BRITISH IDENTITY AND THE GERMAN OTHER A Dissertation ...

The interface between public sentiment and government policy looms large in Kennedy’s
analysis because of the practical impossibility, confronting decision-makers in either country, of
separating diplomatic, colonial and military issues from the impact of popular nationalism and
nationalist pressure groups in the domestic political arena. German chancellors consistently
tapped strident nationalist Anglophobia to gain political advantages: Bismarck, for example,
when he launched his program of colonial annexations in 1884, and Bülow when he sought
public and Reichstag support for naval increases fifteen years later. British officials, on the other
hand, encountered scathing media criticism whenever they attempted to cooperate with Germany.
The 1902 Venezuelan blockade, for example, an attempt to exact payment for damages caused
during revolution initiated by Britain in concert with Italy and Germany—in league with “the
Goth and shameless Hun,” as Rudyard Kipling put it—had to be quickly abandoned due to public
outrage and fears of American reprisal. Likewise, in 1903 an organized press campaign thwarted
government attempts to arrange financing of the Baghdad Railway project in cooperation with
Germany. 45 The elemental contribution to the Anglo-German antagonism of foreign policy
decisions that were driven or justified by their nationalistic appeal underscores the importance of
a news media where forms of expression could present an overgeneralized, distorted picture,
lacking subtleties. In the case of the British periodical press, which is the focus of this study,
Germanophobic sentiments could appear as blatant scaremongering, but more often found
45 Ibid., 172, 240, 259, 261. The quotation comes from the last line of Kipling’s poem The
Rowers, published in the Times at the height of the protest against the Venezuelan debacle.
Chamberlain weighed in against the Baghdad Railway scheme shortly before unveiling his Tariff
Reform proposals, which were aimed primarily at Germany.
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