She has betrayed the principles of the new era. We are going to
boycott her."
"Won't that be rather difficult?" queried Mitchell, shaking his
head. "Seventy or eighty million people--hard to shut them out of
the world, eh?"
"Nonsense, dear Phil," drawled Rosenlaube; "it will be easy enough.
But I don't agree with Phipps-Herrick about the reason or method.
We are going to have a new era after the war. But it will not
be a utilitarian age. It will be a return to beauty and form and
culture--not with a 'k.' First of all, we are going to kill a great
many Germans. Then we are going to Berlin to knock down all the
ugly statues in the _Sieges-Allee_ and smash the parvenu German
Empire. Then we shall have a new age on classic lines. People will
still use French and English and Italian because there is some beauty
in those languages. But nobody outside of Germany will speak or
read German. It is a barbarous tongue--shapeless and hideous--used
by barbarians who gobble and snort when they talk. Sorry for Kant
and Goethe and Heine and all that crowd, but their time is up;
they've got to go out with their beastly language!"
"Yes," said Phipps-Herrick, "out with them, bag and baggage.
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