Art. 11.-SOME BOOKS ON THE WAR.

1. German Ambitions.

By Vigilans sed Equus.' Reprinted from the 'Spectator.' London: Smith, Elder, 1905.

2. The Anglo-German Problem. By Charles Sarolea. London: Nelson, 1912.

3. Germany and England. By J. A. Cramb. London: Murray, 1914.

4. The German Enigma. By Georges Bourdon (19..). Translated by Beatrice Marshall. London: Dent, 1914. 5. France in Danger. By Paul Vergnet (1913). Translated by Beatrice Barstow. London: Murray, 1915.

6. The Origins of the War. By J. Holland Rose. Cambridge University Press, 1914.

7. What is Wrong with Germany? By W. Harbutt Dawson. London: Longmans, 1915.

8. The World in the Crucible. By Sir Gilbert Parker. London: Murray, 1915.

9. Ordeal by Battle. By F. S. Oliver. London: Macmillan, 1915.

10. The History of Twelve Days (July 24-Aug. 4, 1914). By J. W. Headlam. London: Unwin, 1915.

11. The Evidence in the Case. By James M. Beck. New York: Putnam, 1915.

12. A Text-Book of the War for Americans. By J. William White. Philadelphia: Winston, 1915.

And other works.

THE present war is on a scale many times vaster than any previously known in the history of the world. The great increase of population, the far greater increase of wealth, the prodigious development of the machinery of war by land, by sea and by air, all unite to make the catastrophe which we are witnessing one without parallel or measure. And there is another, less terrible and fatal way in which it has utterly exceeded all its predecessors. It is waged by nearly all Europe; and the European races, both in their original homes and in the new worlds which they have conquered, have in the last hundred years taken to thinking, talking, and writing about public affairs to an extent quite unknown, except on the small stage of Athens, throughout their previous

history. The result is that this war has been discussed more thoroughly than any other war ever was. It provoked a considerable literature, that of warning or anticipation, long before it broke out. And since it began not only newspapers and magazines but books dealing with it have appeared incessantly in all countries especially, perhaps, in England and America, always peculiarly given to the habit of discussing public questions, and both of them, even England, freer to indulge it at this moment than the only other country which has the habit to at all the same extent.

The discussion has been from every possible point of view. In Germany for years before war broke out some seven hundred books dealing with the science of war appeared annually. Many of these dealt with forecasts of some such colossal struggle as we are witnessing and the way it would be worked out. Others, like the well-known work of Bernhardi, dealt with it rather from the semi-political and moral, or rather immoral, point of view. Others approached it from the side of history, finance, international law, diplomacy, or ethics. The possible points of view are, in fact, very numerous; and the books themselves, especially those written since war broke out, are past counting. It is clear that in the limited space of an article in the 'Quarterly Review' only a very few can be dealt with. I propose, therefore, to confine myself here almost exclusively to English and American books, and, among these, to leave aside altogether those which are concerned primarily with military or financial questions; and merely to touch on a few of those which discuss such problems as the European or Anglo-German situation which is supposed to have rendered the war inevitable, the events of July 1914, the responsibility for the actual outbreak of war, or the political and moral issues involved.

It is obvious that very little, if any, of this enormous bulk of writing can be of any permanent importance. It is just journalism, good or bad as the case may be, whether it appears in the form of a book or in the columns of a newspaper. But the essence of journalism is to give the facts and opinions of the day, and for the day they have not only their interest but their

importance. So these books give what was being thought about this war in the years preceding it and in the twelve months since it began; and we should be inhuman if we did not find it interesting to realise the facts about the tremendous experience we are going through and our thoughts about these facts, even if no one has been able to give them the form that means life.

Travellers often wonder, when they visit such places as Catania or Torre del Greco, at the courage or recklessness of the people who build and rebuild their dwellings on sites that have again and again been destroyed by the slumbering volcanoes above them. And so it is difficult now to read without amazement some of the books that were written to warn us all three or five or ten years ago. But it is at once man's weakness and his strength to be a very hopeful animal. As a rule he needs no Divine word to make him take no thought for the morrow. He knows that he is to die, and very possibly to die of a painful disease; he sees it as nearly certain that he must survive some of those without whom he cannot conceive life as endurable; or he knows that old age will mean poverty for him and those whom he loves. Yet he lives on from day to day, not merely enduring but enjoying, refusing to lay the burden of the future on the happiness of the present hour. So Europe, or that part of Europe which knew enough of politics to be aware of the danger, lived the last decade and particularly the last five years before 1914. And so far as the danger really was, like death for each one of us, inevitable and certain, who shall say much in blame of this Horatian wisdom?

But so far as it was, like disease or poverty, avoidable, and so far as concerns those, especially the statesmen, who could have done something to avoid it, is it possible to find language too strong to condemn their equally Horatian indolence and indifference? There are some men on the political stage of Europe whose course for the last ten years can only be compared to that of the drunkard drinking himself into the grave and his family into the workhouse day after day, with his eyes open. The facts which are now before us all were, in all essentials, before European statesmen for several years before the war broke out; and the events of its first

twelve months plainly show that neither in Russia nor in France nor in England had the responsible rulers done anything like their duty in preparing for the visibly impending blow. So far as they have yet been tested, indeed, the British naval preparations have proved adequate. But in most other respects it has to be admitted that the Germans were ready and the Allies were not. And Time, the invisible ally in whom they are trusting, is at best a very expensive friend.

All this was not for want of warning. The PanGermans worked in the daylight as well as in the dark. And in spite of the lulling assurances of hypnotised ambassadors, amateur and professional, it ought to have been plain to observing statesmen that Pan-Germanism always got its way. In China, in Turkey, over the visit to Tangier, over the affair of the 'Panther,' over the increases of army and navy, it was sometimes officially discouraged or rebuked, but always ultimately victorious. All this is well shown in M. Paul Vergnet's France in Danger,' first published in French in October 1913. It is a useful little book, exhibiting in some detail the insane extravagance of Pan-German demands, the open assertions that Holland and Belgium are really German and must be united with Germany, the open demands for French Colonies and parts of France itself, the assertion that the people of these countries are pining for German annexation, and sometimes the brutal suggestion that the populations of the districts to be annexed should, in spite of their alleged kinship, be forcibly expelled in order to make room for Germans! And, what is more important, M. Vergnet shows that these are not the extravagances of isolated madness. He has no difficulty in exhibiting the close relations between the actions of the German Government and the propaganda of the PanGerman party. We find the Pan-German author of the press agitation for Morocco confessing that his pamphlet was composed in consultation with the Secretary of State. And we find that on the rare occasions when the Government resisted the Pan-Germans, the resistance was brief and the collapse inglorious.

This little book ought to have taught France both the intentions of the Pan-Germans and their evident power to get their way in Germany. And those who

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believed in conciliation and turned their eyes away from Pan-Germans to Germans of a more reasonable sort might have been enlightened by Georges Bourdon's The German Enigma,' a collection of opinions obtained in conversations with a large number of representative German statesmen, professors, soldiers, financiers and journalists. The date of these interviews is not given, but apparently they took place in 1912. The value of the book is less, perhaps, than M. Bourdon and most Frenchmen and Englishmen would imagine. For, as Maximilian Harden frankly told M. Bourdon, there is in Germany no public opinion such as we are familiar with in England and France. The German middle class has no taste for politics and finds it answers better to leave all that to those in command.' This is a truth which may be ascertained from anybody who has been inside many German homes. When the home is not an intelligent one the women discuss their servants and Heine's wie so theuer der Kaffee,' the men their business and those subjects in which Walpole thought everybody could take part. When it is intelligent the talk is of art and literature, which, to tell the truth, are far more often the subject of conversation than in England. But in neither case are politics, the only serious subject of universal interest in England, ever so much as mentioned. Still, even if public opinion in Germany had any power of influencing the Government, or any wish to do so, no one who desired peace could derive much consolation from M. Bourdon's conversations. Even the most pacific of those whom he interviewed defended the whole German programme of increased forces by land and sea, showed themselves incapable of seeing things except from their own point of view, and declined to consider M. Bourdon's suggestion of finding a way to peace through an autonomous Alsace.

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We in England might have learnt the same lesson from Emil Reich's' Germany's Swelled Head' (1908). The book is as vulgar in thought and style as might be expected from the title and from a man who confessed to being an admirer of the Kaiser's speeches. Nor is it a safe guide always in matters of fact, as may be judged from the amazing statement that half the English National Debt was incurred in subsidies and sops to German princes!