It would be unfortunate if the Central Powers were excluded from a society of nations, but there must be an entire change of mind and heart in the German nation; nothing but decisive victory would bring that to pass.

Still more thoughtfully and skilfully is it shown how the German Empire has been gradually transfigured. How the processes of degeneration, which changes an individual from a man to a monster, have gone on until Germany has reverted to the condition of barbaric tribalism, "Like a giant caveman, dwelling apart, toiling in his working hours in preparation for battle, and in his sleep dreaming of enemies and hostilities, as the chief preoccupation of existence."

It is impossible here to do justice to the chapter on international organization and the power of democracy. Dr. Hill does not believe that peace can be enforced and he thinks there is something in the world which we call democracy that is far removed from the purely mechanical contrivances of politics. It is an inner aspiration, a faithful outreaching for liberty of action and for the uplift of mankind. The final chapter discusses American participation in the war and shows most vividly the necessity of supporting our government in its determined effort, not only to internationalize the world itself in the interest of morality and right, but by one supreme effort to establish democracy upon the earth, so that free peoples can join in a League of Peace, under guarantees of equal rights and equal duties. Its true aim is to associate itself in good faith with the forces which seek for peace with justice in the world.

Anyone wishing a clarified view of the entire international situation cannot do better than to read this book. It is a resultant of wide knowledge and wide experience and breathes the true spirit of a Christian scholar and patriot.

SAMUEL T. DUTTON.

"The Coming Democracy." By Hermann Fernau. Published by E. P. Dutton Co., New York, 1917. Pp. vii, 321. $2.00.

Herr Fernau is the author of "Because I am a German" (Dutton, 1916, $1.00), a book which, like the more famous "J'accuse"

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by an anonymous author, presents a searching exposition and condemnation of the motives which impelled the masters of Germany to plunge the world into war. Prussian himself, he attacked Prussianism as the enemy, and appealed to his country's better self against its worst. All copies of "Because I am a German" that were known to the police in Germany were promptly confiscated. The possession of a copy today in Germany is said to be a capital offense.

This latest work is a merciless arraignment of hereditary political privilege as Germans know it. It contemplates and urges the destructive effort which must precede and introduce new construction. Prussia and Germany must measure the claims of kingship by divine right, a question which England considered and settled in the seventeenth century. Stuart blood flows in the Hohenzollern veins, and William's subjects who, like Professor Quidde, have dared to compare him to Caligula, have not failed to remark also his kinship with the first English Charles.

Fernau, exiled because of his opposition to the German dynastic political system, is comparable to Sir John Eliot in the Tower or to Hampden, imprisoned for refusal to pay an illegal tax. If German democracy already has its Eliots and Hampdens, its Pyms and Cromwells may be on the way. Fernau's brilliant and scathing indictment of the political philosophy of William II., and of the system of which he is the head begins with a masterful answer to this characteristic question: "How will they (i. e., future German historians) ever be able to explain the enthusiasm, the marvelous cohesion and the bedrock belief in the holy mission of the German cause, with which the German people embarked upon this World War?" The answer to this question follows the lines of the author's earlier book.

Next, he devotes one hundred and seventyfive pages to viewing the Hohenzollern dynasty from every possible political angle. First he studies it in its relation to the Constitution of the Empire.

"One could in fact cancel the first nineteen articles of the German Imperial Con

stitution and replace them by a single sentence. "The German Emperor is the Godappointed, absolute Lord of Germany,' and the practical result would be the same. In Germany there are only liberal institutions without a liberal spirit, popular rights without popular government, Ministers without responsibility, deputies without plenary powers; and, on the other side, unassailable rights of the Crown, the widest scope for the imposition of dynastic, arbitrary will, supervision and domination by the King of Prussia over the Federal princes and the Federal Council, and finally, there are Articles 5 and 37 of the Imperial Constitution by virtue of which Prussia's vote in legislation touching the military system, the Imperial Navy, customs and indirect taxation everywhere, is preponderant in the Bundesrat, when it is cast for the perpetuation of the existing condition of things."

Thirdly, he studies the dynastic system in its relation to the army.

"All German soldiers swear, according to Article 64 of the Imperial Constitution 'to render unconditional obedience to the orders of the Emperor.'"

"The Prussian army is feudal, not national, dynastic, not democratic."

How sure the Kaiser is that all German soldiers are his personal retainers, the world knows well from his speeches, as, when addressing the new recruits in 1891, he said, "The occasion may arise when you will have to shoot down or bayonet your own brothers and relations. Then seal your allegiance with the sacrifice of your heart's blood."

Fourthly, Fernau considers the dynastic system in its relations to Kultur, to German scholars, to the philosophies now dominant there, and to the ideals of the Hague Conference.

"For Emperor and Empire! Between these everlasting blinkers our historians view their documents, the professors their antiquities, the freemasons their cornerstones, the classical scholars their Pegasus, and the Social Democrats the ark of the covenant of the sacred Marx. . .

"Such is the result of a mental development that, commencing with the disappearance of Weimar Germanism, and politically trained by Metternich, Bismarck and William II., and intellectually trained by Hegel, Treitschke and their disciples, could only play its part as a protecting power of the dynasty. The World War is the absolute proof of this."

Fifthly, Fernau inquires what is the German's Fatherland, and after reviewing the trials for Lèse-majesté and the conditions of German patriotism, concludes that Emperor and Fatherland are identical.

"The Emperor is not only the supreme authority under the Constitution, but the born incorporation of our political system, leader of our national fortunes in peace and war, umpire in matters of art and science,

..the sole initiative and guiding force of the German Empire within and without. . . . If a German were to love his country as other civilized nations do theirs, as a political community of which he is an active member, he would be a revolutionary."

Sixthly and finally, with the War for his text and continuous illustration, Fernau delivers a moving appeal to his countrymen in the spirit of the German title of his book, "Durch! Zur Democratie!" "Onward, to Democracy!"

He ridicules German pacifists who forever criticise external phenomena of politics and cautiously dodge the discussion of principles, as tho they had forgotten Kant's dictum about a world at peace, "The civil constitution of every State must be republican." Fernau says that he was impelled to write this book by his conversation with a distinguished German pacifist, who admitted that "the dynasties" are the real cause of the war, but observed dejectedly, "What can we do? If we were to say in public who and what drives us into war, we should be got rid of on the spot. We have to be glad that we are suffered to remain as we are. The initiated know all the same that we are republicans."

Fernau concludes with an impassioned cry for "German Government by the German people," and for "A German Army for the German people." "The first step towards the promised League of Nations is the proclamation of the rights of the German people." Thus closes the most comprehensively democratic utterance that has come in book-form from German lips during this great struggle.

CHARLES H. LEVERMORE.