Greater than life, the Greeks said. So those who understood created "Seven against Thebes," "The Frogs," "Oedipus Tyrannus." But lesser men followed, and they could not understand. The race of blue-eyed, fair-haired men discovered that the secret of greatness is a mystery not to be taught, rarely to be learned. The Romans came, conquered, and the lamp was extinguished.

Greater than life, the Greeks said. Slowly recovering from thirty years of titanic struggle a new race of fair-haired men felt the stirrings of a culture soon to be born. First there was Frederick, Frederick about whom the German pride could center. Lessing came, and for an embryonic theater created new ideals, the ideals forgotten since the days of Aristotle, ideals realized by Shakespeare alone of all moderns. Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, Germany had her great century. Then it was over. The bourgeois, the Junkers, the Army, they were the Germany of the nineteenth century. Spake Zarathustra: "Now do we desire--the Superman to live."

But now a new day has dawned. To Conant Hall Common Room at 8.15 o'clock this evening the Vagabond will go to hear from Professor Burkhard whether the Germany of Nesis and pocket cruisers remembers and heads the example of those who made the theater--greater than life.