Art. 7.-THE RISE AND FALL OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE.

1. Germany, 1815-1890. By Sir Adolphus William Ward. 3 vols. Cambridge University Press, 1916-1918. 2. The German Empire, 1867-1914. By William Harbutt Dawson. 2 vols. George Allen & Unwin, 1919.

3. Bismarck. By C. Grant Robertson. Constable, 1918. WHEN war broke out in 1914 English readers who were ignorant of German were singularly ill provided with authoritative narratives of the modern history of their principal enemy. It was possible to trace the fortunes of the Bund and the German Empire by diligent study of the relevant chapters in the last three volumes of the Cambridge Modern History, Mr Headlam's excellent life of Bismarck and the unfinished American translation of Sybel's official record of the foundation of the Empire. But there was no complete, scholarly and up-to-date survey of the stages through which the German people had passed from the overthrow of Napoleon in 1815 till William II staked the existence of his empire on the hazard of war. When peace was signed at Versailles in 1919 there was no longer any excuse for ignorance of the history of the terrible enemy who had been overthrown. Treitschke's voluminous masterpiece, which despite its glaring faults remains an indispensable guide through the first half of the 19th century, was in process of translation. Mr Grant Robertson had published a careful and judicious study of Bismarck incorporating the mass of material that had come to light in the twenty years following his death. Above all, Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr William Harbutt Dawson had completed detailed narratives, distinguished not less by impartiality than by erudition, which reflect the highest credit on British scholarship.

"The present volume,' wrote the Master of Peterhouse in 1916, forms part of a piece of work undertaken in times which already seem remote. After the outbreak of war it would have been unnatural had I not felt forced to lay aside for the moment what I had begun as a congenial task, since one of the chief pleasures of my life had long been to contribute anything in my power to the promotion of a better

understanding between two nations now estranged from each other for many a long day. But, on further reflexion, it seemed that nothing would be gained by postponing sine die the treatment of a chapter of history which, like other chapters, must be studied with care if its outcome is to be judged with candour. The Germany of 1915 cannot be understood... unless the struggles and humiliations of the halfcentury after 1815 are taken into account as well as the successes of the ensuing years.'

The doyen of English historians was well advised to complete the task to which he had set his hand, and for which no scholar in either hemisphere was so well equipped by the studies and observations of a life-time. In his youth he spent several years in Germany, and it adds to the personal interest as well as to the scientific value of the book that his account of the later development of the Schleswig-Holstein question is largely based on the papers of his father, who was accredited to the Hanse Towns from 1860 to 1870.

The work opens with chapters on the revolutionary era and on the German States in 1815; and three further chapters cover the generation of little men and secondary events which fill the stage till the outbreak of revolution in 1848. At this point the narrative naturally becomes much fuller; and the four years' drama which began at Frankfurt and ended at Olmütz demands as many pages as the thirty-three years which preceded it. As readers of the Cambridge Modern History are aware, Sir Adolphus has made this territory his own; and the almost infinite complexities of the constitutional struggle for German unity become intelligible under his skilled guidance. The second volume, after a chapter on the decade of stagnation and disillusion which followed, is entirely devoted to the nine crowded years in which Bismarck won three wars and created the Empire. The chapters on the rupture between Austria and Prussia' and 'FrancoGerman Relations, 1866-1870,' are perhaps the most valuable as well as the most interesting in the whole work. To a mind wearied and confused by the inevitable partisanship of Sybel and Friedjung, Ollivier and La Gorce, it is an emancipation to follow the unravelling of German, Austrian and French diplomacy by one who knows all that is to be known of the rival cases and who

stands above the battle.' The author has lightened his task and enhanced the value of the work by entrusting the military history of the campaigns to the expert hand of Prof. Spenser Wilkinson. The third volume, which carries the story from the Treaty of Frankfurt to the Fall of Bismarck and contains two supplementary chapters on 'Social and Intellectual Life' and The New Reign,' is of somewhat smaller bulk and lighter texture. The Kulturkampf is described at length in a masterly chapter; but Sir A. W. Ward's readers would have been glad of an equally detailed narrative of other aspects of Bismarck's foreign and domestic policy. The sketch of the Emperor William II's reign breaks off in 1907, when, in the opinion of the author, the forces which made for war began to conquer the forces which made for peace.

If Sir Adolphus Ward knows more of the history of Germany from 1815 to 1871 than any man born beyond its frontiers, Mr Dawson possesses a many-sided acquaintance with the Germany created by Bismarck and destroyed by William II which he has already revealed in a dozen volumes, and which no living Englishman can approach. Though written during the war, like the volumes of Sir Adolphus Ward, his work is no less honourably free from the passions and even from the unconscious bias which render most recent books published by English writers on Germany and by German writers on England little better than scraps of paper. It is a striking testimony to the fair-mindedness and scientific method of British scholarship at its best that these two works, written in complete independence of one another, should reach approximately the same conclusions on the policy and personalities of modern German history. But though their standpoint is almost identical, the differences in treatment are so great as to render the two works complementary to one another. Sir Adolphus, the historian, writes mainly for students of history. Mr Dawson, the publicist, announces that he has had in mind less the limited circle of scholars and students than the 'general readers' whose numbers he believes to be steadily increasing. Sir A. W. Ward, except for a massive chapter on German culture, confines himself to the activities of the State, while Mr Dawson minutely explores the operation of social and economic forces.

Above all, while the elder scholar merely sketches the reign of William II, the younger devotes to it half a stout volume and brings his narrative both of foreign and domestic policy down to the outbreak of war. Both writers may be unreservedly congratulated on their achievements, and both works repay the most diligent study.

Now that Bismarck's work has been in large measure destroyed by the bungling of his successors, it is a tempting theme to enquire whether the wholly legitimate desire for the unification of Germany could have been realised except by 'blood and iron.' The attempt was made in 1848; but the more closely we study the problem with which the Frankfurt Parliament had to deal, the more clearly must we recognise that it was insoluble on peaceful lines. The modern history of Germany contains two periods which arouse the admiration or sympathy of men of other lands. The first, the reconstruction of Prussia after Jena, was brilliantly successful. The second, the attempt to win unity and liberty for the whole nation by peaceful discussion, was a tragic failure. In the 18th century the philosophic despots of Austria and Prussia were in advance of their subjects. In the first half of the 19th century the peoples were ahead of their rulers. The educated middle class looked with envy on the constitutional liberties of Victorian England and the France of Louis Philippe. The Professors, at all times the most influential factors in the formation of opinion, were almost to a man adherents of moderate Liberalism. But Frederick William IV hated the conception of responsible government as keenly, and for much the same reasons, as Charles I; while Austria, whether under Metternich or Schwarzenberg, was equally hostile to the spirit of liberty, and was irrevocably resolved to maintain her position as the predominant partner in the Bund.

The hopelessness of the task and the nobility of the effort of 1848 are fully recognised by Sir Adolphus Ward and Mr Dawson.

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"The national movement as embodied in the National Parliament had failed,' writes the former; yet, though they could not command success, neither the Parliament nor the movement had laboured in vain. They had not prevailed, because the German population were still new to constitutional life.

Yet even this obstacle might have been overcome now that Germany's ablest and strongest minds, the very flower of her intellectual life, were found ranged on the side of unity, had it not been for the resistance of the Governments. The German nation, though it had learnt to think, had not yet learnt to act without its Governments. Thus the great opportunity passed away, though not wholly without gain to the nation.'

The fate of the National Assembly,' echoes Mr Dawson, 'will stand out always in national history as a supreme tragedy of foiled hopes and aspirations, of faith and confidence shattered and destroyed at the very moment of apparent fruition. Behind all the impracticable idealism, all the pedantry, doctrinarianism and wild theories that found expression in St Paul's Church, there was that elevation of spirit and that force of conviction which have been the sword and panoply of all earnest combatants in the struggle for human progress in every age. The German who can recall without emotion the large-spirited heroism of the foiled and broken deputies of Frankfurt, who in making a constitution were also trying to make a nation, confesses insensibility to one of the most moving passages in his country's history. The National Assembly seemed to have failed completely and ignominiously; yet they had in truth kindled in the German nation a fire which was not again to be put out. There is truth in the verdict of Hans Delbrück that the Professors' Parliament was more statesmanlike, and saw more clearly the needs of Germany than the sovereign who destroyed its handiwork.'

The failure of the Frankfurt Parliament cleared the stage for Bismarck and made his work both possible and necessary. Was die Professoren gewusst, das hat Bismarck gekonnt,' said Sybel in a speech at Bonn, on the occasion of the attempted assassination of the great statesman at Kissingen in 1874. British opinion sympathised with the unification of Germany, as it sympathised with the unification of Italy; and it was prepared to swallow, if not to approve, the forcible methods by which both tasks were accomplished. 'Qui veut la fin veut les moyens.' Neither country could call its soul its own till Austria was extruded; and, as she declined to go, she had to be expelled by force of arms. In the hurricane of rage which has swept over us owing to Germany's methods of waging war we have been tempted to extend our condemnation from William II to