The German is Orson, or the mob, or a marching
army, in defence of a good case or a bad--a big or a little. His irony is
a missile of terrific tonnage: sarcasm he emits like a blast from a
dragon's mouth. He must and will be Titan. He stamps his foe underfoot,
and is astonished that the creature is not dead, but stinging; for, in
truth, the Titan is contending, by comparison, with a god.
When the Germans lie on their arms, looking across the Alsatian frontier
at the crowds of Frenchmen rushing to applaud L'ami Fritz at the Theatre
Francais, looking and considering the meaning of that applause, which is
grimly comic in its political response to the domestic moral of the
play--when the Germans watch and are silent, their force of character
tells. They are kings in music, we may say princes in poetry, good
speculators in philosophy, and our leaders in scholarship. That so gifted
a race, possessed moreover of the stern good sense which collects the
waters of laughter to make the wells, should show at a disadvantage, I
hold for a proof, instructive to us, that the discipline of the comic
spirit is needful to their growth.
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