From Bismarck to the World War
From Bismarck to the World War. By Erich Brandenburg. (Oxford University Press. 21s.) HERR BRANDENBURG has written a valuable book. It is always interesting to see German policy through German eyes. The author is no pacifist or internationalist and takes a strongly pro-German view on many issues, but at the same time is not a blind jingo. He criticizes the crudity, short- sightedness, and recklessness of German policy from the fall of Bismarck onwards very frankly.
Nor does he fall into the absurdity of supposing that the peoples of France or England desired war. As is usual with German writers he throws the chief blame for the outbreak on the Russians in general and Isvo'ski, the Russian Ambassador in Paris, in particular. Again, the disasters of the Ruhr must have bitten. deep, for he attacks M. Poincare very bitterly.
The book ends on an interesting note. Herr Brandenburg says that in his' opinion the true German policy after 1879 should have been to gather to her standard all the German peoples of Austria and Central Europe and to have abandoned the empires of Austria and Turkey to their fate. This, it is finally suggested, is the policy which she should still pursue.
" This is the path for our future, which we must now tread under much harder conditions than would have prevailed only a generation ago. But we hope, by pursuing it, in the end to reach the goal which a great nation of marked individuality and unex- hausted strength must always keep before it—the dwelling together of those of the same nationality and the same culture, and the welding of them into a political unity, free to develop itself without threatening the neighbouring nations ; but also without being under their tutelage or exploited by them."
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