Frederick II copied the French Army: and this Japanese or anti-like
assiduity in imitation is one of the hundred qualities which the Germans
have and the English markedly have not. There are other German
superiorities which are very much superior. The one or two really jolly
things that the Germans have got are precisely the things which the English
haven't got: notably a real habit of popular music and of the ancient songs
of the people, not merely spreading from the towns or caught from the
professionals. In this the Germans rather resemble the Welsh: though heaven
knows what becomes of Teutonism if they do. But the difference between the
Germans and the English goes deeper than all these signs of it; they differ
more than any other two Europeans in the normal posture of the mind. Above
all, they differ in what is the most English of all English traits; that
shame which the French may be right in calling "the bad shame"; for it is
certainly mixed up with pride and suspicion, the upshot of which we call
shyness. Even an Englishman's rudeness is often rooted in his being
embarrassed. But a German's rudeness is rooted in his never being
embarrassed. He eats and makes love noisily. He never feels a speech or a
song or a sermon or a large meal to be what the English call "out of place"
in particular circumstances. When Germans are patriotic and religious they
have no reactions against patriotism and religion as have the English and
the French. Nay, the mistake of Germany in the modern disaster largely
arose from the facts that she thought England was simple when England is
very subtle. She thought that because our politics have become largely
financial that they had become wholly financial; that because our
aristocrats had become pretty cynical that they had become entirely
corrupt. They could not seize the subtlety by which a rather used-up
English gentleman might sell a coronet when he would not sell a fortress;
might lower the public standards and yet refuse to lower the flag. In
short, the Germans are quite sure that they understand us entirely, because
they do not understand us at all. Possibly if they began to understand us