These volumes of Lomberg’s are well-known school-books in Germany. Hence their value as indicating a certain trend of thought. If the English are ever to form a reasoned judgment of the Germans, it is essential to understand something of that peculiar herbage on which the minds of teachers and pupils alike have been pastured. But Herr Lomberg has not been content to rest on his laurels as regards a critical study of the German classics. War poetry has also claimed his attention and his explanations. One afternoon in a bookshop I stumbled by chance on a volume of German war poetry. I bought it and went on my way rejoicing. I knew something by then of the general outlook of my friend the Rektor’s mind, and felt sure that his observations on the World-War would be worth reading. So indeed they proved. The poems themselves were of very poor quality. Nothing remotely comparable to the verse of Rupert Brooke or Julian Grenfell or of half a dozen other English writers adorned these drab pages. Unless Germany has produced something better than the mediocre collection brought together by the Rektor, her inferiority in one respect at least to England is outstanding. Leaving literary values aside, the normal note struck was one of a boastful and irritating patriotism. The early poems, written in the days when Germany was still flushed by hopes of a speedy and overwhelming victory, are noisy and aggressive. One writer exults over the air raids. “We have flying ships, they have none,” he shouts stridently. No less great is the enthusiasm for the U-boat exploits. The limits of degradation were reached by a poem about a pro-German fish in the North Sea. The fish kept company with a U-boat and followed the various sinkings with great interest. One day the U-boat sank first a cargo of sugar, next of lemons, thirdly of rum. The fish brewed a toddy of these various ingredients, and drank tipsy toasts to the U-boat. I suppose the poem was intended to be funny. Of humour it had none. The mentality it revealed was amazing.