lism; the contrast is better
expressed by the terms optimism and pessimism. In the last ten years
clear prevision of the tasks of the future and a sense of the duty of
national training for these tasks, such as we admire in the Americans,
has developed in Germany. A hopeful outlook fosters the joy of living;
as this joy increases, a new love of nature and a new comprehension of
her revelations develop; the old German passion for roving revives; and
delight in song and sport, in fresh air and sunshine, rejuvenates the
whole people. Literature follows this national bent and its rallying
cry becomes "Out of the atmosphere of the hospital and oppressive
wretchedness, back to the life-giving sod which yields sustenance to
every worker, out into the country, where there is a sufficiency for
simple wants, where there is no strife between capital and labor, where
the harshness of social distinctions vanishes and the feeling prevails
of a common bond between man and his native heath as well as between
man and man."

The optimistic faith in the future of the German people furnishes the
foundation also for the consciousness of a great unity to which all
branches of the German stock have now awakened, and which is the second
important element in the* present state of things. German history
testifies to more than a thousand years of inner and outer disunion.
The present war is almost the first in which Germans have not to array
themselves against Germans; this time there is left only the common
pain and the common bitterness that a people of kindred blood takes the
field against Germany. But all the German tribes and nations feel
themselves to be one people--indeed, the sense of membership proclaims
itself in the form of sympathy beyond political boundaries "as far as
the German tongue is heard." However little political influence may be
attached to this fact, its cultural significance is not to be
underestimated; for a common language forms today a stronger bond than
the sense of racial consanguinity, and this bond is most of all
strengthened by the common possession of a literature.

It has been hardly more than a hundred years that the Germans could
be said to possess a national literature. Even the literature of the
eighteenth century was ill-starred by the partisan strife between the
Saxons and the Swiss, a strife which had its origin more particularly
in irreconcilable differences of language. Permanent peace was
concluded a