Berlin is a city of reason, not a city of faith. You cannot get people to try and do the impossible there. It loves to grade itself upon the possible and do that. Hence the apathy regarding Germany's resurrection. Here all is measured and planned and square and self-poised. No buildings aspire. The golden angels and the other things which are high—are perched there. Some one put them up; they did not fly so high. All the great capitals of Europe are redeemed more by their past than adorned by their present, but Berlin has no old Berlin to help her. If all that is worth while in London were built in the spirit of Downing Street and Whitehall and the statue of Nurse Cavell, it might be said that London was not unlike Berlin.

Clearly two ideas have tried to express themselves in Germany's capital: one is modern commerce, and the other, and more characteristic, is military glory. The commercial houses are naturally much the same as in the rest of Europe, gloomily utilitarian. The military in stone, however, is neither ornamental nor useful. Strange that the Kaiser, who was reputed to have quick intelligence, should not have felt how excruciatingly unspiritual and truly uninspiring the glory-statuary and architecture was. The German army was one of the greatest military organizations the world has seen, and it was in 1914 a potential terror to every nation in Europe, but its reflection in art was ugly. The Victory Column, the statues of Germany's heroes, the appalling queue of stone groups each side of the Sieges Allee, all show up now like a spiritual X-ray photograph of Prussia.

It may seem ungenerous to taunt some one who is down, after the event, but I did not see the Avenue of Victory before 1914, and it came as a shock. Despite the loathsome details of the war, there are many ex-enemies of Germany who have kept in their hearts an altar of admiration for German arms. An idea of Teutonic chivalry lurked somewhere in the imagination. But you can realize in Berlin from the militarist self-confession in art that there is no idealism there. How the Kaiser could go out day after day and confront these low conceptions of patriotism and of Germany, and not order them to be swept away, explains in great part how it was Germany made such a blunder as to go to war the way she did. One advantage of a revolution in Germany might be to sweep away these sad tokens of the past.

It was in this Avenue of Victory that old Hindenburg's wooden statue was set up and the populace struck nails into it to boost war-charities. It became so ugly that it was hidden away at last, and despite the Field-Marshal's great popularity has lately been broken up and destroyed. That was really worth keeping, and ought to have found a place in a war-museum. It was authentic, but it did not flatter, and it had to go.

Hindenburg is the greatest hero in Germany, and all the children idealize him. Whatever he puts his name to, goes. He and a popular pastor worked up a huge subscription for war-waifs, and when the money had been raised it was found the waifs were already well provided for. I believe the money was appropriated to a fund for helping the indigent middle class. At a cabaret one night there appeared a clever impersonator. A slim, clean-shaven man entertained the people sitting at the dinner-tables by rapid changes of personization. He was in turn every one who had a share in the making of modern Germany. Thus he was Bismarck and he was Karl Marx, and he was Ebert, in rapid succession. No one cheered him, and the people looked at the undistinguished figure of Ebert without enthusiasm. Presently, as one foresaw, he came to Hindenburg, and then every one cheered and the place rocked with excitement. There were even a sprinkling of claps over to applaud his next impersonization, the late Emperor Franz Joseph who was sandwiched in to prepare the mind for something else. After that, one waited. Would he show the Kaiser? What would happen if suddenly the familiar face of Wilhelm the Second confronted that gathering of Germans? The mimic, however, would not risk it, and his concluding make-up was not Wilhelm but, very cleverly chosen, Frederick the Great. And every one was at ease again.

Germany is not ready to have the Kaiser back. But, as at Athens, so in Berlin, national humiliation has reacted in favour of the monarch. There is a vague feeling that the Kaiser is suffering for Germany's sake, and that his exile typifies the unhappy downfall of Germany. No one thinks the Kaiser less virtuous than Lloyd George or Clemenceau. Except for the Communist movement, which naturally tends in an entirely different direction, there is a national sentimental reaction in favour of the Hohenzollerns. This was clearly focussed in the honours paid to the dead Kaiserin. Before the passing of that funeral cortÈge the Kaiser's portrait was rare in public places. Now it has appeared again and is common.

There are nevertheless few things in Europe more improbable than the return of the Kaiser. He might come back before he died. But it would be as the result of some strange turn of affairs in Europe. He will probably die in Holland. And then will he not come back and receive the greatest honour?

I was naturally interested in the spirit of the rising generation, those who did not have to fight, those who perhaps will not be conscripted to fight the next war. The boys at school are said to be completely out of touch with the sordid reality of Germany's position. Masters dare not explain her helplessness in its entirety. They are ashamed of what their generation has done with the great inheritance. Nevertheless the children know that Germany has been beaten. They cannot know to what extent beaten. But a boy being asked what his politics were replied to a friend: "One thousand kilometres to the right of the right," and the constant thought in their talk, in their essays, in their boyish life is We will get back Strassburg.

The mature mind regards such impulses questioningly, and looks from the romantic children to the uninspired and uninspiring monuments of 1914 Germany. What sort of a Germany will it be fifty years hence, one asks. Not the old set up again. But if a new Germany, what will it be like and wherein will it excel?

The scenery of these years will no doubt be cleared away. In several ways Germany has excellence and possibilities of great service to humanity. In original research and invention, in applied science and in science itself, in scholarship, and in social and industrial development and organization, the German has shown himself to be a pioneer. In these pacific domains Germany was in happy rivalry for the leadership of the world. In several of them Germany actually was leader. It is very unfortunate that the war should continue to strike at these. And it would be idle to deny that those Germans whose work serves humanity as a whole have in any way escaped the crippling effect of the downfall of the State. In fact, the educated people have been hit most, and are most threatened.

Moreover, the atmosphere of Germany in these days is not creative. A black finger is pointing threateningly from the sky. The enormity of the punishment which Fate threatens is incredibly great, and yet it keeps threatening. It is perpetually:

The Ides of March are come,
Aye Caesar, but not gone.

The first of May has come, the thirteenth of May has come, and so forth. The line trees are arrayed in tender green, and anon blossom along the length of the Unter den Linden, but it is not Germany's new summer, and it has that irrelevance which the murderer remarks when he is being led some beautiful spring morning to the scaffold to be killed. It was a fine morning, but not for him.

It is only too natural for the educated man to look out morbidly from the eye-gate of the soul. Thus R——, whose fine work on Central Asia was published gratis by some learned society in England before the war, says, "I will renounce my German nationality and become English as soon as your Home Office will let me. Germany is going to be no place for men of brains." Thus the famous theologian Harnack, having completed his latest work, speaks of circulating it only in manuscript as he is in no position to have it printed. Thus Z——, the chemist and metallurgist, has taken his laboratory and his assistants to Switzerland to escape the spiritual paralysis which has overtaken his native land.

Doubtless this black will-to-the-nothing is reflected in many lives in Germany, and in many spheres of activity. Nietzsche anticipated it, though of course, he did not ask for Germany the psychology of one who has been beaten, the evil resentful frame of mind. This latter is strongly exemplified on the serious stage, not serenely and universally, but tinged and circumstanced by Germany's downfall—the what-does-it-matter-that-Sophocles-was-great-if-Germany-is-no-more point of view.

"Richard III" at the State Opera House was a strange performance. It was about the time of the Shakespeare Day celebration which Germany keeps once a year. All the newspapers devoted articles to Shakespeare, and one felt truly that a great master of words and of men was more honoured in ex-enemy Germany than in the land of his birth. And that should have been good for Germany; Shakespeare is universal, and it takes the universal to cleanse the national. As a German philosopher has said, it needs an ocean to receive such a muddy stream as man.

"Richard III," however, showed what the war-spirit can make of Shakespeare. It was interpreted in the pedantic historical vein, and was given as a bloody, brutal mediaeval piece without a thought or a smile or a tear. Richard was shown as a "Hun" of the worst kind. His murderous career was facilitated by his characterless victims. Anne was a "characteristic English hypocrite," pretending to mourn her husband, and yet quite ready to marry Gloucester as "the average Englishwoman would do if the proposal were made." Clarence had no poetry in his soul, and was not even allowed to touch you by his dream in the Tower. Richard said his conscience-stricken, soul-torturing speech—"Richard loves Richard, that is I am I." in a matter-of-fact way. It is a great tragic note in Shakespeare, but in Berlin it was quite a playful matter. Just as the murderers played at murdering Clarence, so Richard joked with himself over, "is there a murderer here—Yes, I am."

The only way to explain such a Richard III to the audience was to suggest—That is the sort of people the English are—thank their God for their humility whilst in reality they stick at nothing to gain their private ends, and are not troubled with conscience.

This production was entirely modern in its presentment. There was a remarkable simplification of scenery. This was, perhaps, due to the new poverty of Berlin. But it comprised merely a wall, a hole in the wall called the Tower of London, a platform on top of the wall called Tower Hill, carpeted stairs against the wall called the Court at Westminster. Clarence mopes in the hole with one electric light—his butt of malmsey wine is even out of view. Richard appears between the two archbishops on the top of the wall, and finally he fights the battle of Bosworth Field up and down the carpeted stairs. Indeed, he suddenly appears at the top of the stairs naked to his middle and then runs down the red carpet carrying his crown in his hand whilst he shouts, "Mein Konigsreich fur ein Pferd,"—my kingdom for a horse. This last was deservedly hissed by the audience as a palpable absurdity being foisted on the half-stunned intelligentsia of Berlin.

At the Lessing Theatre a few days later, "Peer Gynt," that poetical drama of the Teuton's destiny—much better done because really nearer to the German soul than Shakespeare. Solveig had faith; though it was not quite certain that she was the sort of woman to whom one had to return. Peer's romantic return to his mother was, however, much stressed, as in the Greig music. The sentiment that Peer "had women behind him and, therefore, could not perish" appealed strongly to the German mood, though the application of the button-moulder idea to the plight of Germany just now appeared to have been missed. Peer ought to have been a shining button on the vest of the Lord, but has missed his chance, and now is to be melted down with other buttons into something else—into a Polish button, a Czech button, an Alsatian button. There was much scope for meditation looking at "Peer Gynt" at Berlin in 1921.

In lighter vein the traveller finds much more to delight him in the operettas of Berlin. As at Vienna, they are better done than classical drama. That is not a slight on the stage. The vulgarity of English musical comedies and imported operettas is lacking on the Berlin and Vienna stage. German pieces of this kind are often extremely charming and diverting, and they impart that light-heartedness which is a first condition of a healthy mind. The audience is in no sense "highbrow," it is the general level of German humanity. It forgets and responds, and is ready to sing choruses with the leaders of song and dance. Three or four evenings spent listening to operetta leave very pleasant memories, and the last of these was on the occasion of the first night of "Morgen wieder lustik," a humorous presentation of the time when Napoleon was splitting up Germany much as the French wish to split her up now—and there was a King of Westphalia who is still memorable for that one phrase, "Morgen wieder lustik!"—To-morrow we shall be happy again!

I visited Strasbourg, now outwardly Frenchified, but inwardly German enough. At the time of the commencement of the armistice and the German retirement "Simplicimus" published a picture of a "Farewell to Strasbourg." It was a stormy sunset and late evening, and the black silhouette of the very memorable cathedral, the stark and ragged grandeur of that cathedral and its spire which looks as if nothing exists in Strasbourg but it, stood for the significance of the city. Some German horse-soldier symbolized the last to go, and lifting his hat, took one last look at the place, and said, "Auf wiedersehen." And Alsace became French once more.

What a thing to graft two French provinces to the living body of Germany for fifty years and then dispart, when the blood has learned to flow strongly from the new flesh to the heart! You feel the break, the interruption, when you go there now.

And now the same two provinces, heavily Germanized, are re-grafted back to the original flesh of France. It would be absurd to say that the circulation of the blood and the spirit have been re-established at once. There is a great deal of mortification in Alsace and Lorraine. It will be a long while before French life permeates the whole and surges through every vein. Meanwhile the new process of Frenchification proceeds.

We seldom hear that the Germans dare claim to hold Alsace and Lorraine on any grounds, and yet, in fact, quietly and persistently, they do dare. It is frequently urged in conversation that if a plebiscite had been taken in the two provinces, the majority would have been found desirous of remaining under German rule. This, no doubt, is partly vanity, and springs from belief in the supposed preferability of German civilization to French civilization—even French people who knew what it was to live under a French as well as a German regime might prefer the latter as more efficient and comfortable and up-to-date. But the belief that a plebiscite would have gone in German favour is based even more on the German population and on the strong business interests which link the industrial part with the industrial whole. Alsace and Lorraine through commercial development had become an exceedingly important constituent of modern Germany before the war. Germany, moreover, claims to have converted them from poor departments of France to wealthy industrial communities.

Naturally no one on the Allied side of the peace-table ever dreamed of considering such arguments. And they are so lacking in practical cogency that they find no place in the current consideration of modern Europe. They are useless arguments for a Germany who lost the war, and they are assumed to be quite dead. Germany has enough trouble to save Westphalia and Silesia and the Ruhr valley, let alone think about the irrecoverables of the war. She might as well argue that the fleet she sank at Scapa Flow should be restored to her as think of Alsace now.

Nevertheless, the arguments remain for another day to become the arguments of pretension and justification. France naturally is taking care that there shall never be another day of reckoning. But let France make a mistake in her diplomacy and "get in wrong," as they say in America, and it will all be fought over again. It was only fifty years after the Franco-German war that this new war came. Who knows what re-grouping of power there may be, or how Germany will stand in 1970!

In our reckonings and prognostications we should keep in mind that the German is the centre body of the Teutonic race. He is down, but he is not finally beaten. His mind is resentful, and indeed full of the revenge instinct. He has not learned the lesson of humility and obedience in the great war. Who has? He believes he is meant to be master in the vast European plain which he has fitly named "Central Europe—Mittel Europa," and identified with himself.