ght the next war. The boys at school are said to be
completely out of touch with the sordid reality of Germany's position.
Masters dare not explain her helplessness in its entirety. They are
ashamed of what their generation has done with the great inheritance.
Nevertheless the children know that Germany has been beaten. They
cannot know to what extent beaten. But a boy being asked what his
politics were replied to a friend: "One thousand kilometres to the
right of the right," and the constant thought in their talk, in their
essays, in their boyish life is _We will get back Strassburg_.

The mature mind regards such impulses questioningly, and looks from the
romantic children to the uninspired and uninspiring monuments of 1914
Germany. What sort of a Germany will it be fifty years hence, one
asks. Not the old set up again. But if a new Germany, what will it be
like and wherein will it excel?

The scenery of these years will no doubt be cleared away. In several
ways Germany has excellence and possibilities of great service to
humanity. In original research and invention, in applied science and
in science itself, in scholarship, and in social and industrial
development and organization, the German has shown himself to be a
pioneer. In these pacific domains Germany was in happy rivalry for the
leadership of the world. In several of them Germany actually was
leader. It is very unfortunate that the war should continue to strike
at these. And it would be idle to deny that those Germans whose work
serves humanity as a whole have in any way escaped the crippling effect
of the downfall of the State. In fact, the educated people have been
hit most, and are most threatened.

Moreover, the atmosphere of Germany in these days is not creative. A
black finger is pointing threateningly from the sky. The enormity of
the punishment which Fate threatens is incredibly great, and yet it
keeps threatening. It is perpetually:

The Ides of March are come,
Aye Caesar, but not gone.

The first of May has come, the thirteenth of May has come, and so
forth. The line trees are arrayed in tender green, and anon blossom
along the length of the Unter den Linden, but it is not Germany's new
summer, and it has that irrelevance which the murderer remarks when he
is being led some beautiful spring morning to the scaffold to be
killed. It was a fine morning, but not for him.

It is only too natural for the educated man to look