_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 sentiments; for it scoffs mercilessly at the ridiculous bards of German Chauvinism, at Heinrich Vierordt, the author of _Deutschland, hasse_, at the criminal poets who stir up hatred with their false stories, and at Professor Haeckel. The dilettantism of this review is extreme. Its weekly issues contain translations from the French of André Gide, Péguy, and Léon Bloy, and reproductions of the works of Daumier, Delacroix, Cézanne, Matisse, and R. de la Fresnaye: (cubism flourishes in this Berlin review). The issue of October 24th is devoted to Péguy, and contains, as frontispiece, Egon Schiele's portrait of the man, who is honored by Franz Pfemfert, the editor, as "the purest and most vigorous moral force in French literature of today." Let us hasten to add, however, that, as is often the case on the other side of the Rhine, they are carried away by their zeal in deploring his death as of one of their countrymen, and in proclaiming themselves his heirs. But the pride which admires is at least superior to the pride which disparages. The most important of these young reviews is _Die Weissen Blätter_; important on account of the variety of questions it deals with, and the value and number of its contributors, as well as for the broad-mindedness of its editor--René Schickele. An Alsatian by birth, he belongs to those who feel most acutely the bitterness of the present struggle. After an interval of three months _Die Weissen Blätter_, which almost corresponds to our _Nouvelle Revue Française_, reappeared in January last with the following declaration, akin to that of the _Revue des Nations_, at Berne. "_It seems good to us to begin the work of reconstruction, in the midst of the war, and to aid in preparing for the victory of the spirit. The community of Europe is at present apparently destroyed. Is it not the duty of all of us who are not bearing arms, to live from today onwards according to the dictates of our conscience, as it will be the duty of every German when once the war is over?_"