FREDERICK THE GREAT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22344, 15 February 1936, Page 10 (Supplement)

FREDERICK THE GREAT

A POPULAR BIOGRAPHY

To Mr. F. J. P. Veale Frederick the Great was one of the few men of whom it can bo said with truth that if he had never lived the subsequent course of history would have been very different. In writing his lifo Mr. Yeale has endeavoured to prove that the awakening of a spirit of nationalism among the German people and the consequent check of French expansion at the expense of the German States was the work of Frederick.

Certainly it was during tho war of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War that Prussia first became a power to be reckoned with on the Continent, began to oppose French ambition and to wrestle with Austria for the leadership of the German peoples. Yet as tho author himself remarks Frederick personally felt only admiration for Franco and of the newlyawakened German national spirit ho remained largely - unconscious. Such manifestations of it as forced themselves upon his notice filled him with contempt and annoyance.

The author defends Frederick upon the charge of being nothing more than a crude militarist delighting only in war and bloodshed. He even suggests that at the time when Frederick was Becretly preparing to invade Silesia a plain intimation from Voltaire that such a step would destroy for ever the esteem with which ho was regarded by enlightened public opinion in Franco would have . been sufficient to have caused the abandonment of the project. Mr. Veale's biography is a very readable one and should prove popular. The "striking resemblanco in many respects" which the author has discovered the Diet of the Empire to bear to the League of Nations will fail to impress any intelligent reader and may be dismissed as the result of a personal prejudice of the author. "Frederick the Great: His Life and Place In History," by F. J. P. Veale. (Hamish Hamilton.)