omentous hour is not favorable for fiction. On three frontiers our own
blood bears witness. I myself have sent out two of my sons. All our
intrepid German soldiers know why they are going to war. There are no
analphabets to be found among them; all the more, however, of those who,
besides their rifle, have their Goethe's "Faust," their "Zarathustra," a
work of Schopenhauer's, the Bible, or their Homer in their knapsacks.
And even those who have no book in the knapsack know that they are
fighting for a hearth at which every guest is welcome.

On the frontier stands our blood testimony; the Socialist side by side
with the bourgeois, the peasant beside the man of learning, the Prince
beside the workman; and they all fight for German freedom, for German
domestic life, for German art, German science, German progress; they
fight with the full, clear consciousness of a noble and rich national
possession, for internal and external goods, all of which serve for the
general progress and development of mankind.

*To Americans From a German Friend*

*By Ludwig Fulda.*

_Like most of the champions of Germany in the literary field,
Ludwig Fulda is a Doctor of Philosophy. He is also author of many
famous poetical and prose works of fiction._

Many things have been revealed to us by this war that even the
keenest-minded among us would have declared immediately before its
outbreak to be impossibilities. Nothing, however, has been a greater and
more painful surprise to Germans than the position taken by a great part
of the American press. There is nothing that we would have suspected
less than that within the one neutral nation with which we felt
ourselves most closely connected, both by common interests and by common
ideals, voices would be raised that in the hour of our greatest danger
would deny us their sympathy, yes, even their comprehension of our
course.

To me, personally--I cannot avoid saying it--this was a very bitter
disappointment. A year has hardly passed since I was over there the
second time as a guest and returned strengthened in my admiration for
that great, upward striving community. In my book, "Amerikanische
Eindrucke," ("American Impressions,") a new edition of which has just
appeared in a considerably supplemented form, comprising the fruits of
that trip, I have made every effort to place before my countrymen in the
brightest light the advantages and superiorities of Americans, and
esp