LAND AND WATER, 
July 24, 1915. 
BOOKS OF THE WEEK. 
A LHEUARY REVIFW 
'rjr\' 
HE tempests which have sliaken the age in which 
we live" have not vet led our best writers to 
seek, in the manner" of Shelley, " to enlist the 
hannouy of metrical language, the ethereal 
combinations of the fancy." Much of the 
best recent literature has been literature which attempts to 
exphiiv—ic explain the war scientifically through political 
and social history, through the history of thought, through 
the history of history. 
An evidence of this interest may be found in the English 
translation cf Professor Henri. Pirenne's " Belgian Demo- 
cracy: Its Early History" (Manchester University Press 
and Longmans, 4s. 6d. net). Professor Pirenne, of Ghent 
University, v/rote this little treatise before the war broke out. 
But it is now, wore particularly, that it can be appreciated. 
It is a study of that town life (especially in the Middle Ages) 
in which the burghers of cities such as Ghent, Bruges, 
Brussels. Louvain, Liege, and Ypres were building up tho 
prosperity, strength, and tenacity of the Belgian race. 
Or we may find another evidence of the historical interest 
in Mr. Niniaii Hill's "Poland and the Polish Question ' 
(Allen and Unwin, 10s. 6d. net). Mr. Hill's book is not, like 
Professor Pirenne's, the result of long study and pondering of 
history. The historical chapters are little more than a sketch, 
serving as background to a survey of the Poles of to-day, the 
Poles whose nationality have been repressed in vain by 
Germans. Russians, and Austrlaus. But this sketch, slight 
as it is, serves to remind us of the brilliant past of that king- 
dom of p&werfnl nobles, throughout a long history made grim 
by l>loodshed. faction, and intrigue, but remembered by tho 
Poles of to-day for its knightliness, its elegance, and martial 
renowu. The disabilities from which the Poles have suffered 
since the partition have made them forget their earlier differ- 
ences. The attempt to destroy their uationality has united 
them in interest and in sent-iraent. 
For a definite assertion of the vital importance of history 
in the modern world, we must turn to an im.portant book by 
the Professor of History at TEcole Polytechnique Suisse. 
"Modern Germany and Her Historians." By Antoine Guillaud. 
(Jarrold.) 7s. 6d. net. 
"' When studying the history of the growth of German 
Unity," says Professor Guilland, " one is struck by the im- 
portant part played in it by the historians : they were the 
promoters of that National Liberal policy which reached its 
triumphant climax after tlie victories of 1866 and 1870." To 
English readers this may seem strange. Our politics has been 
profoundly influenced by philosophers, economists, and even 
poets, but seldom, to any noticeable extent, by historians. 
Milton, Locke, Bnrke, Bentham, Mill — these and others have 
had their direct influence on the political issues of religious 
toleration, constitutional government, popular representa- 
tion, laissez-faire, &c. Macaulay, it is true, wrote history 
from the Whig standpoint, just as Green wrote it from the 
Radical standpoint. But it was politics which influenced 
them, rather than tliey who influenced politics, and the 
greatest of all our historians. Gibbon, was moulded neither 
by politics nor race. He alone wrote world history with the 
sublime detachment of a universal irony. 
We can find none among British historians, with the 
possible exception of Carlyle, who have exercised an influence 
analogous to that of the Germans. We must, however, 
beware of concluding that Treitzsclike is the type of all the 
greater German historians. He is the most extreme, the most 
fantastic example of Prussian megalomania, a rcdiictio ad 
ahsnrdum of an historical school just as tho Kaiser to-day is 
a reductio ad ahsiirdum of the Imperial idea. Do Niebuhr, 
Ranks, Mommssen — historians who have been esteemed in 
this country — culminate in Treitzsclike. with his doctrines of 
the divine right of States and the sacredness of war? Pro- 
fessor Guilland argues that they do. To estimate the im- 
portance of the.se authors and their le.<?er satellites, we must 
remember that the study of history had developed before 
Germany had become a nation. The makers of the modern 
Empire used every intellectual force that was available as a 
weapon with which to coerce events still in the making. 
Baron Stein, who founded in 1819 the historical associalio.i 
wliich, as Professor Guilland calls it, was "the cradle of 
national historical writing in Germany." wrote to a friend: 
" I have been animated by tlie wish to awiiken the taste for 
German history, to facilitate the fundamental study of it, 
and so to contribute to keep alive a love for our common 
country and for the memory of our great ancestors." 
Tliroughout the nineteenth century the rcost diligent of Ger- 
man liistorians were also zealots in the cause of so-called 
" Liberalism," becoming more and m.orc pro-Prussian, cham- 
pions of autocracy, haters of France and, in the last stage, 
haters of England. 
Niebuhr fails to provide the author with a good case. 
The latter generously asserts that Niebuhr " inaugurated 
the mioderu historical method," but he scarcely convicts him 
of bias unless it is a bias to regard liistory as " past politics." 
Still less in the case of Ranke can the charges against German 
studies be successfully illustrated. Eanke had the largo, 
philosophic grasp, the interest in facts for the sake of ideas, 
the lively imagination tempered by commonsenso and wi.sdom 
which together made him the ideal exponent of universal 
history. Professor Guilland admits that he was incapable of 
concealing facts. 
But the author can establish a far stronger case when he 
comes to Mommssen. We have all inevitably admired th* 
History of Home. It has fascinated us as perhaps no other 
history fascinates. No poetic drama could lead more mag- 
nificently to the triumph aud deification of Julius C'lesar, the 
grand culmination of tho Roman Republic, the beginning 
of the Empire. But history is not poetic drama. We have 
all known the falsity of this dramatisation of events. Pro- 
fessor Guilland might have recalled the fact that Cicero is 
mentioned only once by name, and that in a footnote — such 
was Mommssen's scorn for this " voluminous and equally 
empty author." Though we cannot agree with the Professor 
when he calls .Julius Ca?sar " that deceitful and cunning 
man," he is right when he calls Mommssen's history " the 
glorification of force" — "to Mommssen the vanquished is 
always wrong." 
About TreitxKchke, the historian who embodies the doc- 
trines of militant Germany, we have already written in these 
columns. Professor Guilland's analysis is admirable. The 
whole work, informed as it is by knowledge and penetrating 
criticism, is an illuminating study of the great intellectual 
forces which have contributed most to the making and un- 
making of Germany. 
Politics and Crowd-.Morality." 
from the Danish by A. C. 
7s. 6d. net. 
By .Arthur ChristenssD, Translated 
Curtis. (Williams and Norgate.) 
Half a century ago British politics was profoundly in- 
fluenced by, if not based upon, political theory. Burke had 
laid down the forrnuloe of constitutional government; 
Bentham, Mill, Lecky, and many other students worked out 
the philosophy of democracy under Mid-Victorian conditions. 
But to-day there is no great group of theorists who havo 
sought to explain our wholly different twentieth century 
democracy, a democracy which rests not upon the middle 
classes, but upon the crowd. A Frenchman, M. Le Bon, has 
to some extent cleared the ground in a preliminary essay, 
" The Psychology of the Crowd," and now, in a work by a 
Dane, Arthur Christensen, we liave an application of the 
crowd theory to the theory of politics. Christensen takes 
into account many forms of modern government — British, 
French, Danish, and even Hungarian, Russian, aud German. 
Therefore much that he has to say is not specially applicable 
to our British Parliamentary system. 
But the question of crowd-morality and crowd-intelli- 
gence applies in all the cases he considers. Modern politics, 
he urges, is the "practical expression of crowd-morality," 
and as such it lags centuries behind individual morality. 
" Qualities which exist only in the few cannot enter into the 
composition of the crowd-mind." Only primitive emotions 
can enter into a crowd, only threadbare ideas which can be 
expressed in catch "phrases" can strike their intelligence. 
The crowd reacts al.aiost insensibly to suggestion; it has no 
feeling of responsibility. "The more responsibility is dis- 
tributed the less heavily it weighs upon individuals." The 
author's suggestion that in the future governments will repre- 
sent trade groups — that is to say, national interests— ignorss 
(1) the question of how such a revolution, if desirable, should 
be attained ; (2) the fact that the modern trade groups, unlUce 
those in the Middle Ages, are cut in two by the cleavage 
between employei-s and employed; and (3) the fact that 
econonucs is very far from being the whole of politics. His 
analysis of the low conditions of political morality, cynical 
as it is, is extraordinarily suggestive aud disillusionising and, 
is of profound importance. 
IVinted by tlia YicioaiA Hccsii Printing Co., Lid., Tudor Street. Whltefriars. London. E.G 
