he hammer, of the Reformation, visits England and writes: "Above all,
speak no evil of England to them. They are proud of their country
above all nations in the world, as they have good reason to be."

Kant, the German philosopher, on his clock-like rounds in Koenigsberg,
knew something of England and writes of her: "Die englische Nation,
als Volk betrachtet, ist das schaetzbarste Ganze von Menschen im
Verhaeltniss unter einander; aber als Staat gegen fremde Staaten der
verderblichste, gewaltsamste, herrschsuechtigste und kriegerregendste
von allen."

("The English, as a people, in their relations to one another are a
most estimable body of men, but as a nation in their relations with
other nations they are of all people the most pernicious, the most
violent, the most domineering, and the most strife-provoking.")

Another German, something of a scholar, something of a philosopher,
but a wit and a singer, Heine, visited England, and, as he handed a
fee to the verger who had shown him around Westminster Abbey, said: "I
would willingly give you twice as much if the collection were
complete!" To him Napoleon defeated was a greater man than the
"starched, stiff" Wellington; and the "potatoes boiled in water and
put on the table as God made them" and the "country with three hundred
religions and only one sauce were a constant source of amused
annoyance. The German professors and students, who in the early part
of the nineteenth century lauded English constitutional liberty to the
skies and made a god of Burke, have soured toward England since.

"What does Germany want?" asked Thiers of the German historian Ranke.
"To destroy the work of Louis XIV," was the reply. Professor
Treitschke and his successor in the chair of history at Berlin,
Professor Delbrueck, have been outspoken in their denunciation of
England. Mommsen, Schmoller, Schiemann, Zorn of Bonn, and his
colleague there, von Dirksen, Professor Dietrich Schaefer, Professor
Adolph Wagner, and many other scholars have been, and are, politicians
in Germany, and none of them friendly to England, to France, or to
America. Bismarck himself remarked of these gentlemen: "Die Politik
ist keine Wissenschaft, wie viele der Herren Professoren sich
einbilden, sie ist eben eine Kunst" ("Politics is not a science as
many professorial gentlemen fancy; it is an art"); and again: "Die
Arbeit des Diplomaten, seine Aufgabe, besteht in dem praktischen
Verkehr mit Menschen, in der richti