FOLLOWING out this truly Teutonic line of reasoning, there is no reason why Beethoven should not be claimed as English, and surely Christopher Columbus was Russian—or French, or Norwegian. A sense of humor would have saved Germany from this absurdity of claiming the whole world’s genius as her own, but that sense is the one thing that Germany lacks above all others, and from the deficiency has arisen this war and all its evils.

For a sense of humor—or a sense of proportion, which is precisely the same thing—would have given Germany to understand that in these days no nation may aspire to domination over other and different races; it would have given her to understand that there are other forms of culture besides her own Kultur, which, after all, is merely order and discipline, and not a finer perception or a greater development of intellect; it would have given her to understand that which the world’s history has failed to teach her, that aggression does not pay, and that essays in tyrannic dominance inevitably fail.

Raemaekers’ satire is unerring, for though no German has yet stated that Shakspere’s plays are based on the work of a poet who lived two centuries later, yet the professors and pedants of Kultur have attempted equal absurdities, even to showing Germany as a country of simple, kindly people, who abhor a war that has been forced on them. One is tempted to quote from the world-poet who, in this cartoon, faces his antithesis with such an air of gentle incredulity, but the temptation, if yielded to, would lead too far.

Germany has not only claimed Shakspere, but she has claimed control of all the Western world; one claim is as likely to be conceded as the other.

E. CHARLES VIVIAN.