The world owes a debt to
modern Germany beyond all question, but this is far less than the debt
owed to England and to France. It would be interesting if some German,
speaking with authority, should now be moved to explain to us Americans
the reasons which underlie the insistent assertion of the superiority of
German civilization. Within the past few weeks we have been forced to
gaze at certain of the less pleasant aspects of the German character;
and we have been made to see that the militarism of the Germans is in
absolute contradiction to the preaching and to the practice of the great
Goethe, to whom they proudly point as the ultimate representative of
German culture.
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
Columbia University in the City of New York, Sept. 18, 1914.
Culture vs. Kultur
By Frank Jewett Mather, Jr.
_To the Editor of The New York Times:_
Current discussion of the worth of German culture has been almost
hopelessly clouded by the fact that when a German speaks of Kultur he
means an entirely different thing from what a Latin or Briton means by
culture. Kultur means the organized efficiency of a nation in the
broadest sense--its successful achievement in civil and military
administration, industry, commerce, finance, and in a quite secondary
way in scholarship, letters, and art.
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