Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 19.djvu/17

 THE CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORY

By Julius Petersen, Ph.D.

Professor of German Literature, University of Basel TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM GUILD HOWARD

HE last two volumes of this comprehensive publication are devoted to the living, the writers of the present who sow the seed from which shall grow the future of German let- ters. But who can speak of prophecy or prevision, at a moment when all who call themselves Ger- man are compelled to fight for their existence, and the future of German nationality as well as of German culture is hidden by the smoke of battle ? To the four quarters of the globe the wild alarm Germania est delenda is trum- peted as a so-called duty of human civilization; isolated Germany can respond only with her resolute Victory or Death. What shall be the end? Shall this war of the nations, unparalleled in history, mean for Germany the destruction of all her material and spiritual possessions, as they were destroyed during the thirty years of horror in the seventeenth century? Or has Germany, thrown upon her own resources, attained to full consciousness of her strength, and now at last repaired the damage of that national calamity, which devastated her territory, subjected her to foreign domination, and continued to retard her progress for two full centuries?

Who can foretell whether the heroism of a mighty time, whose dawn we see, is to give new inspiration to patriotic poetry for centuries to come, and beget a new generation of bards worthy to sing of arms and men? The spirit of self-sacrificing devotion which waged the Seven Years' War and the Wars of Liberation has returned to animate the Germany of today. Who knows, however, but that

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