648 Reviews of Books troversy on this matter raged with great fury, and Teutonic amenities flew fiercely from both camps ; pure exhaustion only seems to have stilled the storm, for no sufficient agreement was reached to serve as the basis of a treaty of peace. The Delbriick appearance in the fray only widened the circle of spectators without adding views or material of moment, and the reappearance now of these arguments only sug- gests reflections on the standards of heroism and statesmanship that were made the prevailing ones in Germany by the glamor of the Bis- marckian triumphs. That after his seizure of Silesia the great Frederic should have thought to be content to spend the rest of his days or even a few years in replenishing his resources, developing peaceful in- dustry, and assimilating the new population is declared to stamp him as a weakling if not a fool. Only by crediting him with the intention of proceeding shortly to the improvement of the connections between Brandenburg and Silesia by the seizure of Saxony can his claim to greatness be sustained. And so Delbriick declares that he started in 1755 to bring on war that he might seize Saxony, and declines to regard his reputation as in any wise impaired by the trivial facts that (from this point of view) he entirely failed and that he had entirely miscalcu- lated the situation. For did he not thus furnish the German youth of the future with whole pages of exploits ? It is doctrine of this sort that Denis has probably had in mind in declaring in his recent book on Germany that the German cry for war in 1870 was largely due to the production by the university teaching of a youth that " n'a qu'un credo : la conviction de la superiorite de la vertu et de la science germaniques; qu'une religion: la force; qu'un besoin : la domination ". Victor Coffin. Frederick York Powell, a Life; and a Selection from Iiis Letters and Occasional Writings. By Oliver Elton. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1906. Two vols., pp. xvi, 461 ; xvi, 464.) It is unusual for a reviewer in the American Historical Review to use the first person singular in reviewing a new book, and the writer of this review in the course of nearly thirty years of writing reviews has never done such a thing before. But the editors of the American Historical Review may be pleased to make an exception in this case, since the reviewer was not only an intimate friend of the late pro- fessor of history at Oxford, whose life has just been published, but believes that he has certain criticisms to offer which can only be justi- fied by an assertion of personal recollections, of which the value must lie in the credibility of the writer. To sum up rapidly the value of the work, it may be stated at once that the life of York Powell well deserved to be written, and that it has been written in a tactful and interesting fashion. The many-sided- ness of the man has been well brought out; the attractive nature of his personality is excellently displayed; the facts of his career are correctly
