The New Germany. By George Young. (Constable. Ss. net.)—The temper
of this curious book, by a Daily News corre- spondent, may be judged from the following sentence : " In the Jehad we have just fought against Germany, the low material object of the French was to extirpate, while that of the English was rather to enslave." Mr. Young seems to be angry with the Allies, not perhaps for winning the war, but for requiring Germany to do anything in the way of reparation. He actually denounces the Allies for asking Germany to restore five thousand locomotives—a mere fraction of the number that she had stolen. Mr. Young thinks that the German revolution was due to " external causes "—the Allied victory and Bolshevism— but he abuses the Allies soundly for not helping the Spartacists with their Soviet scheme. Why the Allies- should have done anything of the kind we cannot imagine. Mr. Young has- no warrant, so far as we know, for saying that it was " foolish for the British to try to upset the Council movement of the Berliners." Those who have the patience to bear with so unreasonable an author may find some information here and there about German politics up to June last, as well as the text of the new Constitution—now in great peril. " During this last winter," says the author in his Preface, "I have even occasionally thought that the types of old Germany might succeed in suppressing the new." He dismisses the thought as improbable, and as due to the " perverted " pessimism of the British Press. Perhaps Mr. Young will now admit, in view of the counter-revolution, that the British Press was not so " perverted " as he supposed.
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