a convinced pacifist. The father of
Frederick the Great, the greatest militarist of the Hohenzollern
Dynasty, the Sergeant-King, was so attached to his army that he never
employed it in active warfare, he never allowed it to fight a single
battle, for fear of losing or spoiling so perfect an instrument.

But even granting this paradoxical thesis of the pacifism of German
militarists, the situation remains sufficiently contradictory and
distracting to the ordinary mind. Every representative German
consulted by Monsieur Bourdon proclaims that Germany is pacific, that
she wishes for peace, and that she needs peace for her industrial and
commercial expansion. Yet we see her making gigantic preparations for
a possible war. With a restless endeavour, and at tremendous cost, we
see her developing her warlike resources. Every representative German
insists on making platonic professions. Yet we do not hear of a single
statesman daring to take the necessary step or to make the necessary
sacrifices. No one seems to understand that peace demands sacrifices
quite as heroic as war. No Bismarck of peace seems to be strong enough
to-day to put an end to the senseless waste of national resources and
misdirected energies.

VI.

The "German Enigma" of Monsieur Bourdon is mainly an objective,
impartial, and impersonal study, and the author has been careful not
to obtrude his own private views. It is only in the last chapter that
he attempts to draw the lesson and point out the conclusion of his own
inquiry. And his conclusion is an eloquent though restrained plea for
a Franco-German _rapprochement_, and in favour of the only policy
which will bring about that reconciliation. France, he argues, does
not want a revision of the Treaty of Frankfurt. She does not want
compensation or revenge. French history contains a sufficiently
brilliant roll of glorious military achievements that the French
people may afford to forget the reverses and humiliations of 1870. A
French statesman, on the eve of the Treaty of Frankfurt, made the
rhetorical statement that France would never surrender one stone of
her fortresses nor one inch of her territory. Animated by a very
different spirit, modern French statesmen do not claim back to-day one
inch of lost territory. All that the French people demand is that the
claims of justice shall be heard, that Alsace-Lorraine shall cease to
groan under the heel of an arbitrary despot, that Alsace-Lorraine
shall be