on the Influence of German Aviculture.



99



on certain instincts and sympathies, which are common to the

aviculturists of all nations, and is therefore above and apart from all

considerations of race or nationality. I claim that we should regard

the aviculturists of all nations in war time as being fellow-suflerers

united by a common misfortune; for, however excellent the objects

of any war may be, it is bound to be destructive of the best interests

of aviculture.


My protest is against those (if any) who would try to thrust

this terrible war into the quiet realms of aviculture. We should not

only regard them, I think, as disturbers of the peace, but as seeking

to destroy the cosmopolitan character of aviculture and its potential

function as a link to draw all nations more closely together after the

war. One result of this conflict, which we can all foresee, will be

racial animosities more bitter and more enduring than that inspired

in the French by the loss of Alsace-Lorraine. There will be no real

peace in the world until those animosities have been extinguished by

effluxion of time and by the intercourse of nations.


Concerning Patriotism.


We have heard a great deal during the last decade in this

country of that type of patriotism which has produced a certain

national self-complacency, which, when put to the test in the keen

struggle for existence, has not been always justified by results.

Another form of patriotism, less popular but, we think, more profit¬

able, is to point out what other nations are doing and to compare it

with that which we are doing, and to thus attempt to discover our

relatively strong and relatively weak points. It is this latter method

which we shall pursue to-day.


Early German Aviculture.


To understand the true inwardness of German aviculture we

must hark back to its beginnings, and here we run up against a

difficulty, namely that the beginnings of aviculture in all countries

have left no written record. We have to fall back upon the beginnings

of avicultural literature and form inferences by comparing the written

records of the same period of different nations.



