New-York tribune., 1920-03-15
BY William C. Dreher

BY William c. Dreher
BERLIN, Feb. 26.-When I returned
to Germany year ago heard some
talk among learned professors of a
book that had appeared in 1917, Dr.
Spengler's decline of the Occident. f"
Since then the book has had an enor-
nous vogue and is already out of print
Everybody making any pretensions to
intellectual interests is reading Speng-
ler, including persons who never be-
fore ventured upon such heavy diet
of history and philosophy.
All this is symptomatic of the pres
ent state of the German mind For
what is the lcitmotif of Spenglers
book? 1t is that Occidental civliza-
tion already mas entered upon such a
period of decline as finally doomed all
the civilizations Of antiouity
This is no mere intellectual by
product of the war, for the book was
written before it began, but that the
book is now enjoying an almost sem
sational popularity is highly signif-
cant. Why are German thinkers Of to-
day grabbing in the dust of dead civ
ilizations' to convince themselves that
our modern civilization is also doomed
to decay and death.
Thinking in Minor Key
1t is because German post-bellum
thinking has dropped into the minor
key. Germany's great material gran
deur is a thing of the past; the dream
of Germany as the dominant power in
the world has vanished. Instead, Ger
mans find their country condemned to
a state of political servitude All th4s
predisposes the German mind to sor-
rowful and gloomy views of life. Pes
slmistic interpretations of human his
tory in general find favor in the high
places of thought.
The tone of lamentation in respect
to Germany and its future finds eX-
preston in the most varied forms. A
writer captions his essay, "At the
Grave of the German People" A sculp-
tor chisels a group: Germany In
Chains" A cartoonist represents Ger
many as a helpless female figure, while
a monster in the background, with
long arms and sharp claws, stretches
forward to seize her-~its features
those Of Clemenceau.
Lamenting the present and digging
into the past to get materials for a
gloomy progno ostication of the future
that is about the attitude of all those
Germans who had intoxicated them
selves with those grand material
istic visions of German greatness
which were dissipated by the war
Some of these have set about
the task of finding what was
wrong in the dream, and have reached
q Inc l,ot
spiritual or idealistic in it, that i'm
perial Germany crushed the free hu-
man spirit by treating It as a mere
machine to be kept in motion bv an
external force. And so a new type
Of reformers is being developed; their
slogans are back to the human soul,
back to nature and it's simplicity, hack
to love for humanity.
Others-a host in number-are vast
ing their strength in fruitless wrangles
over the war and it's causes, it's out
come, the revolution and all that has
happened since. Did the military
breakdown of Germany cause the revo-
luton, or were the victorious armies
"stabbed in the back" by the socialis-
tic propaganda for peace?
Was Erzberger responsible for the
hard armistice terms and for surren-
dering the commercial fleet? Was
Germany wholly or only partly re-
sponsible for the var? These are a
few of the questions to which embit-
tered hearts are giving bitter answers.
Poisoning National Life.
And it is all leading to nothing good
or constructive. 1t is poisoning the
national life, lowering the tone Of all
human intercourse. Political meetings
are broken up by those elements which
few years ago represented the Ger
many of the Junkers, just as fire.
quently as by the extremists, the In
dependent Socialists and Communists
of the laboring classes.
Speakers are howled down or cud-
geled until they must be sent off to a
hospital. Political editorials TEEN
with the language of coarse vitupera-
tion: coward, rascal, traitor, thief are
the favorite verbal weapons at the two
extremes of German politics
Political cartoons tend to sheer bru-
tality, making up by dull coarseness
what they lack in wit. One smart car
toonist caricatures President Ebert as
a fat hog, and is so satisfied with his
performance that he even sends marked d
copies to literary men abroad TO show
what legitimate means German political
satire employs.
Inc CheatefS also are invaded by this
ruffianism and "theater rows" have be-
come frequent. Recently deputation
of the Goethe Bund went to Minister
Haenisch to appeal for protection for
theatrical performances. at occurs
more and more frequently" they said,
"that theater performances are dis
turbed by small minority making
noisy demonstrations. The result is
that the majority of the audience can
have no artistic enjoyment of the
play"
The minister advised the audiences
to protect themselves, but added that
the police must also interfere Even
public readings, in cases where the
reader has aroused political animosi-
ties, are broken up with whistles