Above the Battle
the most eloquent, courageous, and decided of all is Wilhelm Herzog. He is the editor of the Forum at Munich, and like our own Péguy, when he began to publish his Cahiers de la Quinzaine, he fills almost the whole of his review with his own burning articles. The enthusiastic biographer of H. von Kleist, he sees and judges the events of his own time with the eyes of that indomitable spirit. The German censor attempts in vain to silence him and to forbid the publication of the lectures of Spitteler and of Annette Kolb; his indignation and cries of vengeful irony spread even to us. He attacks bitterly the ninety-three intellectuals who "fancy they are all Ajaxes because they bray the loudest," those politicians of the school of Haeckel, who make a new division of the world, those patriotic bards who insult other nations; he attacks Thomas Mann mercilessly, scoffs at his sophistry, and defends France, the French Army,[1] and French civilisation against him; he points out that the great men of Germany (Grünwald, Dürer, Bach, and Mozart amongst others) have always been persecuted, humiliated, and calumniated.[2] In an article entitled "Der neue Geist,"[3] after having
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