Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/110

8o littleness and meanness—a kleinlichkeit, an inability to recognise anything really and truly great—so at first they did not even recognise their own greatness or what it was they had really done. They were a people with a feeling of humbleness. They had done that mighty thing—brought proud France to the dust—yet somehow no one, least of all those cold, arrogant, haughty British—whom they always call English recognised it, and even the beaten French still considered themselves superior.

The Germans were troubled, self-conscious, shy, but gradually growing resentful, and particularly so towards the “English,” who patronised, snubbed, and looked down on them whilst using their country as a cheap place to live in or to educate their children in. There never was any need of this “humbleness” on the part of Germany; there was too much greatness in the land; she had quite enough to place her on the level of other great nations. Yet for long neither she nor they saw it. She blushed shyly when you condescendingly praised her, burned with pained resentment when you scorned or derided her, and gradually in her people woke up and spread a realisation of their latent power, a knowledge that in them was the possibility of ranking with the greatest nations, and deeper and deeper grew the resentment, the jealous hatred particularly of the arrogant, supercilious “English” who trod on corns all round and rubbed salt into every sore—and bit by bit Germany came to her own.

Now it is another tale. It is her turn. No longer is there any feeling of humility, any consciousness of inferiority; it is just the contrary. It has been instilled into the German people that they are “the salt of the earth,” the great Coming Race, and are no longer to rank even alongside the