“I frequently visit Paris to attend the great sales; I am well acquainted with the superior smiles with which many of your critics greet our attempts. They make fun of the curved outlines of our ‘Jugend’ buildings. For my part, I detest that style of architecture as much as they. Are we not now demolishing a theatre built after this design, although the mortar is hardly dry? But it is possible for us to destroy our architectural abortions. In Germany you can get money, all the money you require, for an artistic purpose. Can you do the same in France? Can you make sacrifices to an ideal incorporated in stone? No, you have too little faith. You believe in your bankers, not in your artists. You venture nothing in art; we hazard all, boldly running the risk of making a mistake. And, by building, we learn to build. “Ten years ago we were making bad attempts; to-day we have discovered a system of architecture appropriate to modern requirements and at the same time beautiful. Go and look at the Weltheim in Berlin, M. Osthaus’s home at Hagen, the new station at Hamburg. When you are in Hamburg get M. Schumacher, chief architect of the republic, to show you the plans of the magnificent public garden he has just designed, which is to cost fifteen million marks. “Here money is the ally of art, the living art of to-day, the ally of artistic creation, whereas in your country money, more prudent, devotes itself only to the purchase of antique and catalogued beauty. I believe, in fact, that France lacks Medicis, whilst Germany possesses them in abundance. The reason is obvious. The wealthier members of our bourgeoisie are uneasy and discontented; they desire a true parliament which will enable them to get the better of the junkers; it is their nature to be progressive. Your bourgeoisie, on the other hand, has triumphed, and, since it has nothing more to desire, it is natural that it should dread novelty in philosophy and art no less than in politics. I know that what I am saying runs counter to all your hopes. But you can do nothing to change your destiny in this matter. France has entered the conservative phase; we are now the creators; we, henceforward, shall be the true successors of your masters.” * * * * * Thus everywhere was to be heard the same refrain: the future lies in the hands of Germany! Germany is the Messiah of the new art; the Messiah of the socialist city; the Messiah of modern thought; the Messiah of the new classic age. She is the successor of aged France. It is she who will realize what the last of the great Frenchmen have dreamed.