and Wilhelm Foerster, president of the international bureau of weights and measures, the father of Professor F. W. Foerster. This manifesto was not published, for Nicolai was unable to collect a sufficient number of signatures. In the summer term of 1915 he incorporated it in the opening of a series of lectures he planned to deliver upon the war. Thus, for the fulfilment of what he deemed his duty as an honest thinker, he deliberately risked his social position, his academic career, his distinctions, his comfort, and his friendships. He was arrested, and was interned in Graudenz fortress. There, unaided, and almost without books, he penned his admirable Biology of War, and managed to have the manuscript sent to Switzerland, where the first German edition has just been published. The circumstances in which the book was written have an atmosphere of mystery and heroism recalling that of the days when the Holy Inquisition was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world, the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September, 1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does force manifest its ludicrous weakness, for its unjust decrees merely help to raise a statue to the man whom force would fain strike down.
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The leading characteristic of book and writer is their universality. The publisher, in a note prefixed to the first edition, tells us that Nicolai "has a world-wide reputation as a physician, more especially in the field of cardiac disease"; that "he is a thinker the universality of whose culture seems almost fabulous in these days of specialisation, for, while distinguished for his knowledge of neokantian philosophy, he is equally at home in literature and in dealing
