It is this social instinct which is the dominating
influence in French civilization and which has given to French
civilization its incomparable urbanity and amenity. It is to the absence
of this social instinct, to the inability to understand the attitude of
other parties to a discussion, to the unwillingness to appreciate their
point of view, that we may ascribe the failure of German diplomacy, a
failure which has left her almost without a friend in her hour of need.
And success in diplomacy is one of the supreme tests of civilization.

The claim asserted explicity or implicitly in behalf of German culture
seems to be based on the belief that the Germans are leaders in the arts
and in the sciences. So far as the art of war is concerned there is no
need today to dispute the German claim. It is to the preparation for war
that Prussia has devoted its utmost energy for half a century--in fact,
ever since Bismarck began to make ready for the seizing of unwilling
Schleswig-Holstein. And so far as the art of music is concerned there is
also no need to cavil.

But what about the other and more purely intellectual arts? How many are
the contemporary painters and sculptors and architects of Germany who
have succeeded in winning the cosmopolitan reputation which has been the
reward of a score of the artists of France and of half a dozen of the
artists of America?

Since Goethe, Who?

When we consider the art of letters we find a similar condition. Germany
has had philosophers and historians of high rank; but in pure
literature, in what used to be called "belles-lettres," from the death
of Goethe in 1832 to the advent of the younger generation of dramatists,
Sudermann and Hauptmann and the rest, in the final decade of the
nineteenth century--that is to say, for a period of nearly sixty
years--only one German author succeeded in winning a worldwide
celebrity--and Heine was a Hebrew, who died in Paris, out of favor with
his countrymen, perhaps because he had been unceasing in calling
attention to the deficiencies of German culture. There were in Germany
many writers who appealed strongly to their fellow-countrymen, but
except only the solitary Heine no German writer attained to the
international fame achieved by Cooper and by Poe, by Walt Whitman and by
Mark Twain. And it was during these threescore years of literary aridity
in Germany that there was a superb literary fecundity in Great Britain
and in France, and that each of