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We "good Europeans," we too have hours when we allow ourselves a hearty feeling for our fatherland, a bump and relapse into old loves and narrow places - I just gave a sample of that - hours of national tumults, patriotic apprehensions, and all sorts of other floods of old-fashioned emotion. Slower moving spirits than we are might take a longer period of time to be done with things which with us last and have run their course in a matter of hours - some need half a year; others require half a human lifetime, each according to the speed and power with which they digest and "transform their stuff." In fact, I could think of some dull hesitant races who, even in our shrinking Europe, would require half a century in order to overcome such atavistic attacks of patriotism and attachment to their soil and to return to reason, that is to say, to "good Europeanness." And while I indulge myself excessively with this possibility, it so happens that I listen in on a conversation between two old "patriots." They both were obviously hard of hearing and so spoke all the louder. One said, "That man thinks about and understands philosophy as much as a farmer or a student in a fraternity. He is still innocent. But what does that matter these days! This is the age of the masses, who prostrate themselves before everything built on a massive scale. That's how it is in politics, as well. If a statesman piles up a new tower of Babel for them, anything at all that's immense in riches and power, they call him ‘great.' What does it matter that in the meantime those of us who are more cautious and more reserved still do not give up the old belief that only a great idea confers greatness on an act or a cause? What if a statesman brought his people into a situation where from that point on they had to practise ‘grand politics,' something for which they were by nature poorly adapted and prepared, so that it would be necessary for them to sacrifice their love of their old and certain virtues to a new and doubtful mediocrity - suppose that a statesman sentenced his people to a general ‘politicking,' although up to that point those same people had better things to do and think about and that in the depth of their souls they could not rid themselves of a cautious disgust with the anxiety, emptiness, blaring, and devilish squabbling of those peoples who were truly politicking - suppose such a statesman goaded the sleeping passions and desires of his people, and turned their earlier shyness and their pleasure in standing to one side into stains, their interaction with strangers and their secret boundlessness into a liability, devalued their most heartfelt inclinations, turned their conscience around, made their spirit narrow, their taste ‘national,' - well, would a statesman who did all those things which his people would have to atone for through all future time, in the event they had a future, would such a statesman be great?" "Undoubtedly," the other old patriot answered him vehemently, "otherwise he would have been incapable of doing it! Perhaps it was idiotic to want something like that? But perhaps every great thing was merely idiotic at the beginning!" "That's an abuse of words!" cried his conversational partner in response, "Strong! Strong! Strong and idiotic! Not great!" The old men had evidently worked themselves up, as they shouted their "truths" into each other's faces like this. But I, in my happiness and remoteness, thought about how a stronger man would soon become master over the strong, and also how there is a compensation for the spiritual flattening of one people, namely, the spiritual deepening of another people. -