GERMANY.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20920, 29 July 1933, Page 13

GERMANY.

♦ A NEW HISTORY. History of Germany : People and State Through a Thousand Years. By Hermann Pinnow. Translated by Mabel Brailsford. Allen and Unwin. 473 pp. (IV6 net.) IKovioncri by RLBY FJ NI>.LA V.; The title of this book, "Deutsche Geschichte," is somewhat alarming. Even in the English translation, with its sub-title, its size gives warning of one of those text-books, so useful to the examination crammer, so wearisome to the general reader, which are compiled, apparently, in the belief that the shorter the text, the longer is it remembered. Herr Pinnow has not attempted to arrange a series of facts in tabloid form. What he gives us is a short survey of the development of the German people from the first cleavage in the old Carlovingian Empire, down to the Conference of German States in 1928. In dealing with this vast subject, he shows great discretion and refuses to be drawn away from it by the most enticing historical dramas. Thus, while a whole chapter hardly suffices to describe the development of trado in the sixteenth century, the growth of the guilds, and the conditions under which the craftsmen laboured, the events of the Thirty Years' War are dismissed in a few pages. The same restraint is shown in the last chapter but one, entitled "Collapse," which describes the enormous increase in Germany's share in the world trade, the evergrowing spirit of nationalism and the increasing ascendancy of military leadership over political, whicn were the main features of development under the last Hohenzollerns. The war, 1914-13, and the political events which led up to it are dealt with briefly, but are not stressed. The author quite firmly refuses to acknowledge his country, as the aggressor in this war and speaks with some bitterness of her treatment by the Allied Nations at Versailles; but his v/dting is inspired by such pure patriotism and such earnest scholarship that only a Chauvinist will take offence. Slow Evolution. In considering the collapse of the German Empire in 191 C, it is difficult to realise how young that Empire was, and how long it had been in the making. From the drawing up of the first Treaty of Verdun between Charlemagne's grandsons to the formation of the German Empire by Bismarck, more than IUOU years elapsed. Those years, during which France and England developed under absolute monarchies, discarded these monarchies, and evolved each their own form of democracy, witnessed in Germany a very different state of things. The German peoples had never fully felt the effects of Roman discipline and civilisation. Though the Rhine was crossed bj' Roman armies, and several attempts at conquest were made, the tribes, divided in most tilings, coalesced to repel these invasions, as they had those of their Slavonic neighbours. Thus the fall of the Roman Empire found them still a group of independent tribes, some of them refusing Christianity, with no common patriotism; ready, when the strong hand of Charlemagne was removed, to fall back into their various groups. The Saxons' attempt to form an Empire coincided with the rise of the Papacy; and rebel princes were encouraged and even assisted by the Popes, who looked with disfavour at powerful and independent monarchies.

The humiliation of Henry IV. by Gregory VII. is remembered because of dramatic incidents: the picture of the great king doing penance in the snow outside Canossa, ignored by the Pope in his castle, is a favourite theme of the chroniclers. It is symbolic of the end. The Empire reached the height of its greatness under Barbarossa and then passed swiftly to disruption. Princes and Popes together were too much for the Emperors. But if the Papacy is responsible for the fall of the Saxon Empire, the Reformation, when it came, did little to help the growth of a German nation. The Thirty Years' War, which began as a war of religion, developed after Richelieu's clever interference into a struggle between * Protestant Germany and Protestant Sweden; and the Peace of Westphalia, made possible by the ambitions of the Princes, subjected German policy to the supervision i of foreign Governments, and gave | large grants of Hapsburg possessions to France. I Napoleon and Russia. It was under the stringent military rule of Napoleon that the first idea of a German National State began to take shape. The burden of taxes fell most heavily on Prussia, where the longing for liberation was most strongly felt: and under the influence of the romantic philosophers many began to look towards her as the centre of -a new German State. Thus some 50 years later Bismarck found the minds of the people prepared for union and the German Empire was formed. As long as he was in power, Bismarck did everything possible to lighten the bonds of the Zollverein. The planning and conduct of the Franco-Prussian War, which was worthy of Napoleon, gave German'' more confidence. But the great Chancellor's policy, conservative at home, seeking for an alliance with Russia abroad, was not at all to the taste of the young William 11., who came to the throne in 1888. Under the influence of the military party at Court the young Emperor increased his popularity at home by his attitude to the Workmen's Protection Act. but adopted a nonconciliatory foreign policy which, finally, left Germany devoid of allies with the exception of Austria and Turkey, while England, assisted by the diplomatic genius of Edward VII., drew closer to France, Russia, and Italy. In his last chapter, Herr Pinnow deals with the attempts at reconstruction which followed the Treat}' of Versailles and some of the effects of the Dawes and Young plans. This survey is of necessity incomplete, as Germany had not yet accepted the Hitler regime when this book was published. How more recent events would have affected the note of optimism with which he closes is hard to say; but at any rate he does not consider the German problem capable of instantaneous solution : The constitutional unity might prove a dangerous boon if it came in the form of a gift; the constitutional unity, as a problem to be solved, sets