ions, as they were destroyed during the thirty years
of horror in the seventeenth century? Or has Germany, thrown upon her
own resources, attained to full consciousness of her strength, and now
at last repaired the damage of that national calamity, which devastated
her territory, subjected her to foreign domination, and continued to
retard her progress for two full centuries?

Who can foretell whether the heroism of a mighty time, whose dawn we
see, is to give new inspiration to patriotic poetry for centuries to
come, and beget a new generation of bards worthy to sing of arms and
men? The spirit of self-sacrificing devotion which waged the Seven
Years' War and the Wars of Liberation has returned to animate the
Germany of today. Who knows, however, but that many a precious life
will be sacrificed from which we hoped for great things even in our
literature, and which now sheds its blood in a struggle for the
warrior's laurel wreath? For German poets have also heard the call to
arms; and those who have not, like Ganghofer, despite his sixty years,
and Dehmel with his fifty-one, joined the ranks of the volunteers, tune
their lyres to Tyrtaean measures and enlist their pens in the service of
their native land. Thus Gerhart Hauptmann, who only a year ago
concluded his dramatic celebration of the centennial of German
liberation with an apotheosis of peace, now comes forward with stirring
war songs.

Is this still the people to which Goethe belonged? At a time when a
common cause with Austria conjures up again the shade of the dear old
Holy Roman Empire no other verse in _Faust_ seems so inept as that
concerning the ugly political song. Today we should rather say "An
unpolitical song, an ugly song;" for to the people that but a few weeks
ago was mindful of naught but works of peace everything has become a
matter of indifference except the burning question of the hour. Even
though the longed-for peace should soon return, the year 1914 must
leave a deep mark in the development of German literature. As yet we
can only look back, not forward, from this milestone; and even in so
doing we cannot escape from the present.

One thing the very first days of the war have made manifest: the
physical and moral strength and the healthy marrow of the German
people. Our literature, as the most faithful mirror of national life,
has reflected in the past ten years this incorruptible healthfulness,
and if we look somewhat farther back, we even