New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-08-05
LITERARY CRITICISM
AND BOOK NEWS
A Paci6st's Amazing Historical Perspective
The Pontihcate-Ihe Rise and
Greatness Of Antwerp.

fell moro speedily than they would
have fallen II they had been monroe
sistant and pacifist. They perished In
spite Of force, not because OF 1t. IL
Draper's theory Of national life were
not now considered quite out OF date
we should liken these powers to strong
men. champion athletes, whose physi-
cal strength was not, after all, suff-
Gent to prevent the oncoming Of age
and death, and, who, therefore, in the
fitness of time, died "as common NOR
tails" But who shall say that they
would have lived longer if they had
been unframed wesklings? All that
Mr. Holmes proves, then. is that no
physical strength is sufficient TO assure
Immortality; which no moro needs
demonstration to the reflective mind
than that two and two make four.
There might, indeed, have been cited
the example of the oldest two powers
now existing in the world. They are
powers closely akin in race and similar
in natural circumstances. They have
existed for many centuries, side by
side One has ever been intensely mill
tant, the other almost as markedly
on-militant- Which Of the two has
been the more secure from perils, the
more immune from alien oppression,
and which Of the two to-day has i'm
measursbly the superior expectancy Of
national life, Japan or China?
The other count in the indictment Of
force is its incompatibility with the
higher life. Here we must quote an
amazing passage from the book:
at is in our own day, however
that We find the supreme example
Of the antagonism of militarism
and civilization in the case Of Ger
many. For centuries the German
people were peaceful traders, hard
working peasants and rsptured
dreamers. Political power was un-
known 20 them and military great
ness undesired. And these were
the days when her life was purest
and her spirit at the zenith of its
achievement. 1t was feeble and
divided Germany which gave us the
long line of noble mystics from
Tauler and Meister Eckhart to
Herder and Schleiermacher-Mar-
tin Luther and the Reformation
the literature of Leasing, Schiller,
Goethe and Heine-the music of
Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart
and Schubert-the philosophy Of
Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte and Schell-
ing-the scholarship of Wolf,
, Strauss, Daur, Niebuhr and Ranke.
Then, IN the eighteenth century,
came the Great Elector and Fred
erick and the beginnings Of Prus-
sian militarism. Then came the
Napoleonic wars, with their poison
Gus progeny in the persons OF
Stein, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau."
Why, this is midsummer madnessl
Does Mr. Holmes imagine, or does he
suppose that he can persuade rational
and intelligent men 70 believe, that
the illustrious Germans whom he
names-al but Tauler, Eckhart and
Luther-lived in the times before the
Great Elector and Frederick Does he
essay 10 put back into the seventeenth
century men who were the glory Of the
nineteenth? Why, some Of those whom
he names as having preceded Frederick
the Great were men OF our own day,
whom some of US now living can well
remember. He names a glorious ga
lazy of the leaders of German thought
who flourished. as he says, when her
spirit was at the zenith Of It's achieve
ment" and tells us that then-after
them-came the Great Elector and
Frederick and the beginnings of Prus-
sian militarism, and after that the
Napoleonic wars. The fact is, as every
schoolboy knows, that these men were
not merely subsequent to the age OF
Frederick, but chiefly were identified
with or Immediately subsequent to the
Napoleonic era, and were contempt
raries Of the poisonous progeny" Of
that era--Stein, Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau. 1t was the Napoleonic era
which produced in Germany the great
est intellectual leaders that race has
ever known. 1t was that era, supremely
identified with militarism, which was
to Germany what the age Of Pericles
was to Greece, the Augustan age to
Rome, the Elizabethan age TO England.
II was that time, the time of that
poisonous progeny-Stein, Scharn-
horst and Gneisenau," that moved Car
lyle TO say that Providence has given
to the French the empire Of the land,
to the English that of the sea, to the
Germans that of-the air!"
Er pede Herc1ttem. We concede
that il may not always be Iudicious TO
Judge a whole book by a single pas
sage or by pair Of passages. But
we do submit that when in serious
volume, Of the highest ethical intent,
the author bases his GROWING argu-
ment upon the premise that Goethe
and Fichte and Leibnitz and Strauss
and their contemporaries fourished at
an earlier date than the Great Elector