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Above the Battle notorious vagaries on Culture and Civilisation (Gedanken im Kriege)—many of the younger ones affect a haughty detachment from actual events.

That impassive publication, Blätter für die Kunst, over which broods the invisible personality of Stefan George, published at the end of 1914 a volume of poems of 156 pages, which did not contain a single line referring to the war. A note at the end affirms that the points of view of the various authors have not changed on account of recent events, and anticipates the objection that "this is not the time for poetry," by the saying of Jean Paul: "No period has so much need of poetry, as the one which thinks it can do without it."

Die Aktion, a vibrating, audacious Berlin review, with an ultra-modern point of view, totally different from the calm impersonality of Blätter für die Kunst, stated in its issue of August 15, 1914, that it would not concern itself with politics, but would contain only literature and art. And if it finds room in its literary columns for the war poems sent from the field of battle by the military doctors, Wilhelm Klemm and Hans Kock, it is in consideration of their value as art, and not for the vivacity of their patriotic 158