Intellectually about fifty per cent of English people are Germanized without knowing it. I should say the percentage is even higher in America. I believe that no study is considered so frivolous or so suspect in both countries as the study of French art and poetry. And yet—Russia and one or two Anglo-Saxons put aside—the history of the art of the last fifty years is the history of French art. You who have given Whistler to the world do not need me to tell you what French art is. The American painting at a recent Exhibition here was of so high a quality that I felt my respect for the intellectual progress of America greatly increased. I admit freely and regretfully that it was immeasurely better than English painting. That is because most Americans study painting in Paris. Why don’t they sometimes give a look at the poetry of France, for in no country is poetry so cultivated, so well understood, and so honored? Mr. Shanks apparently knows something of German poetry and nothing of French. Of Liliencron I know nothing. But I do know something of Hauptmann, Dehmel, and Stefan Georg. (I have no doubt Mr. Shanks dislikes Georg because the latter got his training in France.) Well, I will cheerfully wager that any more or less fair-minded person would find three equally good poets in France to every one that can be mentioned in Germany. “Kahn, Régnier, and the other Symbolistes”! What an odd statement! Régnier is a Parnassian and Kahn a nobody. I am not going to write a history of modern French poetry, nor speculate as to the effect of 1870 or the probable effect of 1914 on poetry, especially French poetry. I just want to give some names, and if anyone,—if Mr. Shanks,—can give me half as many German poets of the same calibre, charm, and general technical accomplishment I shall be delighted. Let us grant that Rimbaud, Verlaine, and the elder Parnassians were products of the period of before 1870. Well, since that disastrous war France has produced the following—I will not say great—delightful and readable poets: Samain, Francis Jammes, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas, Paul Fort, Laurent Tailhade, Jules Romains, Remy de Gourmont, Charles Vildrac, Laforgue, Louys (translations), Mallarmé (pre-1870?) and younger men like Guy-Charles Cros, Apollinaire, Castiaux, André Spire, Carco, Divoire, Jouve, Luc Durtain, and dozens more. I do not mention the Belgians Maeterlinck, Verhaeren, Elskamp, and Rodenbach, nor the two Franco-Americans Vielé Griffin, and Merrill—though they also have considerable reputations. (Did you ever hear of an American who wanted to write German?) I have quoted off-hand twenty-six names from a period of about forty years. And you must remember that there are scores and scores of names only a little less known, and scores and scores beyond that which I may have missed in my reading.