m this lofty position, although few
would be so bold as to deny the superior achievement of the French in
the fine arts and of the English in pure science.

Nations are never accepted by other nations at their own valuation; and
the Germans need not be surprised that we are now astonished to find
them asserting their natural self-appreciation, with the apparent
expectation that it will pass unchallenged. The world owes a debt to
modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt
owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German,
speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans
the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of
German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to
gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character;
and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in
absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great
Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of
German culture.

BRANDER MATTHEWS.

Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.

Culture vs. Kultur

By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.

_To the Editor of The New York Times:_

Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost
hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he
means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by
culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the
broadest sense--its successful achievement in civil and military
administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary
way in scholarship, letters, and art. Kultur applies to a nation as a
whole, implying an enlightened Government to which the individual is
strictly subordinated. Thus Kultur is an attribute not of
individuals--whose particular interests, on the contrary, must often be
sacrificed to it--but of nations.

Culture, for which nearest German equivalent is Bildung, is the opposite
of all this. It is an attribute not of nations as a whole but of
accomplished individuals. It acquires national import only through the
approval and admiration of these individuals by the rest, who share but
slightly in the culture they applaud. The aim of culture is the
enlightened and humane individual, conversant with the best values of
the past and sensitive to the best values of the present. T