War Literature
scoffed at the banality that has reappeared in the German theatres, and the literary mediocrity of patriotic productions, he asked where this "new spirit" may be found, and this gives him an opportunity to demolish Ostwald and Lasson.
"Where is it to be found? In the Hochschulen? Have we not read that incredibly clumsy (unwahrscheinlich plumpen) appeal of the 99 professors? Have we not appreciated the statements of that double centenarian (des zweihundertjæhrige Mummelgreises) mummy Lasson? When I was studying philosophy as an undergraduate at the University of Berlin, the theatre in which he lectured was a place of amusement (Lachkabinett) for us—nothing more. And to-day people take him seriously! English, French, and Italian papers print his senile babblings against Holland, as typical of the Stimmung of the German intellectuals. The wrong that these privy councillors and professors have done us with their Aufklärungsarbeit can hardly be measured. They have isolated themselves from humanity by their inability to realise the feelings of others."
In opposition to these false representatives of a nation, these cultured gossips and political adventurers, he extols the silent ones, the great mass of the people of all nations who suffer
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