BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

of contention in the history of Anglo-German diplomatic relations that nationalists on both sides
could exploit. At the June 1895 opening of the Kiel Canal, which ran from the North Sea to the
Baltic through territory once governed by Danes, one writer remarked, “The Duchies were ripped
from Denmark by a process none too scrupulous, and England played a sorry part in a cynical
transaction.” 37
The Danish Question also perpetuated the image of the German, or Prussian, bully which
would gain further momentum during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1, especially with the
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. Indeed, the war marked a watershed in the shift of British
sympathies away from Germany and toward France after the demise of Napoleon III. 38
Following the declaration of war on 19 July 1870, the Times had branded the French a “vain
race,” but by 2 September, the day of the French capitulation at Sedan, the same paper poured out
its sympathy for “Unhappy France”:
. . . we are overborne with sympathy for the unhappy nation. A people of so many
virtues, gifted beyond all other races with vivacity, swiftness of intelligence and
emotional energy—people which has carried into the lowest ranks of life the education of
social civility, threatens to become once more politically bankrupt. 39
37 “Buns, Bunting, Bunkham,” Pall Mall Gazette, 21 June 1895, 1. See also “The North
Schleswig Question,” Review of Reviews 19 (June 1899): 55; “Why Europe Hates England,”
Review of Reviews 21 (December 1900): 556; and Louis Egerton, “The Hungry Hohenzollerns,”
New Century Review 3 (February 1898): 135.
38 Kennedy, Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 22-24, argues a gradual abandonment
of suspicions against France, accompanied by a growing apprehension of German power after
1871. There was no abrupt break in diplomatic relations.
39 “France and Germany,” Times, 19 July 1870, 5. “Unhappy France,” Times, 2 September
1870, 7. After asking if the French passion for military display had produced the catastrophe that
led to their downfall, the writer stated, “we hope that the fearful experience of this war will
uproot it forever.”
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