REVIEWS

The Biology of War. By G. F. NICOLAI. Translated by CONSTANCE A. GRANDE and JULIAN GRANDE. New York, The Century Company, 1918.-xxx, 553 pp.

Wide interest in this book among the English-speaking peoples, as on the continent of Europe, is partly adventitious. For publishing it Professor Nicolai was imprisoned. One wonders as one reads it why he was not hanged. Such a book, written and published in the United States in time of war by a citizen who believed and taught that the war was infamous and that our government deliberately and infamously began it, would have been held treasonable, beyond a doubt. Such being its character the volume has a documentary value as further evidence of German culpability. For example, the pages offer numerous gems like this.

. one of our most highly educated military men asked me whether it might not be possible to hurl bombs loaded with cholera germs or plague bacilli behind the lines of the enemy. When I told him that this seemed rather purposeless and hardly humane, he replied, with a contemptuous wave of the hand, that humanity had nothing to do with this war; that Germany had full license for whatever it wished to do.

Also as a tour de force the book is likely to survive a long while among objects of intellectual vertu, for it was written in jail with no books of reference at hand, yet it is a remarkable compendium of scientific, historical and political facts.

Apart from these circumstances, nevertheless, the book is a serious work, well deserving of dispassionate study. It is rich in ideas, a considerable portion of which are recognizable as being of various coinages, issued before Dr. Nicolai began to philosophize, but not much worn by active circulation, and it offers a fairly well-organized account of the causes of war, an indictment of war and a study of how war may be abolished. As such it is already making an impression, if one may judge from press notices, and it appears probable that it is destined to exert real influence as a factor in anti-militaristic thought.

It would be unfortunate, therefore, if Dr. Nicolai's theses, which are distinctly challenging, should not be patiently examined and rigorously criticised. Though the translators assure us that he is not, in the

common meaning of the word, a pacifist, and that he would by no means oppose defensive war under all circumstances, yet it is difficult for the reader to sidestep the conclusion that Dr. Nicolai is at bottom a pacifist of the sentimentalist (observe I do not say the sentimental) school. Although as a physiologist he finds the causes of war in the struggle for existence, nevertheless, as an idealist and humanitarian, he relies upon the progress of intelligence and a strengthening of the Christian sentiments to bring wars to an end. He writes long chapters to exhibit what was quite unnecessary to prove the increasing destructiveness of war and the possibilities of human happiness if mankind, behaving rationally and reasonably, should cease to fight.

Like all true pacifists, moreover, he undervalues patriotism, which he very nearly identifies with chauvinism. It has been noticed in England and in the United States since 1914 that deprecation of patriotism has in these countries as a rule been associated with a pacifism that has not been pro-German. Dr. Nicolai's pages suggest a reasonable explanation. Germany has been patriotic and German patriotism has been chauvinism. If chauvinism were in fact the only kind of patriotism in the world, it would deserve all the bad things that have ever been said against it, but Dr. Nicolai admits, curiously enough, that there is another kind, which he calls "a new patriotism, American patriotism" (page 272). It is much to be regretted that he has not more comprehensively studied and better understood this new patriotism of the American people.

For if he understood it better, he would not dismiss it with the passing remark that it is "based on moral sentiment" without inquiring what underlies the sentiment. American patriotism is an expression. of the practical purposes of more than a hundred million human beings of diverse origins, cooperating in a live-and-let-live way, in the improvement of a common opportunity. And this brings us to what is fundamentally inadequate and disappointing in Dr. Nicolai's thinking. Physiologist though he is, he has not emancipated himself from the Kantian-Hegelian conception of causation. It is metaphysical, not scientific, if by a scientific notion of causation we understand a sense of the relative dynamic values of the factors of a situation. Dr. Nicolai would properly be shocked if any one were to explain physiological fatigue in terms of good or bad intentions, yet it is in such terms that he talks about the problem of war. There is no great harm in that, perhaps, if one is admittedly talking idealism,-poetical, sentimental or speculative; but there is great harm in it when one is professedly talking physical science, as Dr. Nicolai thinks he is, since he

calls his treatise "The Biology of War."

If we are talking in terms of dynamic values and prefer not to talk nonsense, we must say that war will end when the sum of the measurable energies that make for peace exceeds the sum of the measurable energies that make for war. Mankind did not abandon cannibalism because mankind developed a moral sentiment repugnant to a diet of human flesh. Cannibalism was abandoned because somebody invented a hoe and then a plow. Chattel slavery was not abolished because humanitarianism abhorred it. It was abolished when the invention of the steam engine made it possible to sustain civilization without slavery. Modern democracy did not come into existence because the European world became interested in the brotherhood of man. It came into existence because geographical discovery and exploration opened up the Western Hemisphere into which men could flow and where by their individual efforts they could lead independent, self-reliant lives. Wars may cease when a way is found to make food and clothing so abundant that men would no more think of fighting for their respective shares than they think of fighting for atmospheric air under ordinary conditions. That day will not come, however, if with material abundance the human race increases in numbers until twenty million individuals dwell on each square kilometer instead of "only eleven" as now, and Dr. Nicolai gently remarks, "this number of human beings is attainable."

FRANKLIN H. GIDDINGS.

Alsace-Lorraine. Past, Present, and Future. By COLEMAN PHILLIPSON. New York, E. P. Dutton and Company, 1918.327 pp.

The sections of this volume which describe the past of AlsaceLorraine are more satisfactory than those which discuss its future. One reason for this is that the former are, on the whole, objective and the latter are dominated by the author's predilections for a certain future organization of the world; and another is that the latter do not appear to be an outgrowth and a natural conclusion of the former. Having read the first half of the book, the reader is surprised at the turn things take in the second half.

The author's account of the history of Alsace and Lorraine from the earliest times down to the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century, though in no sense profound or penetrating, is, in the main, supported by the evidence, though exception might be taken to statements here and there. There is an excellent chapter on the an

nexation of Alsace-Lorraine by Germany in 1871, which describes the military events and diplomatic negotiations by which it was brought about; another on the proposals as to the fate of the provinces after their conquest and Bismarck's opinions on the problem of assimilation; another containing the protests of 1871 against the annexation; and two chapters on the German claims to Alsace-Lorraine-the historical claims based on previous possession, the claims based on nationality, race and language, and those resting on political necessity, on military necessity and security, and finally those deduced from the right of conquest. Mr. Phillipson rejects as untenable all of these claims except the last, that of conquest. He asserts on page 86 that "it became abundantly clear, after the fall of Sedan, that the war against France was a war of spoliation" and quotes Bismarck as saying to Monod, concerning the alleged German origin of the Alsatians: "All this is a swindle. Even if the Alsatians had been Japanese, we would have annexed them just the same, because we had need of Metz and Strassburg from a strategic point of view." Yet Mr. Phillipson says, apropos of the war and its outcome:

Now we cannot enter here into the question of the Ems telegram and into the allegations that are sometimes brought forward that Napoleon was wrongfully entrapped by Bismarck. In 1870 it was the belief throughout Europe that France was the aggressor, and that belief has generally prevailed since. Assuming, then, the belief to be founded on fact, we must conclude that the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine after its conquest, and its formal cession by the Treaty of Frankfort, was a valid act transferring the legal title of France thereto to Germany.

A good many things might be said concerning this paragraph. One is that if the legality of the transfer by treaty is based upon an assumption that a general belief is founded on fact, the reader is entitled to know whether the legality still persists in case it turns out that the belief was not founded on fact. Bismarck himself made the claim in his memoirs that he brought on the war by his handling of the Ems telegram, a claim which Mr. Phillipson does not consider either here or elsewhere in his book. "Assuming" things to be true which are not true is a summary and unsafe procedure in reaching conclusions in matters of gravity or even in matters of levity.

There are other assumptions in plenty or loose, hazardous and very questionable statements in this book. In chapter x the author treats of the movement for autonomy which was so important in AlsaceLorraine from about 1890 down to the outbreak of the war. He calls

this a "nationalist" movement, by which he evidently means that the Alsatians and Lorrainers have undergone a fundamental change during the last generation, that they have become conscious of their own collective individuality and are no longer French or German, although his manifest belief is that they would vote to remain in Germany could they attain the complete statehood of Baden or Bavaria or Prussia. They have

in the twenty-five years before the present war, developed a distinctive personality and their own particular ideals of nationalism and self-government. Thus Alsace-Lorraine is neither French nor German; it is itself. . . . If Alsace-Lorraine has any noticeable affinity with any neighboring country at all, it is perhaps Switzerland.

Again,

we have emphasized more than once that, speaking generally, the AlsaceLorrainers are neither French nor Germans; they are Alsace-Lorrainers with ideals of their own the fulfillment of which the great majority of them seek neither in France nor in Germany, but in Alsace-Lorraine.

This thought we meet very early and very late in the book. On page 38 the author writes: "The native Alsatians are neither French nor German in character, temperament and ideals; they are Alsatians, showing certain characteristics of the rival nations and differing markedly from both in many other qualities." One is tempted to inquire whether the Bretons are "French," whether the Provençals are "French" and also whether the Alsatians knew what they were talking about when, in their passionate and pathetic protests of 1871, they declared that they were French and desired to remain French.

The autonomist movement was simply a new form of protest against German rule. It was not a "nationalist" movement in the sense in which that word is currently used. It expressed the desire of the people to govern themselves, so that they might prevent that Germanization which every agency of the German Empire was trying to bring about. It did not mean estrangement from France, or a growing indifference to her. On the contrary, the only possible method whereby the people might hope to keep open their cultural and ideal connections with France was by getting control, among other things, of their own system of education, of their courts, police and administration, and by preventing these from being used, as they have been since 1871, for purposes of stamping out all French reminders and associa