to seek perfection in
phrase and thought had little attraction for him. With what heaviness
the German diplomat discusses matters at the council table! With what
clumsiness the German conqueror plants himself in a conquered country!
While France, at the end of half a century, makes herself beloved in
Savoy, at Mentone, and at Nice, while in the space of two centuries
she assimilates Lille and Dunkirk and Strasburg and Alsace; while
England in a few decades unites to her Egypt and the Cape, Germany
remains detested in Poland, Schleswig, and in Alsace-Lorraine. Germany
is essentially the persona ingrata everywhere it presents itself. It
knows only the methods that divide, and not those which unite. Germany
makes proclamations that act upon the mind as the frost acts upon
plants. Germany knows neither how to attract nor how to charm nor how
to civilize, because she has no personal and profound moral force.

Europe under the successive spiritual hegemonies of Athens, Rome, and
Paris remained the most admirable centre of human development that has
ever been.

Under German hegemony Europe would move toward a sort of gloomy and
hard organization under which everything would be impeccable, arranged
only because everything would be tyrannized over from above.

For the true Germany--we have today the sad but immovable conviction
of this--was never that of Goethe, of Beethoven, nor of Heine. It was
that of implacable Landgraves and fierce soldiers.

For thousands of years Germany has let loose its hordes upon Europe;
Vandals, Visigoths, Alains, Franks, Herules. Germany continues to do
this at the present day. It is Germany's terrible and sinister
function.

Only let us not deceive ourselves as to this point in future, Germany
is the dangerous nation because it is the uncivilizable nation,
because its castles, its fields, and its barracks have remained the
inexhausted, and perhaps the inexhaustible, reservoirs of human
ferocity.

EMILE VERHAEREN.

Retreat in the Rain.

By O.C.A. CHILD.

Those Uhlans now are working in too near,
Their carbines crackle louder every shot.
I say! our chaps a-plodding in the rear
Are getting it--and most uncommon hot!
It's not much fun retreating in the night,
Through all this mess of rain and reeking slime--
It seems to me this boot's infernal tight!
I must have hurt me when I slipped that time.
Whew! that was close and there's