o in
Leipzig the editor of a famous journal undertook to prove to me that
Shakespeare was a German. Our poet, he said, was the grandest output of
the Teutonic mind; nine-tenths of the Teutonic mind was German-argal,
Shakespeare was a German, Q.E.D.

With the vast accumulation of solid knowledge of provable facts there is
too often in the German mind a sudden bounding up into a cloudland of
crude and unproved guesswork. In the logic of Kultur there seems to be a
huge gap in the reasoning of the middle terms. A savant unearths a
manuscript in Syria, which he deciphers with marvelous industry,
learning, and ingenuity. Straightway he cries, "Eureka, behold the
original Gospel--the true Gospel!" and he proceeds to turn Christianity
upside down. He may have experimented on cultures of microbes for a
generation; and then he calls on earth and heaven to acknowledge the
mystery of the self-creation of the universe. We hear much of Treitschke
today--no doubt a man of genius with a gift for research--but what
ferocious pyrotechnics were poured forth by this apostle of mendacious
swagger. And as to Nietzsche, he was anticipated by Shakespeare in
Timon--a diseased cynic--

henceforth hated be
Of Timon, man and all humanity.

They seem to think that to have put the critics right about a few lines
in Sophocles, or to have discovered a new chemical dye, dispenses the
German Superman from being bound to humanity, truthfulness, and honor.
Charge them with the mutilation of little girls and the violation of
nuns in Belgium, and they reply: Yes! but think of Kant and Hegel! It is
treason to philosophy, they say, that a man who has translated
Schopenhauer should condemn Germans for burning Malines and making
captive women a screen for troops in battle. Kultur, it seems, has its
own "higher law," which its professors expound to the decadent nations
of Europe.

Let us hold no parley with these arrogant sophists. Let all intellectual
commerce be suspended until these official professors have unlearned the
infernal code of "military necessity" and "world policy" which, to the
indignation of the civilized world, they are ordered by the Vicegerent
of God at Potsdam to teach to the great Teutonic Super-race. Yours, &c.,

FREDERIC HARRISON.

Bath, Oct. 29.

*The Reply From France*

*By M. Yves Guyot and Prof. Bellet.*

_The following is the text of an open lettert addressed by M. Yves
Guyot, Editor-in-Chief of