“But are you not struck by the fact that during the last twenty years it has been in Germany, above all, that your innovators have gained appreciation; that many of them have had to secure their first celebrity in the foreign world, before they were enabled to harvest in France the fruits of a restricted glory, admired in their own homes solely by a group of cosmopolitan epicures? Are you not astonished that such a man as Van de Velde, who vegetated in Paris, should build palaces for our great manufacturers; and that Maillol, the sculptor, a most typical Frenchman, should find a place of honour in our museums while in France he is still almost unknown? Is this neglect deliberate? Is it because you are convinced that genius cannot flower to perfection until it has suffered, that you provide this chill atmosphere for your best artists? Or is it timidity, unwillingness to take risks, stupidity, provincialism? Whatever the reason, the air of France is to-day less favourable to creation than the air of Germany. “In Germany there is an extensive public which lives upon the hope of a new ‘culture.’ This public has nothing in common with the pangermanists. It includes few generals and few leaders of the bureaucracy. But it contains our best men of letters and some of our principal bourgeois, in a word, the general staff of wealthy, liberal, and parliamentary young Germany. There are some, like Stephan Georg, Wolfskehl, and Madame Osthaus, in whom this hope assumes an ardent and mystical character, becoming a true religion. While it is the fashion in Paris, at least so we are assured, to be frankly reactionary,[6] here all the men and all the women who wield the empire of mind are animated by a quasi-messianic spirit. Is it possible that Nietzsche, with his idea of the revaluation of values, has contributed to the spread of this spirit? I do not know. We wait; we aspire; we hope. To us to-morrow is sacred. Every one is striving towards forms of life and art which shall be more ample, more truthful, more expressive, more beautiful. Every one is making ready to welcome the wonderful butterfly which is to spring from this larval age. It is with us a matter of faith that the men will come, that they are now on the way, who can provide the artillery and the watchwords of the new civilization.