than in the chances of money-making. The passion for humanity is in this fresh, unhackneyed verse, but, although there is some crudity, there is no strain after newness. There is something pleasantly familiar in the work of Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hagedorn; but it is the presence of old and lasting elements of human interest, not of old-time ways of speech and points of view. These young poets are both university-bred, and have not discarded the traditions of their art; but they are distinctly of the new age, and life has brought its problems home to their imaginations. They are concerned, however, less with the problems of social condition than with the problems of the soul, and more with individual experience and the ultimate goals than with collective experience and imminent change. Mr. Robinson's "The Town Down the River" is a finely imaginative rendering of an age-old mystery in terms of fresh imagery; and his shorter poems included in the volume having that name, which sometimes give one a faint suggestion of Browning, pay the reader the compliment of assuming that he shares with the poet the power of imagination.

College verse has rarely risen to the level of Mr. Hagedorn's "A Troop of the Guard " (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston), read at Harvard on a recent Commencement day; a poem which has the freshness of the gallantry which pulls rein on the edge of the charge that it may hear for a moment the clamor of cries for help, and feel the fierce passion of young idealism to be up and away. This poem, with its bugle note, recalls Sydney Smith's spirited counsel: "Whenever you hear of a good' war, go to it." So long as youth is ready to go to the good wars, there will be good poetry. This ringing note is struck more than once in the verse of this young poet :

"Let the battle be grim and a thousand assail

us

By the sun that has led us, we still will defy! Though the fight go against us, our hope shall not fail us.

Though we die in the striving, we'll laugh as we die."

Other of Mr. Hagedorn's poems appear with "A Troop of the Guard."

Those who heard Mr. Percy Mackaye read the spirited lines of his ballad "Ticonderoga " at the Tercentenary celebration three years ago will not forget the skill with which the historical background was sketched, nor the picturesque quality of the verses in which

the place and the day were celebrated. Like Mr. Robinson and Mr. Hagedorn a man of university training, Mr. Mackaye shows breadth of intellectual interests and a strong historical instinct. His imagination has an epical quality, and he has written poetic drama with lyrical as well as dramatic feeling. There are passages in The Canterbury Pilgrims," a comedy, which have a Chaucerian freshness and freedom. This young poet gives the impression of possessing larger resources than he has yet used; and his materials are not yet completely mastered. His genius still outruns his art, and lacks organization. But Mr. Mackaye has given ample evidence of large ability and high ideals both personal and artistic, and time and patience will bring the clear and well-knit structural quality which his work sometimes lacks.

Mr. Niehardt was hailed at the beginning of his career as a disciple of Whitman, and there were signs of early intimacy between the two; but the young poet has studied under older and wiser teachers, and his latest book of verses, "The Stranger at the Gate" (Mitchell Kennerley, New York), is a notable advance in artistic power and skill. There is no lack of freshness in the verse; indeed, freshness of feeling and diction is its special quality, but there is less evidence of the pose of professional newness, less striving for effects and far greater success in securing them. The theme of these latest songs is motherhood, and rarely has the ancient mystery of birth been celebrated with such a sense of its universality and such deep and tender feeling for its sanctity.

Those who care to take stock of the new poetry will find it in twoscore slender books and in two or three volumes of selections. It is well worth studying, not because it is great-though some of the poets may grow to greatness-but because it is high-minded, like the poetry which preceded it; because it shows that the soul of the country is awake; and because there are in it both promise and achievement. It is clean poetry; it has not fallen into the slough of eroticism which dulls the senses, blurs the vision, and blights the inspiration. One feels in it the new passion for humanity which heralds a rebirth of freedom in the modern world. Much of it is crude, but so are all beginnings. It must not be over-praised, but it ought to be recognized. The people who do not know their poets have ceased to hear the voices of their own souls.

N°

O Baedeker is needed to assure the traveler that he has entered a new country as he passes from Holland, Belgium, or France into Germany. If he enters at Cologne, Düsseldorf, or Frankfort, as many wandering Americans do, he comes at once to one of the most finished as well as most highly organized cities of the modern world. Here along the river Rhine cities have sprung up with the rapidity of American growth. Here is industry like that of Cleveland, Detroit, or Pittsburgh; here are iron and steel, machine, tool, silk, woolen, and chemical industries that have made the German name the nightmare of England. Here are cities that might be like our own factory towns. They might be dirty, ugly, and un

FROM A STEEL ENGRAVING BY JOHN A. LOWELL
BANKNOTE COMPANY, BOSTON. COPYRIGHT 1906

you why their city is the most attractive and livable city in Europe. And they do this with every show of reason. For these cities are examples of what can be done with a factory city. Certainly they do more for their people than any cities I know. And they are reaping annual dividends on their investment in the stream of travelers that comes to them, not only for the pleasure they offer, but to remain there and build factories and adopt them as a place of residence.

The railway gateway of a German city is a symbol of the whole. It is like the portal of a cathedral or the towered gate of a mediaval town. It is imposing, commodious, commanding. Millions are spent on stations by the Government. The German city would be ashamed to have its gateway anything else than imposing. The station at Frankfort cost $9,000,000, and it was built when Frankfort had less than half the present population of Cleveland, whose railway station would be a disgrace to a German city one-tenth its size.

In front of the station is the station place, the Bahnhofplatz. In the foreground is a garden surrounded with clean, well-paved roadways for traffic. Here street railway lines from all over the city converge. Round about the Bahnhofplatz are hotels, restaurants,

THE GATEWAY OF WASHINGTON IS PROBABLY THE

and shops, all of uniform height and in harmony with the station itself. The open space is usually a half-circle. Out from it, like the ribs of a fan, broad streets radiate to different sections of the city.

Such are the railway stations of Frankfort, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and Cologne. They are city centers, focal points of traffic. Through them the city's life surges. There is no dirt, little noise, less confusion. There is dignity and comfort. Obviously, the city's gateway, the railway station, is under public control.

The portal of the modern German city is the twentieth-century adaptation of the old city gate that is still preserved in Munich, Düsseldorf, and elsewhere. It is treated with studied care. It is the city's most conspicuous point. Therefore it should be beautiful as well as convenient.

We have made a beginning of building gateways in our cities. The Union Station at Washington is of commanding size and classic design. It opens into a spacious formal plaza, which at night is brilliantly lighted. In the distance the Senate building and Capitol rise on Capitol Hill. The intervening space has been razed of buildings, so as not to obstruct the vista. The transportation system of the city radiates from this center.

MOST MONUMENTAL OF ANY CITY IN THE WORLD

The gateway of Washington is probably the most monumental of any city in the world. It is worthy of the capital of the Nation.

The new Pennsylvania and Grand Central Stations in New York are also of splendid proportions. But, with few exceptions, our railways have permitted the cities to shift as best they can, with unsightly, inconvenient, and inadequate stations.

Cleveland has grouped its public buildings so that the Union Station will open into a mall six hundred feet in width and a fifth of a mile in length, running to the business center of the city. The station is to open on a wide plaza flanked on either side by the Court-House and City Hall. In the foreground is a long formal garden terminating with a vista of the Federal Building and the city Library. Experts have planned similar gateways to Rochester, Buffalo, and other communities.

Germany builds her cities as she builds her stations. They are designed by master builders, by city planners, engineers, and landscape artists. They are planned for people, for business, for convenience, comfort, and beauty. They are consciously designed for people to live in. The city is an extension of the home. Nearly every German city is being built from center to circumference.

It has its building director or town planner. This explains the wondrous charm of the Rhine cities, of Charlottenburg, Dresden, and Munich. They are planned as is a great estate, and built as is a modern office building.

This study and control of the physical foundations is what most distinguishes the German city from our own. City planning is Germany's greatest contribution to the municipal problem. It is not the honesty of her officials, not the trained experts who serve as burgomasters; it is the recognition by everybody, from Kaiser to citizen, that the city problem is a physical, not a political, problem; it is this that marks the cities of the Fatherland from those of the rest of the world.

City planning in Germany is an art. There are experts who make it a profession. They go from city to city to confer with local officials on definite problems. They lay out suburbs, plan city centers, locate public buildings, docks, and harbors, and give advice as to building and land restrictions. They compete with plans on some big undertaking, and are recognized as essential aids in the administration of a modern town. There is a per-.

manent school of town planning in Berlin.. Another has been opened in Düsseldorf. A large literature has made its appearance. Town planning expositions are held at which