BRIEFER MENTION
355
Tradition and Progress, by Gilbert Murray (12mo, 221 pages; Houghton Mifflin: $3) is a somewhat curiously assorted group of ten essays, all reprints of papers and lectures previously published. The first five of these pleasingly written essays deal with some of the larger aspects of classical scholarship, the sixth with Literature as Revelation, the remainder of the volume consists of thoughts on social and international ethics. The translator of Euripides is at his best in the earlier papers. He does succeed in setting such topics as the war-satire of Aristophanes, the bitterness of Euripides, the Stoic philosophy, and the poetic definitions of Aristotle in some relation to our interests of to-day. The paper on Poesis and Mimesis 1s particularly penetrating in its insistence on the necessity of taking due account, in literary criticism, of the formal genius of the language in which the artist does his work. Not a great deal is to be said of the latter half of the book. Professor Murray oscillates rather comfortably between optimism and despair, makes the usual high-souled march along the smooth ridge of English liberalism, animadverts feelingly on the elements of wickedness and goodness in contemporary politics, and is careful to put in the parentheses needed to prevent a charge of excessive radicalism.
Moltke, by Lt.-Col. F. E. Whitton (8vo, 326 pages, Holt: $3.50). This book is less a biography than an exhaustive study of the formation of the German army after the Napoleonic wars and the using of that perfected instrument in effecting the union of the German empire. The after-effects of having a huge and successful army on a nation's hands are ably brought out, and as an inferential study of the psychological background of the Great War, its value is great. As a life of a German citizen it amounts to very little, because Moltke scarcely existed aside from his statesmanship. In his youth he was an excellent student at the War Academy. In his old age, he planted trees, played whist, and refused to own more than two suits. The one time when enthusiasm is recorded of him is the occasion of Bismarck's historic altering of the French telegram into an insult which made war inevitable. The one bit of humour he indulged in belongs to the same occasion. The devil, he said, might come for his old carcass as soon after the war as he liked, provided only Bismarck might lead the German armies into it. He was a Spartan, a thinker, and a strategist second to none in the history of nineteenth century warfare.
Memoirs of the Crown Prince of Germany, written by himself (illus., 8vo, 375 pages; Scribners: $5) traces a wavering line, as though the author—wise after the event—were still undecided whether to present himself as having been, so to speak, on the inside looking out or on the outside looking in. Basking in this confusion, the Kaiser's heir dextrously draws a red herring across the path of his own share in military and political exploits which did not precisely pan out in harmony with imperial aspirations, yet with no subtraction from the consciousness of his high rank and prestige. Thus he contrives to come out of it all looking rather more infallible than father. With this reservation, however, the book is as illuminating as it is diversified—a panorama of opinion, conjecture, narrative, and high-flown sentiment—a restless record, curiously without stamina.
