rature of
that country. The worldwide appreciation of Rodin had its origin in
Germany--we esteem Anatole France, Maupassant, Flaubert, Balzac, as if
they were German authors. We have a deep affection for the people of
South France. We find passionate admirers of Mistral in small German
towns, in alleys, in attics. It was deeply to be regretted that Germany
and France could not be friends politically. They ought to have been,
because they were joint trustees of the intellectual treasures of the
Continent, because they are two of the great cultivated nations of
Europe. But fate has willed it otherwise.

In the year 1870 the German races fought for the union of the Germans
and the German Empire. Owing to the success of this struggle Germany has
enjoyed an era of peace for more than forty years. A time of budding,
growing, becoming strong, flowering, and bearing fruit, without parallel
in history. Out of a population, growing more and more numerous, an
ever-increasing number of individuals have been formed. Individual
energy and a general tendency to expand led to the great achievements of
our industry, our commerce, and our trade. I do not think that any
American, Englishman, Frenchman, or Italian when in a German family, in
German towns, in German hotels, on German ships, in German concerts, in
German theatres, at Baireuth, in German libraries, or in German museums,
ever felt as if he were among "barbarians." We visited other countries
and kept an open door for every stranger.

*English Relations.*

It is with pain and with bitterness that I speak the word England. I am
one of those barbarians on whom the English University of Oxford
conferred the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa. I have friends in England
who stand with one foot on the intellectual soil of Germany. Haldane,
formerly English Minister of War, and with him countless other
Englishmen, made regular pilgrimages to the little barbarous town of
Weimar, where the barbarians Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, and
others, have created another world for humanity. We have a poet, whose
plays, more than those of any other German poet, have become national
property; his name is Shakespeare. This Shakespeare is, at the same
time, the prince of English poets. The mother of our Emperor is an
English woman, the wife of the King of England a German, and yet this
nation, so closely related by blood and choice, has declared war against
us. Why? Heaven only knows. This much