urope.
From a poem of later date come these words: "All possessed it, but no
one prized it. Like a cool spring it has refreshed us all. What a sound
the word peace has for us now. Distant it sounds, and fearful, and heavy
with tears. No one knows or can name the day for which all sigh with
such longing."

Do not let us forget that almost everything that is most militarist is
_old_. It is only the old who affect still to glory in war--the old
newspapers, the old reviews, the old statesmen, and some, perhaps, of
the old soldiers--it is to what is newest, youngest, most creative, most
living that we look not in vain for an unshaken belief in brotherhood,
for a clear acknowledgment that any other belief would throw us back
into the ape and tiger struggle of world beginnings, but with the ape
ten thousand times more cunning and the tiger ten thousand times more
cruel. To some German publications the war is a stupid eruption of
barbarism into a workshop where work was being done. _Die Aktion_ scoffs
mercilessly at the Chauvinists and at Lissauer with his Hymn of
Hate.[72] Even Lissauer, be it remarked, has published his repentance,
and, personally, I respect him for it. The man who can say that he spoke
too strongly is always worth knowing. The man who insists elaborately on
his consistency (as the politicians do) is usually singularly devoid of
any appreciation of truth. _Die Aktion_ (1915) goes on steadily with its
appreciation of French artists, as if no war were in progress. There may
be some affectation in this attitude, but it is to be preferred, I
think, to the complete ostracism of work of the enemy called for by a
noisy but, I believe, small section on this side. _Die Weissen Blaetter_
appeared in January, 1915, with the following announcement:

It seems good to us to begin the work of reconstruction in the
midst of the war. The community of Europe is at present
apparently destroyed. Is it not the duty of all of us who are
not bearing arms to live from to-day onwards according to the
dictates of our conscience, as it will be the duty of every
German when once the war is over?

Evidently the editor has in his mind a contrast between the dictates of
conscience and the dictates of officialism. He was born in Alsace, so he
may well know this contrast. We are learning it here. In the February
number the _Krieg mit dem Maul_ (war with the mouth) was most vigorously
condemned:

If journalist