always
been persecuted, humiliated, and calumniated.[34] In an article entitled
"_Der neue Geist_,"[35] after having scoffed at the banality that has
reappeared in the German theaters, and the literary mediocrity of
patriotic productions, he asked where this "new spirit" may be found,
and this gives him an opportunity to demolish Ostwald and Lasson.

"_Where is it to be found? In the Hochschulen? Have we not read that
incredibly clumsy_ (unwahrscheinlich plumpen) _appeal of the 99
professors? Have we not appreciated the statements of that double
centenarian_ (des zweihundertjaehrige Mummelgreises) _mummy Lasson? When
I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of
Berlin, the theatre in which he lectured was a place of amusement_
(Lachkabinett) _for us--nothing more. And today people take him
seriously! English, French, and Italian papers print his senile
babblings against Holland, as typical of the_ Stimmung _of the German
intellectuals. The wrong that these privy councillors and professors
have done us with their Aufklaerungsarbeit can hardly be measured. They
have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability to realize the
feelings of others._"

In opposition to these false representatives of a nation, these cultured
gossips and political adventurers, he extols the silent ones, the great
mass of the people of all nations who suffer in silence; and he joins
with them in "the invisible community of sorrow."

"_One who is suffering and knows that his sorrow is shared by millions
of other beings, will bear it calmly; he will accept it willingly even,
because he knows that he is enriched thereby, made stronger, more
tender, more humane._"[36]

And he quotes the words of old Meister Eckehart: "_Suffering is the
fastest steed that will bear you to perfection._"

* * * * *

At the close of this summary review of the young writers of the war, a
place must be found for those whom the war has crushed--they counted
amongst the best. Ernst Stadler was an enthusiastic admirer of French
art and of the French spirit. He translated Francis Jammes, and on the
eve of his death, in November, he was writing to Stefan Zweig from the
trenches about the poems of Verlaine, which he was translating. The
unfortunate George Trakl, the poet of melancholy, was made lieutenant of
a sanitary column in Galicia, and the sight of so much suffering drove
him to despair and death. And ther