POLITICS AND LITERATURE

Saying that "a new secession of the true German spirit and soul is beginning." Emil Ludwig in the current Nation proceeds to explain the causes of this movement. When Wilhelm II became emperor, there was a similar secession. The great German artists withdrew from the official circle, and the court favorites were pedestrian mediocrities. With the coming of the revolution however, Ludwig felt, "the eternal division between intellect and state, to which the tragedy of Germany was due, had been ended." The ministries were given to men of real ability, In 1921 the spirit of liberalism prevailed.

"Today," Ludwig mourns, "All this sounds like a hoary old legend." In the dark days that followed 1921, the people lost faith in the leaders of the revolution. They refused to believe that the fault lay with the writers of the peace treaties, and they came to think of Germany as the innocent victim of the war. Had they turned to the National Socialist Party, leaderless though it was, they would have done better, for at least "its roots lie deep in the nation." Instead old and young have looked to the Junkers, experienced in rule, reactionary, and, like the Bourbons, learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

However true his remarks on the present somnolence of the creative spirit may be, Ludwig is unjustified in his conclusion that only a continuation of the liberalism of the revolution could have produced a tremendous outburst of the Germany spirit. Ironically enough, he says that only a period of political unity and national enthusiasm could have brought forth another Goethe or a Humbolt. At that time Germany was split into sections and subjected to the armies of Napoleon. Like the post-war Germany of today it was weary of strife and lacked any unifying ideal to inspire the national consciousness. This was, nevertheless, the Germany of Goethe and Schiller,--the great creative and prolific period of German literature. Although there is no reason to suppose that the present disorder will produce another Goethe, there is equally to reason to despair of German art for the future.