f average
business men discuss a problem of their own business in one of their own
offices will hardly be able to deny that a capable poet and a capable
painter would have settled the question in a quarter of the time.
Instead of superstitiously believing that only "Business Men" can be
efficient, Germany picks out her business men (and her bureaucrats) for
their general efficiency. She has attained efficiency by abandoning the
fallacy of the Expert in favour of the maxim of Confucius--"the Higher
type of man is not like a vessel which is designed for some special
use."[74]

But from the fact that German industry and German theatres are better
managed than our own it does not follow that there is any natural or
national antagonism between England and Germany. The real hatred of
Germany if it exists in England at all should be found among what it is
becoming the fashion to call "the intelligentsia." Such a purely
intellectual hatred of the sentimental melodrama of _Faust_ and of the
semitic luxuriance of Wagner and Reinhardt is not likely to become a
democratic motive in England. Here brains are always unpopular, and Park
Lane will never be stormed by the mob until it is inhabited by the
Bernard Shaws, the Lowes Dickinsons and the Bertrand Russells, instead
of by German financiers.

There is no national hatred between England and Germany. The two peoples
are natural friends. Even the men in the trenches (or perhaps I should
say particularly the men in the trenches), fraternise with their
opponents whenever they get the chance.[75] Even now a press campaign of
a few months would suffice to make Germany popular in England; and if
that were ever to happen, which is not improbable, only the
"intellectuals," who are most strongly opposed to this war, would still
find much to dislike, but not to fight about, in the national culture
produced by the German character.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 69: E.g. Oscar Wilde and Artzibashev.]

[Footnote 70: "The whole industrial expansion of Germany dates from the
introduction of the Bessemer process in 1879, by which its supplies of
iron became possible to work at a profit."--_Bertrand Russell_.]

[Footnote 71: It is unnecessary to refer at length to the world-famous
caricaturists of _Simplicissimus_, although it may be noted that the
best of them, Gulbrannson, is a Norwegian, while his chief rival, Heine,
is a Jew. Munich sculptors whose names might be mentioned are
Hildebrand, Tasch