subjects there will be for the artist. Even war, even that beautiful calamity is swept away with the “no” of modern culture. Oh, this “modern culture”! You can’t imagine a better nursery of vulgarity. It is pitiless to all that is most beautiful. Why, the picturesque little corners of the globe, even they are spoiled with restaurants! Believe me, there will come an hour when Americanism, that ideal incarnation of vulgarity, will catch up in its paws the last poetical little spot of our much-enduring planet and then
Friend: And then?
Master: The death of art—the decadence of decadence—the empire of the machine—the grandiose factory, and before it an American, in a humble pose and boots he cleans himself
Friend: H’m—the death of art. Therefore all manifestations of culture should be annihilated, eh? We ought to look to the Vandals? Have I understood you properly?
Master: My dear old fellow, in the matter of knowledge of the truth, we people of the twentieth century are not so very far from the Vandals, but in the matter of destroying all that is most beautiful, all that most adorns life, we have
