Mr. Churchill's New Volume Mn. CHURCHILL'S sixth volume on the
" World Crisis " confirms the expectation that when his work is finished it will be much the best history of the War. Naturally, he has enjoyed great advantages over his predecessors ; records and reminiscences of the War have been appearing for twelve years in most countries and from all points of view. Each new history of the War, like each new edition of an old piece . of literature, has better sources of scholarship to draw upon. But when this had been admitted, it must be added that Mr. Churchill out-distances his competitors in the pace, swing, energy and relish of his narrative.
Those who are interested in what Stevenson called the technical elements of style may be amused to notice how Mr. Churchill starts his new volume with passages of Gibbonian roundness, but later in the volume lapses into the skilful irregularities which signify that he is too much excited to trouble greatly about his form. In this new volume he treats of a subject_ of which the details are a blank to most people. He admits that it was a blank to himself until he studied the foreign works, many of which have not been translated into English, and perhaps never will be. The subject is what he calls " The Eastern Front," though he uses the phrase in a contracted sense ; the period is 1911- 1918. The struggle is between Russia, Germany and Austria-
Hungary, with Serbia, the Eons et origo of the War, playing on the flank of greater events.
We are given an astonishingly vivid portrait of the old and tired Emperor Francis Joseph holding heroically to the routine of every little daily act which his high but narrow conception of duty had imposed upon him. We see him fall in harness at the end, complaining with his last breath that he is in arrears with his papers. We must, however, pass over Mr. Churchill's examination of the diplomacy which led up to the War without doing more than mention two figures who evidently made a deep impression on his mind, if only for negative reasons—Count Berchtold and Marshal Conrad von Hotzendorf. The description of Count Berchtold is the most acid appreciation of character in the book :—
" Berchtold was one of the smallest men who ever held a great position. His calibre and outlook were those of a clever Foreign Office clerk of junior rank, accustomed to move a great deal in fashionable society. Fop, dandy, la-di-da ; amiable, polite and curiously un-selfseeking ; immensely rich ; magnate of a noble house ; habitué of the Turf and of the Clubs ; unproved in any grave. political issue ; yet equipped with the all-too-intensive training of a chess-board diplomatist ; thus conditioned Berchtold fell an easy prey. He was allured by the glamour and force of the military men, and fascinated by the rattle and glitter of their terrible machines. We gaze with mournful wonder upon his
doubting eyes and his weak, half-constricted jaw ; we contemplate a human face in which there is no element of symmetry or massive•
ness. We are appalled that from such lips should have issued commands more fateful to the material fortunes of mankind than any spoken by the greatest sovereigns, warriors, jurists, philosophers and statesmen of the past." Mr. Churchill has much more liking for the soldier, Conrad von .H5tzendorf, who was narrow and mischievousi• but whose gallantry and passion for his profession do not appeal in vain to Mr. Churchill's heart: With such men senselessly driving the world against its will towards a cataclysm of universal fortunes there are obviously the elements of a tragedy on the classic scale. Thrones, governments, • soldiers and sailors, industries, families, hardly won homes, were all engulfed. Destiny had been unleashed. and could not be checked in its stride.
Mr. Churchill sees all this happening rather as the .Greek dramatists watched the unfolding fate of the Atrides. His favourite word is " mournful." He uses it again and again. After all, the stride of destiny is seen in all great wars, and the historian is tempted by the epic models. Probably few people read iiinglake's immense history of the Crimea to-day, but Delane of The Times was not far wrong when he exclaimed one day, " I see the secret of all this. Kinglake is making an Achilles out of Lord Raglan ! "
The most novel and most enlightening chapters are those which deal with the battles of Lemberg and Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes. Mr. Churchill entirely reverses the first judgement of the world about Tannenberg. The credit, as everybody knows, went first to Marshal von Luden- dorff, who, as Mr. Churchill says, was very willing to accept it. It next passed. to Marshal von Hindenburg, who at once began to become a legendary figure and 'mounted the first rung of the ladder that led to the Presidency of the German Republic'. If Mr. Churchill, who has assimilated the latest investigations, is to be believed virtually the whole credit belongs to General von Francois who, with Nelsonian
audacity disobeyed all his orders. He saw the opportunity of hemming in the Russians- in the vast trackless forests,
and was able to do this with only the thinnest of cordons. Never in military history was there a greater triumph for discerning indiscipline.
The truth is already grasped even in Germany, where a popular legend might be expected to last longest. Among the illustrations in this book is a most interesting photograph of a group of the Eastern commanders. The position of honour is given to General von Francois. It is pleasant to fancy that Marshal von Hindenburg, who was one of the group, placed him in that position.
After Tannenberg it seemed likely that the " Eastern " school of strategy would be supreme for the rest of the War, and Mr. Churchill, who is in substance an "Easterner" himself,
plainly deplores the blindness, as it seems to him, which re-enthroned " Westernism " and imposed upon the " Westerners " the bloody duty of pounding out the War to a finish in France. " Eastern " strategy, whether for the Allies or for the Central Powers, naturally appeals to his quick brain, for the " Eastern " war was an affair of huge 'distances and rapid movements.
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