BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

Labeling the Germans “earnest monks of science,” he then sought to clear up a misconception:
“In spite of all our withering denunciations of the fair-haired Teuton, in his invidious capacity as
underpaid clerk and commercial tactician, he has no serious rival, all the world over, in the
earnest pursuit of ideals and the self-denying cultivation of science.” 84
84 E. J. Dillon, “Germany’s Foreign Policy” Fortnightly Review, reprinted in Living Age,
212 (January-March 1897): 73. A long-time contributor to the Fortnightly, Dillon won
recognition for his disclosure of Turkish atrocities in Armenia in 1895. A character sketch
entitled “Dr. E. J. Dillon: Our Premier Journalist,” in the Review of Reviews 24 (July 1901): 21-
26, revealed this “knight-errant of journalism” to be fluent in German and an admirer of Kaiser
Wilhelm II. As a measure of the contemporary emphasis placed on the connection between
ethnicity, culture and character, Dillon’s “essentially combative” nature was attributed to his Irish
ancestry and “the pessimism which forms the foundation of Dr. Dillon’s character” to his
fondness for Schopenhauer.
1892): 385.
There existed a sense among some journalists that British ignorance, irrationality and
prejudice fed misperceptions of Germany. “What chiefly deters the English mind from following
German affairs with any interest,” declared Louis Bamberger in 1892,
. . . is the state of tutelage in which, according to their impression, Germans are kept by
their Government. They look down with contemptuous pity on the child-like attitude of
German representative bodies towards their grandmotherly régime, and set little value on
their acts. 85
Bamberger, a German liberal, insisted that this “defective insight” into German political life had
led to a “distorted and exaggerated estimate” of falsely juxtaposed news reports, leaving the
prevailing impression “that a Socialist insurrection is impending in Germany, and that the
Emperor is preparing to overcome it by the introduction of a monarchical dictatorship.” 86 Seven
years later, despite a steady increase in coverage of German affairs, Charles Copland Perry, the
85 Louis Bamberger, “The German Crisis and the German Emperor,” New Review, 6 (April
86 Ibid., 386.
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