GERMAN LETTER
SO it has been decided: I shall tell the readers of The Dial now and then of the cultural life in my home country, that European province which is known to citizens of the Union under the name of Germany and with which, if I remember rightly, America was recently at war. America, which, according to our own Goethe, "is better off" than this aged continent with its "crumbling castles" and its "basalts," things which for Goethe, however, who mentions them with a sigh, are merely symbols of much deeper burdens and picturesquely melancholy differentiations of the European mind—burdens, differentiations which, to America's athletic astonishment, have prevented the unity of Europe up to now and will most likely prevent it to the bitter end. On the surface at least, after the world war we are more widely removed than ever from the chance of constructing the cis-atlantic counterpart to the United States. And America, mighty, bright-eyed, unweighted by history, must be somewhat disillusioned to observe that its decisive participation in the war has helped to increase rather than decrease the European system of small states which Nietzsche found so ridiculous. This small portion of the world previously comprised twenty-seven nations; it can now count thirty-five—and for the most part, skilled statesmen such as the astute Signor Nitti assure us, they are artificial products lacking durability.
In short, things are in a bad way. And we should despair for the salvation of this old, misery-tried, but still unwise Europe except that despite all the wretchedness, despite a war which must be voted a loss for all parties, and despite the strengthening of nationalistic passions which the war has occasioned everywhere, a feeling has arisen as though European nations had begun almost imperceptibly to draw closer together. This movement is partly along economic lines—for even the most heated chauvinist is coming to see that the material rehabilitation of the continent can be accomplished only through concerted action—and partly also in the sense of a new impetus to spiritual commerce and a mutual
