Here is an amusing office incident which many of our readers will enjoy. In the first package of manuscripts received from Germany since peace came were the compositions of a widely-admired composer whose works have been played by thousands of Etude readers. One of the manuscripts bore the flattering label
AMERIKANISCHER MARSCH
This label was pasted on and one could readily see by holding the page to the light, the original title, which with the translation we have given was
Aus Deutschland's Grossem Fest
(To Germany's Great Festal Day)
Hohenzollern Allen Voran
(Hohenzollerns to the Front)
Preusischen Siegesmarsch
(Prussian Victory March)
The incident is only one of thousands indicating how the German people were misled for years into thinking they could conquer the world, while their citizens were being slaughtered to support an aristocracy.
The Victory somehow didn't happen and since the composer lived in the occupied territory, he has evidently seen one of the reasons why.
The war is over and the citizens of the new Republic across the Rhine are destined to find that the Americans, who were forced by altogether unexpected and unwanted circumstances into the great war against an enemy whom they had always looked upon with friendship, are neither "the contemptible little army of dollar hunters" nor the terrible beasts that their comic papers have led them to believe we are. Evidently they are beginning to see a great light. Let us welcome it and the new Democracy in that spirit of bigness and fairness which we all like to call "American."
