Though Chamberlain was always very supportive of German imperialism , he had nothing but scorn for British imperialism , viewing Britain as the world 's biggest bully , a view that he expressed more and more vehemently as the 1890s went on . In 1895 , Chamberlain wrote to his aunt about the Hamidian massacres in the Ottoman Empire during 1894 – 96 : The Armenian insurrection of 1894 with the inevitable retaliation of massacres and persecution ( of course '' enormously exaggerated '' by those greatest liars in creation , backed by their worthy friends the English journalists ) was all got up at the precise moment when English politics required a " diversion " . In 1896 , Chamberlain wrote to his aunt : The English press is the most insufferably arrogant , generally ignorant , the most passionately one-sided and narrow-minded in its judgments that I know ; it is the universal '' bully '' , always laying down the law for everybody , always speaking as if it were umpire of the universe , always abusing everybody all round and putting party spirit in all its judgments , envenoming thus the most peaceful discussions . It is this and this only which has made England hated all the world over . During the whole year 1895 , I never opened an English newspaper without finding '' War '' predicated or threatened — No other nation in the world has wanted war or done anything but pray for peace — England alone , the world 's bully , has been stirring it up on all sides . During the 1890s , Chamberlain was an outspoken critic of British policy in South Africa , writing to his uncle in 1898 : We are '' the '' heathen nation and race '' par excellence '' . War , conquest , commerce , money and above all an eternal readiness to knock every man down who stands in our way . And the only thing thoroughly distasteful to me in England and Englishmen generally , and English politics in particular , is this eternal coquetting with a religion to which every one of their feelings and opinions and acts is in direct contradiction . At the time of the Boer War , Chamberlain supported the Boers against the British , though not publicly , and he expressed much regret that two white peoples should be killing each other at a time when he believed that white supremacy around the world was being threatened by the alleged " Yellow Peril " . In July 1900 , Chamberlain wrote to his aunt : One thing I can clearly see , that is , that it is criminal for Englishmen and Dutchmen to go on murdering each other for all sorts of sophisticated reasons , while the Great Yellow Danger overshadows us white men and threatens destruction ... The fact that a tiny nation of peasants absolutely untrained in the conduct of war , has been able to keep the whole united empire at bay for months , and has only been overcome — and '' has '' it been overcome ? — by sending out an army superior in number to the whole population including women and children , has lowered respect for England beyond anything you can imagine on your side of the water , and will certainly not remain lost on the minds of those countless millions who have hitherto been subdued by our prestige only . Chamberlain seized upon the fact that some of the Randlords were Jewish to argue in his letters to Cosima Wagner that the war was a case of Anglo-Jewish aggression against the Germanic Afrikaners . Wagner wrote back to Chamberlain : " This extermination of one of the most excellent Germanic races is so horrible that I know of nothing I have experienced which is comparable to it . " As a leading Wagnerite in Vienna , Chamberlain befriended a number of other prominent Wagnerites , such as Prince Hohenhohe-Langenburg , Ludwig Schemann , Georg Meurer , and Baron Christian von Ehrenfels . The most important friendship that Chamberlain made during his time in Vienna was with German Ambassador to Austria-Hungary , Prince Philip von Eulenburg , who shared Chamberlain 's love of Wagnerian music . Besides being a passionate Wagnerite , Eulenburg was also an anti-Semite , an Anglophobe and a convinced enemy of democracy who found much to admire in Chamberlain 's anti-Semitic , anti-British and anti-democratic writings
Hamidian massacres
Hamidian massacres
Houston Stewart Chamberlain