Charles Morris's "Famous Days and -Deeds in Holland and Belgium" (J. B. Lippincott Co.) deals with the present war only in the closing chapter, in which is given a rapid sketch of the 'German invasion of Belgium, and the courage with which the Belgians sprang to arms, at hardly more than a day's warning, to defend their country. For the most part, the book has to do with the past of Belgium and Holland, and the narrative therefore furnishes a setting for the story of the Belgium of to-day. There are few countries whose history is more full of heroic deeds, and unquestioning sacrifices for principle and liberty; and Mr. Morris has wisely chosen not to attempt a consecutive history, but to tell the tales of these struggles in order, from the tyranny of Charles V, the horrors of the Inquisition, the bloodthirsty deeds of the Duke of Alva, and the gallant and successful resistance of William the Silent down to the nineteenth century. These stories are told with graphic power. They are as thrilling as any tales of romance, and a great deal more worth while because they portray real men, real struggles and real victories for freedom and right. Sixteen full-page illustrations add to the interest of the text.

Nominally, Hugh Paret, the hero of Mr. Winston Churchill's "A Far Country" is a corporation lawyer, but unprofessionally he dabbles in theology after the American manner, seeking first to find, and later to make a creed convenient for him, and at the same time to spread a good table in the presence of his enemies. As far as

ful, and clothes, feeds, and houses himself and his family sumptuously, but the creed is a more difficult matter, and sometimes, from pure indolence, he is almost persuaded to be a Christian. He has no conceit and no delusions, either about himself or these United States in which he lives, and his ability to perceive the ills besetting his contemporaries is offset by genuine esteem for their abilities. Mr. Churchill's national pride does not close his eyes to the queer laxity of American morals painfully apparent in the circles of those too delicately sensitive not to be shocked by the spectacle of the ten commandments engraved upon a church wall before a whole congregation; and so his hero beginning with deception grazes the borders of political and financial dishonesty, and daringly trifles with the seventh commandment. Mr. Churchill treats the situations which he creates both skilfully and bravely, and without cant, and without preaching, and without sacrificing probability or art shows how inevitable is retribution. He keeps his more frivolous readers by giving them such details of the lives of the rich as are spread before them by the "society" reporters, but

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he subordinates them to the real business of living, and it is to true repentance that he brings his hero. As for his two heroines, he contrives to save both of them. There is little trace of the Richard Carvel romance in "A Far Country," but there is convincing proof of growth in literary skill. The curious may discover some personal traits and some incidents borrowed from contemporary life at certain points in the story but nothing to offend good taste. Eight excellent pictures by Mr. Herman Pfeifer supplement the text. The Macmillan Company.

I.

TREITSCHKE VERSUS HERBERT SPENCER. All human conduct, whether national or individual, is always affected by the operation of certain principles of which the individual is not directly aware. Indeed, under ordinary circumstances, for the mass of average men, these principles have no particular interest; and questions as to what they are or ought to be, are commonly regarded as academic, and remote from practical life. Conditions may arise, however -and chief amongst these are the conditions produced by war-when the case suddenly changes; and questions which for most men have been little more than shadows, are illuminated as though by lightning, and reveal themselves as close realities. Broadly stated, the chief of such questions are these. Is the object or test of the conduct and feelings of the individual the effect produced by them on the individual's private life, and on the lives of others, considered as individuals like himself? Or is it the effect produced by them on his own life and on their lives collectively—that is to say on the Country, the Society, or the State, to which they all belong, considered as an entity distinct from, and in point of interest possibly even opposed to, its individual and component parts? Or again, is the object or test of conduct neither one nor the other of these, but both taken together in stable or varying proportions?

The State as a corporate unit, and the State as the sum of the private lives of its citizens, are by many thinkers treated as conceptions which are mutually exclusive. Does the State, it is asked, exist for the sake of the individual, or does the individual exist for the sake of the State? As will be shown presently, if the question

is put thus, it is not susceptible of any rational answer. And yet such is the uncompromising form in which it has been asked by one thinker, and apparently asked by another, the former of whom has affected the sentiments of an entire nation, whilst the latter is notable as one of the few English philosophers whose influence has been during the last fifty years international. The former of these is Professor Treitschke; the latter is Herbert Spencer. They are both so far alike that each, with the utmost emphasis, attributes to the State an actual unitary existence distinct from the individuals composing it; but the State of the English philosopher is like a business man dressed in a frock-coat; and the State of the German is like an ogre, bristling with dirks and pistols and sniffing the air for blood. Nevertheless there are certain points as to which both these philosophers, in common with all others, agree, and which are equally fatal to the extreme conclusions apparently inferable from the main arguments of both. Let us, however, first take them both as they stand, beginning with the conception of the State as elaborated by Professor Treitschke.

II.

THE MAIN LINE OF TREITSCH KE'S ARGITMENT. THE STATE, AS A SAVAGE POWER, WHICH IS ABOVE MORALITY, AND IS AN ABSOLUTE END IN ITSELF.

It is not often that a philosophy expounded in scholastic lectures is assimilated so rapidly by all classes of a nation, and excites such widespread passion, as the social speculations of this German professor have excited throughout his own country; and outrageous and even absurd though his teaching may be as a whole, there is in

some of his arguments a truth which would be wholesome medicine for many people in places not far from home.

Professor Treitschke's message to Germany, briefly summarized, is as follows. It is a truism to say that men cannot live in isolation; for each man is naturally one member of a family. It is equally true and not much less of a truism to say that families cannot live in isolation any more than individuals. For mutual aid and for self-protection neighboring families have always had to unite; and their union necessarily implies certain conditions and obligations which are laws. Thus "The State consists of a plural number of families, permanently living together, and legally united so as to form an independent power." The State, having thus formed itself, becomes forthwith more than the sum of its component families. It differs from such families, he says (though he does not himself use this metaphor) very much as a boat differs from the passengers contained in it. The passengers will desire to be as comfortable as the nature of the case allows, and each must be free to look after his own interests, subject to regulations equally enforced on all; but far more important than any struggle for personal comfort is the safety of the boat itself-the protection of it against hostile craft which would, if they could, sink it. Hence, to go back to Treitschke's own language, though the State has two functions that of keeping order amongst its citizens for their own private advantage, and that of preserving itself as an entity distinct from other States -the latter function, in point both of logic and practice, is so incomparably the more important that the definition of the State as "the people legally united, under a power resident in themselves and not in any other body," may be properly translated into a formula

still briefer:-"The State is the public power of offence and defence." The State, Treitschke continues, "is no academy of the arts"; it is "no economic undertaking" which aims (as is held by the Manchester school of thought), at enriching men by a mastery of the productive forces of nature. It has nothing to do with religion or morals, except in so far as it keeps its citizens in order by rigidly enforcing on all of them the principles of legal or purely external justice. The ideal State, in short, is not so much a city as a camp, and the citizens are soldiers first, and only citizens afterwards. It is true that these excellent creatures need not be always at war; but body and soul they must be ready for it at a moment's notice always; and "we may trust to the living God" that they will, till the world ends, be "frequently" fighting with somebody.

To some people it may seem that so sanguinary a teaching as this is merely an outburst of rhetoric, not meant to be taken literally; and it is true, as we shall see presently, that our Professor is far from being always consistent with himself; but if any of his teaching is deliberate, and is meant to be taken literally, this gospel of war is one of the most deliberate parts of it. Certain people, he says, have allowed their thoughts to be colored by dreams of a World-State, in which all States should be united, war being thus expunged from the possibilities of human existence; but such a WorldState, he says, is a dream which can never be realized, and even if it could be, it would be "odious." The grounds on which he maintains that a WorldState could never be realized, we shall have occasion to consider presently. What concerns us here is his reason for declaring that if it realized it would be odious.

could be

It would

be odious, he says, because, just as without war no States have ever