the ties that hold my nature most strongly? Very simply because
I should have perished of despair in my youth but for the world
created for me by that great German dynasty which began with Bach
and will perhaps not end with Richard Strauss. Do not suppose for
a moment that I learnt my art from English men of letters. True,
they showed me how to handle English words; but if I had known no
more than that, my works would never have crossed the Channel. My
masters were the masters of a universal language: they were, to
go from summit to summit, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven
and Wagner. Had the Germans understood any of these men, they
would have hanged them. Fortunately they did not understand them,
and therefore only neglected them until they were dead, after
which they learnt to dance to their tunes with an easy
conscience. For their sakes Germany stands consecrated as the
Holy Land of the capitalist age, just as Italy, for its painters'
sakes, is the Holy Land of the early unvulgarized Renascence;
France, for its builders' sakes, of the age of Christian chivalry
and faith; and Greece, for its sculptors' sakes, of the Periclean
age.

These Holy Lands are my fatherlands: in them alone am I truly at
home: all my work is but to bring the whole world under this
sanctification.

And so, O worthy, respectable, dutiful, patriotic, brave,
industrious German reader, you who used to fear only God and your
own conscience, and now fear nothing at all, here is my book for
you; and--in all sincerity--much good may it do you!

London, 23rd. October 1907.