It is impossible to imagine Berlin waking some winter morning to find such a "criticism" as this on its breakfast table. In Germany, people who understand music write about music, and people who understand about fashions write about fashions, and the two subjects, both of them interesting and important, are kept apart. Society journalists who write about Lady Bobbies and Mrs. Fitzwegschweins do not exist yet in Germany, and so far the empire seems to worry along quite comfortably without them. I once asked a well-known English journalist who is of German birth, why one of our newspaper kings did not set up a huge, gossipy, frivolous paper in Berlin, and it was explained to me that it would be impossible, because the editor and his staff would probably find themselves in prison in a week. What we understand by Freedom of the Press does not exist there. On the other hand, books and pamphlets are circulated in Germany that would be suppressed here; and the stage is freer than our own. _Monna Vanna_ had a great success in Berlin, where Mme. Maeterlinck played the part to crowded audiences. _Salome_ is now holding the stage both as a play and with Richard Strauss' music as an opera; Gorky's _Nachtasyl_ is played year after year in Berlin. Both French and German plays are acted all over Germany that could not be produced in England, both because the censor would refuse to pass them and because public opinion would not tolerate them, unless, to be sure, they were played in their own tongues. It is most difficult to explain our attitude to Germans who have been in London, because they know what vulgar and vicious farces and musical comedies pass muster with us, and indeed are extremely popular. It is only when a play touches the deeps of life and shows signs of thought and of poetry that we take fright, and by the lips of our chosen official cry, "This will never do." Tolstoy, Ibsen, Gorky, Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Hauptmann, and Otto Ernst are the modern names I find on one week's programme cut from a Berlin paper late in spring when the theatrical season was nearly over. Besides plays by these authors, one of the State theatres announced tragedies by Goethe, Schiller, and a comedy by Molière. _The Merchant of Venice_ was being played at one theatre and _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ at another; there were farces and light operas for some people, and Wagner, Gluck, and Beethoven at the Royal Opera House for others. The theatre in Germany is a part of national life and of national education, and it is largely supported by the State; so that even in small towns you get good music and acting. The Meiningen players are celebrated all over the world, and everyone who has read Goethe's Life will remember how actively and constantly he was interested in the Weimar stage. At a _Stadt-Theater_ in a small town two or three operas are given every week, and two or three plays. Most people subscribe for seats once or twice a week all through the