BRIEFER MENTION
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Famous Morganatic Marriages, by Charles Kingston (12mo, 284 pages; Brentano), is the sedate orchestration of a score of royal romances. The theme is occasionally elaborated by the wood winds of fancy, to make room for snatches of dialogue, but there is no radical departure from the accepted rules for this type of narrative. Such volumes provide a sort of dual baptism—a sprinkling of history in an immersion of text.
My Memoirs, by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz (2 vols., 12mo, 805 pages; Dodd, Mead), is one of those elaborate vindications which carry the authentic conviction of guilt. The earlier part of the work contains surprisingly generous praise of England's maritime tradition: the latter part is devoted to showing that the blundering of Bethmann-Hollweg gave Germany's enemies the opportunity to attack her without bearing the onus of aggression. Occasionally in Von Tirpitz acute perceptions of men and ideas combine with a complete moral imbecility and a stale reverence for the household gods of Preusstum. If Germany was really, as the Grand Admiral estimates, a sheep in wolf's clothing, a few more memoirs like this will leave no regret about her fate.
Ludendorff's Own Story, by Erich von Ludendorff (2 vols., 8vo, 950 pages; Harper), gives a G. H. Q. view of the war from August 1914 to November 1918. It has a certain quality of forthrightness which makes its fallacies and mistakes apparent to the reader even when they escape the author. Ludendorff's thesis is that the war was lost because the army at home had not another Ludendorff to direct it—hence unrest, disaffection, slackness, and ultimate disaster. With his Fatherland prostrate, only Ludendorff's self-complacency remains erect among the ruins. Whilst his country writhes in defeat his code and outlook stand stiffly in their pre-war attitude of "Attention."
The Yankee in the British Zone, by Ewen Cameron MacVeagh and Lee D. Brown (illustrated, 12mo, 418 pages; Putnam), is a cheerful and amusing account of a rather neglected portion of America's participation on the Western Front. It is good-humoured, accurate, full of incident, and a bit "hurrah." That is, the authors are still writing in 1918.
