All the papers are interesting and suggestive. Mr. Thayer's alone is rather shabbily dressed so far as literary form is concerned and not exactly punctilious in its impartiality; the author of Germany versus Civilization, in characterizing Prussian diplomatists, even the aristocratic Manteuffel, must needs lay aside his sense of humor and his mellow historical-mindedness in favor of a somewhat unseemly vindictiveness. Brennus could hardly be a prototype of modern Prussian diplomacy, as Mr. Thayer maintains, for Brennus was a Celt!
Mr. Coolidge's article on "Claimants to Constantinople" is a clear, well-balanced, and fair-minded, though appropriately brief, account of the most difficult question in the international relations of modern times. It deals mainly with the political aspects of the problem, and only incidentally with the economic. Mr. Coolidge brings out best "the clash between the interests and we may say the legitimate ambitions of Russia and Germany". So baffling to us does he make the clash that he can have a good laugh at us by suggesting "that the Russians shall have Constantinople and the Straits, and the German railway shall go under them somewhere by a tunnel". But what will be the effect of the revolution at Petrograd upon Russian claims to Constantinople?
The editor of the series in which this volume belongs is safe in his observation that (p. v), "Whatever may be thought to-day of the value of Spencer's writings, no one who wishes to understand the thought of the nineteenth century can neglect him." There will be more dissent from the editor's further opinion (p. vi), "As far as one can see, whether as a philosopher or as a man of science, Spencer is not likely to live for future generations."
Not all the men and women who, in the seventies of the nineteenth century, were beginning to take philosophical problems seriously, and who were fascinated by Spencer, have thought beyond their preceptor. A faithful few remain whom Mr. Williams's objectivity will affect as impiety. What will these few say to the brutal frankness of the biographer himself? He tells us that he accomplished his first reading of the Synthetic Philosophy while he was in active service on the South African veldt. His appraisal of that work at the time may be inferred from the further detail: "Not infrequently I had little other baggage than a toothbrush and a volume of The Principles of Psychology" (p. 5). Fifteen years later, after a second reading of Mr. Spencer's works, together with a collateral study and consultations with many of the author's most intimate friends, Mr. Elliot had reached the conclusions which his book elaborates:
