Treitschke of whom, indeed. Meinecke says: "The newer history-writing follows not in Treitschke's footsteps, but in those of Ranke, and strives with conviction after Ranke's impartiality and objectivity as regards other nations, and corrects step by step the errors of portraiture and exaggeration of Treitschke's historical pictures."

SAMUEL B. HARDING.

The German Empire. 1867–1914, and the Unity Movement. By WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. In two volumes. (New York: Macmillan Company. 1919. Pp. xviii, 496; x. 535. $5.00.) MR. DAWSON, who has been interpreting German social and economic problems for thirty years, turns in this book to political history. Distinguished by a patient study of the sources, a sincere desire to be fair, and a complete absence of chauvinism, the work is the best account of the origin and development of the German Empire. Its value lies not only in the admirable narrative, which is thoroughly readable, but in the author's understanding of the German mind and his ability to discuss problems as they appealed to Germans. This does not mean that he has written an apology for Germany, for he is a patriotic Englishman: but he has produced a solid history and not propaganda.

The creation of the German Empire was the central fact of the nineteenth century. In the earlier chapters, Mr. Dawson pictures the movement for "unity through liberty", which envisaged a national German state resting on a democratic and parliamentary government, and traces its fortunes through the Frankfort Parliament, which he describes as “a failure more heroic and honourable than many brilliant successes ” (I. vii). The Zollverein was perhaps the chief unifying force, but it is well to emphasize the reality of the Liberal movement in pre-Bismarckian Germany.

Naturally Bismarck is the central figure of the story, and two-thirds of the book is devoted to his career. The greatness of the man, intellectually and politically, is portrayed on every page, but Mr. Dawson persistently records the successive set-backs of liberalism with each new victory of might over right. The Act of Indemnity passed by the Prussian Diet in 1866 was the surrender not of the government, but of the Liberals, who “sealed the fate of their party and cause for over half a century" (I. 260). To what extent Bismarck was the evil genius of German political life-"In none of his known utterances will be found the slightest trace of sympathy with the political aspirations of the masses of the people" (II. 224)-is shown by the detailed account of party politics from 1871 to 1914. Liberalism was submerged by class warfare, for every party, except the Centre, became the preserve of a class. The government bought the Conservatives and National Liberals by a high tariff; and the advocacy of a more democratic system by the Socialists, for their own ends, only strengthened the reactionaries.

In foreign affairs Bismarck was the great realist.

"He wished to

make Germany strong and great, but only in order that she might be able to realize herself, live her own life freely and do her own work in the world without menace, and not that she might assert an arbitrary superiority over other nations, still less impose her will upon them" (II. 255). Hence, after 1871, his policy was peace, and his successors, Caprivi and Hohenlohe, clung to his traditions. The success of this policy is measured in expanding trade and in the high regard for Germany among the nations of the world till the beginning of this century. Yet there was a fatal legacy:

The German nation saw, and sees, its Iron Chancellor only as the great unifier at home, never as the disuniter abroad; as the gainer of new territories, never as the spoliator of neighbouring states. It does not remember, in short, that much that he did for Germany was done at the expense of other countries, and that in settling the question of German unity he unsettled other questions, which have never since ceased to be a source of international disquiet and danger (II. 267).

Moreover, "by the spirit and methods which he introduced into political life, Bismarck did much to pervert the moral sense of his countrymen and to lower the standard of public right in Europe" (II. 265).

Hence, perhaps, the "new course" of William II. and Admiral Tirpitz, upon whom Mr. Dawson places the responsibility for the catastrophe of 1914:

there grew up in the room of the old Bismarckian autocracy a far more mischievous personal régime of the Emperor, expressing itself in forms and measures which are contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. All initiative was taken from the Government; everywhere the Sovereign stood forth as the real director of public policy (II. 341). Surrounding himself with flatterers who encouraged him in his vaulting ambitions, he prevented Bethmann-Hollweg, a man of peace, from coming to terms with Britain on the naval question, and allowed full play to the sinister genius of Tirpitz, a procedure the more dangerous because Germany was eager for power and prestige abroad, yet troubled little to consider how these might most wisely be obtained; she sought empire, and in seeking it gave the impression that she expected to enrich herself. at the expense of other nations; in both of these quests her ruler and statesmen were wanting as much in discrimination as in patience (II. 459).

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It may be, as Mr. Dawson contends, and he is competent to judge, that the idea that the people of Germany as a whole, or even in large part, were ... bent on war is a legend [that] may be dismissed"; that only a few responsible leaders of public opinion or men of political and social influence took seriously the intemperate oratory of the military party, still less of the Pan-Germanists" (II. 483). But whereas, "in the early years of the Empire it was difficult to pass Army Bills, even when

Bismarck was their advocate, with Moltke always in reserve, while to naval bills the Diet would not listen at all. . . . latterly bills of both kinds were to be had almost for the asking, and since 1907 neither the Clericals nor the Radicals dared to raise a voice in serious protest" (II. 378).

The book ends with the War of 1914, which was due in part, so Mr. Dawson thinks, to "the growing disposition of the Berlin foreign office to defer to Austria and go her way ", and the "complete control over the statesmen of Berlin" asserted by Aehrenthal and Berchtold (II. 516). The treatment of Anglo-German relations is singularly dispassionate, it being conceded that "in the colonial controversies of 1884 and 1885 England put herself in the wrong" (II. 213). Also:

Nothing that is known of the inner history of the Triple Entente . . . can be held to justify even the assumption that its purpose was to harass, thwart, and ultimately to isolate Germany. This, however, was the belief entertained in that country, and it cannot be reasonably denied that there were facts and appearances which must have made the belief easy for a suspicious government and a nervous nation (II. 480).

The naval rivalry "was not a question of right or wrong, but merely of different views of national interest (II. 497).

One wishes that the author had discussed more fully the question of the Prussianization of Germany, and how far the fear of Socialism contributed to the decision for war. The relation of economic progress to political problems, however, is well analyzed, and there is an adequate account of imperial legislation and the disaffected provinces. There were not forty-one states in the Confederation of 1815 (I. 12), nor was Signor "Gioletti" Italian "foreign secretary" in 1913 (II. 517). Occasionally the date of some foreign incident is wrongly given. Mr. Dawson has evidently not seen the article of M. Goriainov in this Review (January, 1918) on the Russo-German reinsurance treaty, or he would not have written that "the terms of the treaty have never been published" (II. 527).

The author has not lost confidence in the German people. Writing in December, 1918, he says:

it is justifiable to believe that, under whatever form of government the nation may choose to live henceforth (for the choice, for the first time in its history, is in its own power), the Empire will continue; nay, more, that it will be strengthened in the end rather than weakened, by renovation and adaptation to the imperious demands of a new, and, let us hope, a brighter era of European and world civilization (II. 524).

BERNADOTTE E. SCHMITT.

Germany, 1815-1890. By Sir ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD. Volume III., 1871-1890. (Cambridge: University Press. 1918. Pp. xvi, 437. $3.75.)

THIS Volume concludes Sir Adolphus Ward's three-volume survey of German history since 1815. The title is misleading in its modest limits, for of two so-called supplementary chapters occupying half the volume, the first covers the social and intellectual life from 1850 to 1900 and the second (of over ninety pages) deals with the reign of William II. to 1908. The volume then really concludes with the Second Hague Conference. Sir Adolphus holds that at about this point the forces in Germany making for international peace and good relations definitely lost. the battle to the party of militarism and aggression. The judgment could have been fortified by carrying the account to 1911, but there is no stopping point between 1911 and 1914 and I hold with the author that the years 1907-1908 are the real turning-point from the standpoint of present values and interest.

The author's treatment has grown better and somewhat clearer in the successive volumes. This is due, not so much to his method, as to the simplification of the subject-matter by the overwhelming dominance of Prussia and Bismarck since 1871. The score of German states, princelets, and innumerable petty provincial statesmen who mobbed the unresisting pages of the first volume are now kept in reasonable subordination in the political history of unified Germany.

It is a colorless political survey of the Bismarck period that is here presented. Its strength lies in its dispassionate treatment of these twenty years. The encyclopedic method of the early volumes yields an advantage here when men like Bennigsen, Miquel, Delbrück, and Lasker are at least located in the political and party history of the two decades. None of them, not even the founder of modern Germany, really marches across a single page. If one of them even starts he turns back dismayed at all the parentheses and dashes he will have to hurdle. Particularly good are the accounts of the beginnings of German rule in Alsace and of the Kulturkampf. The accounts of the war-scare of 1875 and Bismarck's quarrel with Harry von Arnim are interesting even if confused, but are given space out of proportion to their importance in such a compressed narrative.

The whole work should be treated as a reference-work to be used with the index. This is especially true of the 125 pages on social and intellectual life, packed full with names, important and unimportant. The last chapter, on William II. to 1908, is a good survey from which the discriminating reader can select the points of future friction and international misunderstanding, particularly if he knows something of the industrial and commercial development of Germany, here wholly neglected.

Minor errors seem mostly the result of hasty editing; e.g., Italian not

French troops entered Rome, September 20, 1870 (p. 44). Von Mühler was an unpopular not a popular minister (p. 47). Fueter's excellent work on historiography and the two volumes of Vogt and Koch on German literary history were evidently not used in connection with chapter VI., and are missing from the bibliography, which is only a supplement to those in the preceding volumes.

English historical writing on this period done even in the midst of war may point with pride to the excellent tone of this work, but among recent works the equally dispassionate life of Bismarck by Robertson. and the two volumes on German history since 1867 by Dawson are much more satisfying than the volume under review.

GUY STANTON FORD.

Modern Germany, its Rise, Growth, Downfall, and Future. By J. ELLIS BARKER. Sixth edition. (New York: E. P. Dutton and $6.00.)

Company. 1919. Pp. ix, 496.

IT is difficult to recall an English author who devoted himself more assiduously to anti-German propaganda before the war than Mr. J. Ellis Barker; there are few whose work was more useful in rousing the intellectuals in England to a sense of real danger. The importance of Mr. Barker's contributions was somewhat overshadowed by his Conservative affiliations during a Liberal régime but they are not likely to be denied by students of opinion during the war. As one of those friendly to Mr. Barker's general thesis and to many of his convictions, I should find myself in a quandary were it not for the fact that the question upon which I am to pass is the immediate value to the professional historian of the sixth edition, rewritten and enlarged, of Mr. Barker's best-known book. It may not also be beyond the point to touch upon the probability that the book may possess the elements of as valuable a judgment on the present situation in Germany as a contemporary author, as avowedly hostile to Germany, is able to attain.

The groundwork of the book was a number of articles contributed originally by Mr. Barker to the Nineteenth Century and After, and the additions to the book are certain of the articles written by Mr. Barker since its original publication, including some three or four written during the war. Without having made any elaborate examination, it does not seem to me that the material content of the book is as substantially changed as the publisher's announcement declares. Mr. Barker's own foreword is much more modest. The last two chapters on the future of Germany and Austria are the only portions which are really fresh and which contain Mr. Barker's latest convictions. They suffer inevitably from the fact that they were written immediately after the armistice. Mr. Barker feels that Germany is thoroughly exhausted by the war and that an immediate renewal of the issue is out of the question. He even thinks it probable that "by her attack in 1914, Germany has destroyed