To think that such precautionary measures should be necessary in the very places which ought to be first to provide material for forming the youth, not for amusing their blase elders ! What would the great dramatists of all times have said to such a warning and to the cause which made it necessary ? Imagine the indignation of Schiller—how Goethe would have turned from it in fury !
But, indeed, what are Schiller, Goethe or Shake¬ speare in comparison with the heroes of the new G erman poetry ? Worn out and obsolete, altogether passe. For it is characteristic of the period not only that they produce nothing but filth, but that, in addition, they throw mud at all that was really great in the past.
Thus the saddest side of the condition of our national Kultur in the period before the War was not merely the complete impotence of our creative power in art and general culture, but also the spirit of hatred in which the memories of the greater past were besmirched and blotted out. In almost every domain of art, particularly