Germany by Geroge P. GoochReview by: Guy Stanton FordThe American Historical Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Apr., 1926), pp. 525-526Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1841006 .

Accessed: 24/06/2014 22:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Oxford University Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.77 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 22:06:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Gooch: Germnany 525

Germany. By GEORGE P. GOOCH. [The Modern World, edited by the Right Hon. H. A. L. Fisher, M.P.] (London: E. Benn; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. I925. PP. xi, 360. 15 s.; $3.00.) IT is a pleasure to begin this review by calling attention to its subtitle.

This volume by Professor Gooch is one of a series called The Modern World, under the editorship of H. A. L. Fisher. The return of Professor Fisher to Oxford and the editorship of this series is an indication that one who was an ornament to British historical scholarship a decade ago has abandoned the vicissitudes of political life to devote himself to edu- cation rather than to Lloyd George.

For the volume on Germany there could be no happier choice than Professor Gooch. His selection is one the Germans would have ap- proved, although parts of this volume will not wholly please them.

What Professor Gooch has attempted is first a swift sketch (23 pp.) of Germany before Bismarck, taking off at Westphalia, but emphasizing the years after the battle of Jena. The same compression enables him to cover the Bismarck era from I862 to I890 (22 pp.). Three brief chapters bring us from the dropping of the old pilot to 1914 (64 PP.).

There are just two things that can be said about this achievement of spanning I648 to 1914 in one hundred and ten pages. The first is that no one could have done it better and no one would have done it in the same way. And that is real commendation. It permits me to say that even a Liberal must confess to-day that the German Confederation after I815 with all its faults was as strong as the time and circumstances per- mitted and the humiliation of Prussia at Olmutz in I850 put Prussia and William I. in a state of mind to accept Bismarck and the blood-and-iron policy of ending the Austro-Prussian dualism in Germany. And in the budgetless years was it not Bismarck and the king rather than the Prus- sian Diet that stood on the letter of the constitution? Reducing Schles- wig-Holstein and the Danish War to two sentences is drastic. To men- tion the Kruger telegram and leave it a name of something that is called important, or to cut the Hague Conferences to a line or two, in view of the threads picked up in later chapters, is a break in one of the main lines of the author's interpretation. He has written elsewhere so excellent an account of the Triple Entente that he here lumps it along with the Yangtse Agreement of I900 and similar diplomatic episodes.

The second comment on these early pages is that they will be ap- preciated by those who know German history before 1914, but that the general reader will have much difficulty in making history out of them. It is inevitable. Perhaps, after all, it is kinder to cut off the dog's tail completely than inch by inch. Author, editor, publisher, reader, and re- viewer can never agree on the length of the stump and whatever is left serves no dog's purposes.

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.77 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 22:06:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

526 Reviews of Books

In other early chapters, From Poverty to Riches and the German Mind, the author is at his best. The war itself gets two chapters, chiefly on diplomacy during the war. The best part of the book is where it should be, in the treatment of the German national attitude toward Europe before I914, and in the last half on revolutionary and post-war Germany. It is sane, clear, balanced, strikingly phrased at times, ade- quate, and eminently just. I can now say what I have wanted to say from the first, and that is that it is the best book about Germany on the eve of I9I4 and since the war that has yet been written.

There is no chapter labelled War Guilt, but the treatment makes clear just what Germany's diplomatic blunders after Bismarck and the state of mind of the German people contributed as fuel when the spark was struck. The author's view is not far from the moderate statement of Brockdorff-Rantzau at Versailles. He does not let us forget that two kinds of fools can contribute to an explosion, one by parading around with an open powder can, and the other by looking in with a lighted match. This volume may be commended to those who think they have found the man with the match and want him to apologize to the man with the open powder can.

In his consideration of Germany since the war, Professor Gooch indicts Poincare severely, although one count, that of the Separatist move- ments in the Rhine area, could have been drawn more sharply. That folly was France's greatest contribution to German post-war unity and nationality. The appreciation of the new constitution and the tribute to Walter Rathenau are excellent. The chapter on economic conditions is less satisfactory than those which deal with currents of thought and prob- lems and prospects in the present German Republic. What may we ex- pect of this Germany which, to quote General Morgan, " sees herself purged of her sins by her sorrows ", who " has forgotten the early years of the war with their lust of annexations and only remembers the last of them with their fight for existence " ? Has post-war vindictiveness won its Pyrrhic victory over the fathers only to dedicate the children to new and deadlier hatreds? Will the Republic survive? " Self-government", replies the author, "has never formed part of the religion of the German people. The thrones were overturned by the sword of the enemy and the arrows of President Wilson. If they are re-erected it will be because the nation is convinced by bitter experience that a tame parliamentary republic is incompatible with the strength and prosperity of the realm. Thus the future of Germany is inextricably linked to the fortunes of Europe; and the fate of victors and vanquished alike will depend on the capacity of rulers and people to perceive and pursue the abiding interests of our common civilization."

The index, which I attribute to the publishers, is a poor joke with which to conclude such an excellent volume.

Guy STANTON FORD.

This content downloaded from 62.122.78.77 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 22:06:00 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions