The sun., 1919-10-05
T is difficult to find any recently


which is not animated by spirit of hos
tilitv to the German people. The authors
are hardly to blame for doubling whether
any good car come out Of Nazareth. The
attempt to discriminate between the reo-
pie of Germany and the military caste
which dominated them seemed futile when
such men as the great Socialistic party
leaders and the ninety-three university
professors upheld the Imperial German
Government In its violation Of interna-
tional law, its submarine wvffare on mer-
chant vessels and its brutal savagery in
Belgium. Nevertheless, there must b.
some good men nd women in a nation Of
60,000,000 people, and when we charac-
terlze history Of their empire as SYM
pathetic we merely mean that the author
does not regard the entire mass Of the
German people as hopelessly bad.
Such an author is Mr.. William Harbutt
Dawson, an English social worker, who
has just produced an elaborate historical
review Of he unity movement in Germany
between 1867 and 1914, in two volumes,
under the title of The German Empire
(Macmillan Company. Having been
educated at Berlin University, married
into two German families, and devoted
years to the study of political, social and
economic life in Germany, he ought to
possess exceptional qualifications for such
a work as he las here undertaken. His
attitude toward the German people is in
dicated by this extract from his brief biog-
raphy contributed to the English Who's
Who for 1918: "Most Of his books have
been written for the purpose of interpret
ing German thought, life and institutions
for English people and particularly of
expounding the German practice in the
treatment of social, economic and indus
trial questions" His numerous publica-
tons attest an enthusiastic interest in
things German; but we have found no
evidence in these volumes of any lack of
that loyalty which every patriotic English
man owed to his own Government at the
outset and during the progress of the
great war. His political sentiments, so
far as we are able to judge, seem to be
those of constitutional liberal
II.
According to Mr. Dawson's view the
movement for German unity which culmi-
mated In the formation of the modern
German Empire is to be regarded as hay
ing begun in 1867, after the signal defeat
of Austria by Prussia in the War of 1866,
which terminated in the Battle of Sadowa,
or Koniggratz, where the needle gun gave
the victory to the Prussian-so easily that
Bismarck watching the fight from afar
and observing the fresh appearance of
the Prussian troops as they withdrew from
the battlefield, wondered whether he was
the spectator of actual warfare or only of
maneuvres." This war resulted in the ex-
trusion of Austria from the scheme of
German unity and in the formation Of the
North German Confederation, consisting
of twenty-five States north of the River
Main, with Prussia as the predominating
power. After the Franco-Prussian War
of 1870, the North German Confederation,
together with the, States of South Ger
many, became the new German Empire,
and King William of Prussia became the
German Emperor. The earlier and sue
eessively futile efforts to establish a per-
manent federation of the States Of Ger
many are sketched in the beginning Of
Mr.. Dawson's work. Here we have an
account Of the first appearance of Otto
Won Bismarck on the stage Of history, as
@ Deputy in the Prussian United Diet of
1847. In 1851 he represented Prussia in
thes Federal Diet at Frankfort. "His
short career as a parliamentary Deputy
had justly given him the reputation of
typical reactionary, uncompromising in
his attachment to the principle of mon
archy by the grace Of God and hostile to
any concession to the idea of popular