t this puny stage of
culture, whose beginnings may be said to date from that ominous year
for culture, 1492, when Lorenzo di Medici died and Columbus discovered
America!

During all this time statesmen have insisted that there is no good
reason why Germany and England should not be on good terms; gentlemen
of various trades and professions from both countries, speaking
halting English or embarrassed German, as the case may be, cross each
other's boundaries, comment upon the beauties of the respective
countries, and overeat themselves in ponderous endeavors to appear
cordial and appreciative. Mayors and aldermen swap stories and
compliments over turtle and sherry, or over sauerkraut and
Johannisberger; bands of students visit Oxford or Heidelberg, and
there is a chorus of praise of Goethe from one side, of Shakespeare
from the other; and all the while there is an unceasing antiphonal of
grimaces and abuse in the press. Not even when Germany exports her
latest stage novelties to London, and pantomimic platitudes are
dandled under colored lights, does the turmoil of martial talk cease.
Not even Teutonic lechery, in the guise of Reinhartian art, dressed in
nothing but silence, and making faces at the British censor on the
boards of the music-halls, avails anything.

Of course all this is nuts to the irresponsible journalists, to the
manufacturers of powder, guns, and ships, and to politicians and
diplomats out of employment; but it is hard on the taxpayer, who has
no dividends from manufacturers of lethal weapons and ships, nor from
newspapers, and no notoriety from the self-imposed jobs of the
unofficial diplomats.

Perhaps of all these factors the press, in its wild gamble to make
money out of sensationalism, is most to blame. The press, for the sake
of gain, has soiled and soured the milk of human kindness by exposing
it, carelessly and unceasingly, to the pathogenic dangers of the dust
of the street and the gutter. It is wholly unfitting and always
demoralizing when the priest, the politician, and the journalist turn
their attention to private gain. Any one of these three who makes a
great fortune out of his profession is damned by that fact alone. The
only payment, beyond a living, that these three should look to is,
respect, consideration, and the honor of serving the state unselfishly
and wisely. The world will be all the happier when there are no more
Shylocks permitted in any of these professions.

Germany is