370 LITERARY ACTIVITY. 



and only let good workmanship proclaim its merits. 

 Unfounded attacks on its achievements could therefore 

 not pass unchallenged, which frequently had to take 

 the form of an appeal to the law of libel, as the 

 newspapers usually had more sympathy for their 

 regular profitable advertisers. 



Of such rectifications I will only here instance 

 one sent in April 1877 to the Elberf elder Zeitungj 

 since it is of a more general interest. The anonymous 

 writer, who gave occasion to this rectification, had 

 praised the dynamo-electric machines of M. Gramme 

 in Paris, whom he styled the meritorious inventor 

 of the dynamo -electric machine and electric lighting, 

 and for whose recognition he claimed the German 

 love of justice in high-sounding phrases, without 

 even making mention at all of the German share in 

 these inventions. In my reply I emphasized the un- 

 doubted merit of Gramme in the development of 

 the dynamo - electric machine , which consisted in 

 the combination of the ring of Pacinotti with nay 

 dynamo -electric principle, I could however not omit 

 to reverse the appeal to German love of justice in 

 favour of foreign services by pointing to the fact 

 that the German is always inclined rather to recog- 

 nise foreign and exotic than home growths. This 

 was, I added, a great obstacle to the development 

 of German industry, since the latter was often com- 

 pelled by the preference for foreign manufactures 

 to send its better products to the markets of the 

 world under a foreign flag, whence it came to pass 



