It is indeed interesting to read some of the articles which appear in the various German magazines, no small number of which express the smuggest complacency. Thus in a recent issue of the leading monthly magazine of the Hitler Youth "Wille und Macht" the editors devote a great deal of space to Shakespeare, in an article which represents the present struggle between Germany and Britain, to that of Shakespeare's time between England and Spain. But the Nazis contemplate carrying on without Shakespeare, though it is pointed out that "German trusteeship for Shakespeare has become so much of a blessing that it would betoken nothing short of an irresponsibility to interrupt this trusteeship." When, or through whom the Germans accepted the trusteeship for Shakespeare has not been made plain, but it is gratifying to know that, though they are determined to get along without the great English playwright and poet, they will nevertheless continue their arduous duties as trustee for him. The reason for seeking to get along without him is that "Germany's day has arrived," and that the German is "appointed to shape occidental morality, to establish his empire in the middle of Europe, and after suffering injustice and persecution, at last put the people of the middle into his heritage. The claim is prodigious, the battle hard, yet no harder than the one England won against Spain." The likening of Elizabethan England's rôle in the sixteenth century to that being played by Germany in this, is just the sort of impertinence to be ex-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.