Kultur in Roman Times. By J. Selden Willmore. (Constable. 4s.
6d. net.)—Mr. Willmore has collected some of the references to the German tribes which are made by the historians of the Roman and early Byzantine Empires, and gives the Latin or Greek texts with translations on the opposite pages. General Bernhardi has remarked that "the Germans, ever since they were first heard of in history, have shown themselves to be a nation practising the highest form of civilization." This is the exact reverse of the truth. The Roman writers were doubtless biassed, though Tacitus has often been &ceased of picturing an ideal barbaric Germany to shame his effemi- nate countrymen. But it could not be mere prejudice or a literary convention which caused the civilized historians of those centuries to refer incessantly to the perfidy and brutality of the German tribes, such as the Goths, Lombards, and Franks. Mr. Willmore appends a few parallels from the history of the war to show that the German nature has not changed through the ages. In the days of Proaopius, for example, the Franks slaughtered the women and children of the Goths, just as the Germans murdered the Belgian women and children. 'Gregory of Tours, too, notes the German delight in slaying priests.
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