rigid castes, of splenetic envy and back-biting, of systematised spying. As careful of the outward forms of politeness as he is of his person or his title, the German follows a calculated code of behaviour that implies no respect and is based on no spirit of consideration. We, the least ceremonious of peoples in our social intercourse, have far more of the essence of good manners. The German has the stridency and touchiness in his social and political conduct of the parvenu. We, an older, more assured and tolerant nation, a natural growth where they are an artificial creation, have many faults, but the inexperience and self-assertiveness and bumpkin blatancy of youth are not ! among them. The Germans understand things and facts, but they do not, as we do, understand men. They lack the power of dramatic sympathy to enter into other people's feelings and emotions, or to grasp the moral factors, the imponderabilia, of a situation. In their relations with alien subject peoples their truculent and purblind intelligence always leads them astray. They have not the capacity as a governing power to win either affection or respect. They are far more accessible to ideas than to the appeal of sentiment. Their power is in their collective gregariousness, their love of work, their instinct for following. A mingling of the two peoples would produce a race of supermen; and it is, perhaps, the supreme tragedy of the war that it should have descended upon the very nations that have most to learn from one another. Happily there is the consolation that while we possess in embryo and can, if put to it, develop nearly all the good qualities of the Germans, our own good qualities, being less mechanical, more elusive and more fundamental, are likely to remain for ever beyond their powers of assimilation. SYDNEY BROOKS. HISTORY OF THE WAR. THE campaign in Damaraland deserves the first place in this month's record of the war, if only for the political consequences which have resulted from General Botha's successful strategy. In the short space of five months 322,348 square miles of German territorynearly three times the size of the United Kingdom-have been added to the British Empire. There has been no declaration of annexation, but it is recognised by common consent that the newly won territory will eventually be incorporated in the Union of South Africa, and a benevolent administration will henceforward replace the harsh government of German officials. General Botha has conducted the campaign to a decisive end under difficulties which would have disheartened a less resolute commander. Invited by the Imperial Government to send an expedition into the German Protectorate, which has been for so long a thorn in the side of the Union, the General, who enjoyed the advantage of being both Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief, was busy preparing the necessary force for the purpose of his campaign when he was suddenly confronted with two local rebellions, both inspired by German intrigue; one led by the two rebel leaders, Kemp and Maritz, who conducted their operations from German territory, the other by De Wet and Beyers, who raised the flag of revolt in the Transvaal and Orange Free State. The suppression of these rebellions delayed the departure of the Expeditionary Force, but General Botha lost no time in putting them both down with a strong hand. Beyers was drowned, De Wet captured, and Kemp compelled to surrender on February 3rd, after being badly defeated by General Van de Venter when he was attempting a raid on Uppington. Maritz is still at large, but his capture can only be a matter of time. While operations against the rebels were in progress Major-General Sir Duncan Mackenzie was sent to occupy Luderitz Bay, which will in future be known as Angra Pequena, and though he was constrained to await the arrival of the forces detailed to co-operate with him he pushed a reconnaissance up the Keetmanshoop railway as far as Aus (see map). Walfisch Bay, which had been seized by the Germans a few days after the declaration of war, was re-occupied on Christmas Day, while defensive posts were at the same time established at all the drifts over the Orange river. The campaign began in earnest at the beginning of February, and continued without any serious hitch till the final surrender of what remained of the German force under Colonel Frank on July 9th, General Botha's plan of operations being as under. He himself with the Northern Force was to land at Swakopmund, and move up the ! railway to Windhoek, the capital of the Protectorate, while three other columns, one operating from Angra Pequena under General Mackenzie, another from the Orange river under Brigadier-General Van de Venter, and a third under Colonel Berrange, based on Kimberley, were to form a Southern Force, which after reaching Keetmanshoop by converging routes was to be placed under command of General Smuts, the Minister of Defence in the Union Government. The details of the Expeditionary Force have not yet been published, but its total strength is believed not to have exceeded 15,000, the greater part of the force being composed of mounted troops organised in small handy brigades under young commanders. The enemy's force did not exceed 8,000 men, of whom between 5,000 and 6,000 were Germans. It was always intended to bring this force up to full war strength by reinforcing it with German reservists from South PROTECTORATE |