Thorstein Veblen
Review author of: 'England; Its Political Organisation and Development and the 
War against Germany'. By EDUARD MEYER. Translated by Helene S. White.
(Boston: Ritter & Co. 8vo. pp. xix + 328).
THE DIAL. A fortnightly Journal of literary Criticism, Discussion, and
Information (Chicago) - Vol. LXII, January 11 to June 14, 1917

(Apr., 19, 1917) pp.344-345. Article: "Another German Apologist."
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[344]
Another German Apologist.

This book on England was written two years ago, during the first half-year of 
the great war, but none the less it runs true to form as an exposition of the 
current German views on all those topics with which it deals. It was written 
during that season of immoderate exasperation that followed on the defeat at the 
Marne, and that has lasted since that time. That such a volume of unstinted 
dispraise, growing out of that preposterous disappointment, should still 
continue to reflect the national sentiment to-day is significant of the fact 
that the great war was, in effect, brought to a decision in the fall of 1914, 
and that nothing has occurred since that time to alter or offset the miscarriage 
then suffered by the warlike enterprise on which the German hopes converged. The 
closing months of 1914 probably mark the largest and most shocking 
disappointment known to the history of mankind. So also the volume is 
significant of that distemper of the intellect which overtook the intellectual 
classes of Germany at that juncture, and which has lasted since that time. The 
book is unbalanced and intemperate in all its appraisal of England and the 
English, as well as of Germany and the Germans. There speaks through it an 
animus of uncontrolled ferocity, as of a trapped animal; and yet it is to be 
noted that in all this it runs true to form.
What has just been noted in characterization of Professor Meyer's book marks a 
serious blemish, of course, but when all this is said, it still remains true 
that it is a book of exceptional value as a presentation of the material which 
it handles. Professor Meyer commands a large and highly significant range of 
information and he controls his material with all that swift and sure touch that 
marks the master of his craft. He knows, or perhaps rather be is informed about, 
the United Kingdom and its people and circumstances so intimately and 
comprehensively that what he has to say about it all is charged with information 
and suggestion even when the animus of the argument departs farthest from the 
conventions of well-bred scholarship. The author's exuberant bias of antipathy 
is to be deprecated, of course, but its effects are not altogether unfortunate. 
It serves to throw up into a needed light many infirmities of the case which 
commonly escape notice at the hands of those writers who see the pertinent facts 
only in a haze of somewhat stale complacency.
There is very much, substantially the whole, of Part I - "The Character of the 
English State" - that British subjects as well as students of British 
institutions would do well to take to heart without material abatement, however 
tartly, not to say spitefully, it is presented. The author has a quick eye for 
the infirmities as well as for the foibles of the British administrative 
machinery and its quasi-aristocratic personnel, even though he does at times 
make too much of the formal data bearing on any given point and is apt to 
undervalue the part played by legal fiction and dead letter. The analysis and 
presentation is unsparing, but all the more veracious, in what it has to say of 
biased upper-class mismanagement and sordid muddling of all those affairs that 
touch the interest of underlying, outlying, and dependent classes and 
communities under British jurisdiction, and the author does not hesitate to 
speak openly of that Management of national affairs for pecuniary gain which the 
gentlemen-investors who guide the ship of state are wont to cover with a decent 
make-believe of serving the common good.
Tacit or explicit, there runs through all the discussion a contrasting of these 
British phenomena with the corresponding German ways and means of doing things, 
and always the comparison falls out in favor of the German case. That it does so 
is due to a tacit assumption which serves as major premise to the argument at 
all points; with a naiveté characteristic of his kind, the author goes on an 
axiomatic assumption that dynastic aggrandizement is more commendable and more 
to the public advantage than the pecuniary gain of such a class of gentlemen-
investors as controls the fortunes of the United Kingdom. In the apprehension of 
any outsider, of course, there is not much to choose, as touches the common 
good, between the warlike aggrandizement of an imperial dynasty and the unearned 
increase of pecuniary benefits that accrues to a ruling class of gentlemen-
investors. The nearest approach to serving the common good that is made by 
either of these contrasted national establishments and national policies is a 
make-believe backed with just so much of concession to the public needs as will 
serve to keep popular discontent from rising to the point of revolt; the 
material difference being that the committee of gentlemen-investors who rule the 
commonwealth under parliamentary auspices are habitually constrained to concede 
something more, being more readily accountable to their underlying community.

[345] This paramount ideal of dynastic aggrandizement that hallows all German
politics and throws it into contrast with the corresponding British phenomena,
is set forth to this effect:
"The most important and most deeply rooted difference lies in the Continental 
idea of the state as it has been developed in its relation to the central 
authority, the sovereign; of this the English, or we will say, the people of 
Great Britain have no conception. To us the state is the most indispensable as 
well as the highest requisite to our earthly existence, not with regard to our 
political welfare alone, but to the daily life and activity of the individual as 
well, uniting, as it does, the entire population dwelling within the limits of 
its jurisdiction in wholesome activity for the general good; we therefore 
believe it to be worthy of, as well as entitled to, the entire devotion of every 
citizen, in honorable effort to further its purposes. All individualistic 
endeavor, of which there is no lack with us too, as well as the aspirations of 
those shattered foreign nationalities that are included within the boundaries of 
our state, must be unreservedly subordinated to this lofty claim. ... The state 
is of much higher importance than anyone of these individualistic groups, and 
eventually is of infinitely more value than the sum of all the individuals 
within its jurisdiction ... (pp. 29-30). This conception of the state ... is 
quite foreign to English thought, and to that of America as well (p. 31)."
Quite logically, what has happened to the English constitution and to English 
sentiment since the Stuarts forfeited the despotic rights of the crown is viewed 
by Professor Meyer as a record of national decay (pp. 7-15).
The purpose of all this analysis and exposition is to be found in its bearing on 
the merits of the present conflict between the German coalition and the rest of 
Europe. Here, again, the argument runs true to form. There is the customary 
apparatus of innuendo and devout falsification, familiar enough in the 
diplomatic arguments on both sides; and there is the old familiar Pharisaical 
whine that "this war has been forced upon us," - also shared equally by the two 
parties in controversy. But all that belongs in the domain of diplomacy rather 
than in historical inquiry. To anyone who can see the lie of the land in some 
degree of detachment, it should be sufficiently patent that both parties to the 
conflict are on the defensive and that the war has been "forced upon" both alike 
by the circumstances of the case. Both are on the defensive, very much after the 
fashion of the legendary two cats of Kilkenny, who were moved by the obsession 
that there was one too many. The situation is simple enough, in its elements, if 
one will only take a dispassionate view of it. There is no longer room in the 
modem world for both parties; because the two parties embody two incompatible 
variants of the modern civilization, and the world is rapidly becoming too 
narrow for more than one. It is not that there is no room for all the several 
warring peoples; there is, in fact, increasingly easy room for all of them to 
find a livelihood by help of the increasingly efficient modem industrial arts. 
But there is no room for Imperial Germany and its subservient allies in the same 
world with the democratic commonwealths of the French and English-speaking 
peoples, and the war is to decide between them. It is a conflict of institutions 
rather than of peoples, and it involves the fortunes of these peoples only as 
they contend for the one or the other institutional scheme - the dynastic 
monarchy or the democratic commonwealth.
Professor Meyer's book includes a Foreword in which he speaks of the position 
taken by the American administration toward the belligerents. Here, again, the 
argument, which runs on the now historical "Lusitania Episode," runs true to 
form. It embodies the singular hallucination which appears to beset all 
apologists for the German case, that because both are disallowed by law and 
custom, therefore interference with neutral trade is as heinous an offence as 
the unprovoked killing of neutral citizens. It is true, of course, that trespass 
and manslaughter both are illegal, but in all English-speaking countries the 
latter is held to be much the more shocking crime of the two. It is a 
distinction of this kind - between illegal detention and search on the one hand 
and piracy with manslaughter on the other hand - that is accountable for the 
different attitude of the American administration toward the British as 
contrasted with the German irregularities; and it is this difference that has 
finally thrown the forces of the American republic into the scale against German 
imperialism. And it is this difference that still continues to be invisible to 
the patriotic German historians.

THORSTEIN VEBLEN.
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