(To TRH EDITOR OE THE "SPECTATOR. ") SIR,-7i was very glad
to see the editorial note you appended to a letter on this subject in the Spectator of February 14th, " The last thing which we desire is to stir up or increase national animosities," for it has seemed to me that scarcely a week has passed for some months now without your empha- sising the unfriendly feeling between ourselves and Germany. Article after article has appeared, and their tone has been such as I feel sure must have hurt or offended a country with which, after all, we have many ties, social and commercial as well as political. I have really supposed that the Spectator must wish to bring this country to war with Germany, and there must be others besides myself who view your attitude towards this question both with pain and apprehension. I trust the statement which I have quoted above may be borne out by an absence, at least for a time, of such an unfriendly tone, which I do not think is warranted, and some of your readers will then have more pleasure in perusing the Spectator.
[We have, as we have repeatedly said, no desire to increase national animosities; but we cannot from fear of consequences, however deplorable, garble or suppress facts, or fail in what we conceive to be the duty of the conductors of a newspaper, i.e., to speak what they believe to be the truth. That Germany and her Government are as a whole hostile; that German political aspirations are in their nature not only antagonistic to us, but cannot be satisfied without our ruin ; and that the leaders of German opinion know this, and, in spite of it, pursue those aspirations,—is our firm belief, and therefore must be expressed by us. To pretend otherwise would not get rid of German hostility, but would merely make our danger the greater. Let the rulers of Germany change their policy and their aspirations, and we shall be the first to desire good relations with the German people.—ED. Spectator.]
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