But imagination is not her gift. If Sheffield can give her a model knife, Germany can reproduce that knife in quantities and undersell Sheffield. The German people keep step in a regiment, in a factory and on a ship, and therefore are wholesalers. The French mind is creative. It stands for individual excellence, and is at the other extreme from the German temperament. The emblem of the German intellect is beer; the emblem of the English intellect is port wine; the emblem of the French mind is champagne; the emblem of an American intellect like Emerson's is a beaker filled with sunshine--but Germany has a "beer" mind. It is this lack of imagination that explains Nietzsche's statement that for two hundred years Germany has been "the enemy of culture" while Heinrich Heine insists that "the very name of culture is France." It is this total lack of any appreciation of art and architecture that explains Germany's destruction of some of the noblest buildings of the world. She cannot by any chance conceive how the other races look upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it publicly in one of her state papers, "Let the neutrals cease chattering about cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military ends." Guizot in his history of civilization presents three tests of a civilized people: First, they revere their pledges and honour; second, they reverence and pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture and literature; third, they exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor, the weak and the unfortunate. Now apply those tests to the Kaiser and his War Staff, and you understand why Rheims Cathedral is a ruin.[2] No building since the Parthenon was more precious to the world's culture. What majesty and dignity in the lines! What a wealth of statuary! How wonderful the Twelfth Century glass! With what lightness did these arches leap into the air! Now, the great bombs have torn holes through the roof; only little bits of glass remain; broken are the arches, ruined these flying buttresses, the altar where Jeanne d'Arc stood at the crowning of Charles is quite gone. The great library, the bishop's palace, all the art treasures are in ruins. But ancient and noble buildings do not belong to a race, they belong to the world. Sacred forever the threshold of the Parthenon, once pressed by the feet of Socrates and Plato! Thrice sacred that aisle of Santa Croce in Florence, dear to Dante and Savonarola. To be treasured forever the solemn beauty of Westminster Abbey, holding the dust of men of supreme genius.