Our Foreign Exchanges 
nenee given in the 
German papers to the 
work of Baillie-Scott 
and Charles Rennie 
Mackintosh. 
We may fully admit 
the crudities which 
distinguish much of 
the Teutonic work in 
every field of activity 
—that element of bar¬ 
barism which, lacking 
originally perhaps 
the discipline of the 
empire has to this day 
proved wholly ineradi¬ 
cable, or so it has 
seemed from foreign 
view-points—yet in 
spite of these elemental 
crudities in manner 
and customs, we recog¬ 
nize an inspired desire 
to break the bounds of 
that devitalizing fatal¬ 
ism which is the inevi¬ 
table accompaniment 
of a decadent classical- 
ism, just as the classical 
Renaissance itself is a 
downward step from 
the period of the free 
Renaissance. 
So earnest an en¬ 
deavor as that now 
making in Germany to 
develop a modern na¬ 
tional style, and above 
all a virile one, cannot 
fail some day of success. At present, it is pass¬ 
ing with great credit through the formative 
stage and has shown itself capable both of 
real inspiration and good result. That it 
has fully arrived, the laborers in its field 
would be the last to claim; but they may 
well afford to disregard the criticism, which it 
is so easy to make as it is easily refuted, that 
they are in headlong pursuit of the old ignis 
INTERIOR OF MUNICH DEPARTMENT STORE 
fatuus of originality and picturesqueness 
with the inevitable result of plunging head¬ 
long in the bog of romanticism. There is 
in Germany, as elsewhere, a wealth of roman¬ 
tic literature, and a well-established parallel 
inevitably points to a modern school of roman¬ 
tic German architecture worthy of the high¬ 
est honor. That it will result from the present 
revolt there seems little reason to doubt. 
95 
