d unbridled
license of the strong man.

Reckoning by epochs, it was only yesterday
that Germany said to the world: "No more of this!"

"Hang up philosophy!
Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,
Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom,
It helps not, it prevails not: talk no more!"

Of a sudden our scholar threw off his gown and cap, and said: "I
propose to play base-ball and foot-ball with you, I propose to have a
hand in the material spoils of life, I propose to have a seat at the
banquet and to propose toasts and to be toasted!" Faust of a sudden
left his gloomy, cobwebby laboratory, flung a fine cloak over his
shoulders, stuck a dandy feather in his cap, buckled on a rapier, and
began roistering with the best of us. We sneered and smiled at first,
let us be frank and admit it. We did not think much of this new buck.
We had little fear that the professor, even if he took off his
spectacles and slippers and dressing-gown, and exchanged his pipe for
a cigarette, would cut much of a figure as a lover. He was new to the
game, we were old hands at it, but the first thing we knew he had
given the world's mistress, France, a scolding, and flung her into a
corner, a cowering heap of outraged finery; and she has only been safe
ever since in the role of a sort of mistress of England on
board-wages.

A new cock in the barn-yard is never received with great
cordiality. He must win his place and his power with his beak and his
spurs. We all of us had enough to do before this fellow came along. We
are a little jealous of him, we are all uneasier because he is about,
and he has done so well at our games, now that he has indeed hung up
philosophy, that we are not even sure that it is safe to take him on
in a serious match. We have endeavored, therefore, to keep him
occupied with his own neighbors, to whom we have extended our best
wishes and our moral backing, which is known as keeping the balance of
power in Europe.

But a new Germany has come into the world. Germany nowadays has a
large class, as have the rest of us, who belong to that increasing
number of extraordinary people who want money without even knowing how
to get on without it. The only satisfactory test of the right to
wealth is the ability to get on without it. One of modern
civilization's most dangerous pitfalls is the subversive doctrine that
all men shall have wealth, even before they have proved their ability
to do without it. Germany is gradually arriving a