1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 141 a bishop whom he disliked, wrote out his abdication. That crisis was happily overcome by a suggestion of ale, in which the royal wrath was quenched. But the defects of the ruler were the more palpable when Denmark was entangled in the Slesvig-Holstein question and inter- mittently deluded by the phantom of Scandinavianism. They were, in part at least, the cause of her delay in grasping the problem until it had become insoluble by herself alone. Under 11 March 1857 Krieger notes, while the kings of Denmark and Sweden were briskly corresponding, Mauteuffel found the Scandinavian dreams incredible ; ' the end of the story would be that Prussia would have the pleasure of seeing an English or Russian fleet stationed in the Great Belt.' As for the Slesvig-Holstein question, which was being litigated by arms in 1848 and in 1858 had long seemed on the verge of a new appeal to force, it is noteworthy that Krieger's records tend to exonerate both England and France from blame for the final catastrophe. A British foreign secretary frankly confessed his inability to fathom the question, and ' the old Times clique ' was reported in 1858 as pronouncing Slesvig intelligible but the German Holstein question impossible. But again and again Denmark was warned of her danger and, as history has proved, sound advice was offered, while both powers separately indicated their inability to give armed assistance. This, however, is a topic upon which far more light will doubtless be thrown by the next volume of this interesting work. W. F. Eeddaway.
