he reason for this was probably the
momentary bitterness against your country of our people's intellectual
representatives. Indeed, our best scholars and artists, Ernst Haeckel at
81 years, leading the rest, stripped themselves during these past weeks
of all the honors which England had apportioned them. Permit me as one
who had the opportunity to do much for the propagation of your dramatic
works, especially of your finest drama, "Candida," in Western Germany
and in Holland, to present as quiet and as moderate a retort as is
possible.

Your appeal to intellectual Germany we reciprocate with a question to
intellectual England. It is as follows: How is it possible for you to
witness your country's present unheard of policy (so opposed to culture)
without rising as one man against it? Do you believe that we thinking
Germans would ever, without saying or doing anything, observe an
alliance of our Government, whose goal was the strengthening of
imperialism and the subjugation and destruction of a cultured power,
such as France or England? Never! Among your people only a very small
number of brave scholars protested against this criminal alliance of
your Government at the beginning of the war. You others, you poets,
painters, and musicians of present-day England were silent and permitted
Sir Edward Grey to continue to sin against a people related to you by
blood and intellect. You raised your voice a little, Bernard Shaw! But
what did you propose to us: "Refrain from your militarism, my dear
Germans, and become again the congenial, complacent poets and thinkers,
the people of Goethe and Beethoven, whom no one hated! Then we will
surely help you against the bad Russians!"

Is not this proposal a bit too naive for you, Bernard Shaw? We are
situated in the midst of Russians and Frenchmen, who have formed an open
alliance against us for more than twenty years. Our neighbors in the
East denounce nothing more than us, and our neighbors in the West
denounce us and plan against us, who have for nearly half a century
evinced nothing but friendliness toward them. When such enemies surround
us, does not your friendly counsel, Bernard Shaw, seem as if you said to
us: "Just let yourself be massacred, Germans! Afterward your British
cousins will vouchsafe you their protection."

*Germany Not Isolated.*

Do you think that we would carry on our militarism and our expensive
drilling if we lived on an island as you do? We would not thin