ation of which
gives the society, the press, the art, and the literary style of
Germany their pharisaical character. Naturally the copy nowhere
produces the really artistic effect which the original, grown out of
the heart of Roman civilisation, is able to produce almost to this day
in France. Let any one who wishes to see the full force of this
contrast compare our most noted novelists with the less noted ones of
France or Italy: he will recognise in both the same doubtful
tendencies and aims, as also the same still more doubtful means, but
in France he will find them coupled with artistic earnestness, at
least with grammatical purity, and often with beauty, while in their
every feature he will recognise the echo of a corresponding social
culture. In Germany, on the other hand, they will strike him as
unoriginal, flabby, filled with dressing-gown thoughts and
expressions, unpleasantly spread out, and therewithal possessing no
background of social form. At the most, owing to their scholarly
mannerisms and display of knowledge, he will be reminded of the fact
that in Latin countries it is the artistically-trained man, and that
in Germany it is the abortive scholar, who becomes a journalist. With
this would-be German and thoroughly unoriginal culture, the German can
nowhere reckon upon victory: the Frenchman and the Italian will always
get the better of him in this respect, while, in regard to the clever
imitation of a foreign culture, the Russian, above all, will always be
his superior.

"We are therefore all the more anxious to hold fast to that German
spirit which revealed itself in the German Reformation, and in German
music, and which has shown its enduring and genuine strength in the
enormous courage and severity of German philosophy and in the loyalty
of the German soldier, which has been tested quite recently. From it
we expect a victory over that 'up-to-date' pseudo-culture which is now
the fashion. What we should hope for the future is that schools may
draw the real school of culture into this struggle, and kindle the
flame of enthusiasm in the younger generation, more particularly in
public schools, for that which is truly German; and in this way
so-called classical education will resume its natural place and
recover its one possible starting-point.

"A thorough reformation and purification of the public school can only
be the outcome of a profound and powerful reformation and purification
of the German spir