these unfortunate ones have had to leave their home and were ence: Where is the cause to be found? For five years the Allied and Associated Powers have inundated the world with tales, pictures and films of German atrocities. Pictures of soldiers with tongues torn out, of women with dismembered bodies, of children chopped in pieces, were manufactured from old illustrations of Russian pogroms, of murders preceded by rape, and so forth, and for years have been believed. Who would not believe what he sees with his own eyes in black and white in a picture? Meanwhile the methods which were applied during the war have become known; reminiscences of the atrocities manufacturers, proud references to the work performed and the cleverness shown, together with concrete proofs of the falsifications, have unveiled the lie, and have filled the world, in particular the Anglo-American world, with a post festum nausea. Now no one wishes to hear more of atrocities, and the Germans, who at first had to suffer from the belief in the atrocities falsely imputed to them, today have to suffer from that incredulity: one is of opinion that pictures and stories of French atrocities originate in similar methods, refuses to believe them and indifferently turns away. If one inspects more closely what Mr. Lauzanne has to say, as to the as he calls it-"bestial" behaviour of the Germans in 1871-1873, one finds nothing but some insignificant social frictions and, in particular, a decree of Bismarck, in which he threatens that, if French courts of justice would not punish murders of German soldiers, he would demand the extradition of the murderers and, in case of necessity, would take hostages. Mr. Lauzanne alleges that the Commander-in-Chief of the 1 German troops in France, General v. Manteuffel himself, said of this note: "I am really surprised at its brutal violence and outrageous perfidy." It is true that Comte St. Vallier reported to Thiers such a remark of v. Manteuffel. From this report, however, it may also be seen that there existed the greatest friction between Bismarck and v. Manteuffel at that time, and that each suspected the other of intriguing against him. The question may be left open whether the Comte St. Vallier on his part has not exaggerated the remark of v. Manteuffel's. If one personally examines the note of Bismarck, nothing whatever is found therein which might give cause for such a judgment. Let us see: A German soldier had been murdered. During the trial the defending counsel had said of the accused: "Il a eu raison de dire je voudrais tuer un prussien. Qui donc de nous n'a pas dit cent fois, je voudrais tuer 200,000 de ces brigands?" Thereupon the jury, though the Public Prosecutor himself requested the most severe punishment, acquitted the man. Bismarck, however, restricted himself to a mere threat in case of recurrence, and simultaneously reported to the German Emperor that he did not wish to do anything further, in order not to cause difficulties to the French Government. This is the action which General v. Manteuffel is reported to have designated as brutal and perfidious. Mr. Lauzanne further compares the acquittal of that murderer with the acquittal of certain so-called war criminals by the German Supreme Court in Leipzig. He forgets, in the first instance, that not only acquittals but sentences as well have been given in Leipzig, and further, that in the one case deeds committed in war time are concerned, where the border between permissible and prohibited is sometimes indistinct, whereas in the other case premeditated murder in peace is in question. Mr. Lauzanne himself, in the end, cannot abstain from saying that General v. Manteuffel "despite all showed himself to be human enough and generous enough during the occupation". This remark, too, I should like to supplement by a few sentences. When the occupation had come to an end, the new President of the Republic, Marshal MacMahon, wrote to General v. Manteuffel: "Au moment où les troupes allemandes vont quitter le territoire français, je crois devoir exprimer á leur commandant en chef les sentiments que je prouve pour la justice et l'impartialité dont il a fait preuve dans la mission difficile qui lui était confiée." Mr. Thiers himself, however, sent to General v. Manteuffel a copy of his historical work: Du Consulat et de l'Empire, with the dedication: "A son excellence le général de Manteuffel, en souvenir de son humaine et généreuse administration des provinces occupées françaises, dévoué A. Thiers." Perhaps these were but phrases of courtesy? Oh, no! The French Ambassador, Comte St. Vallier, reports to his Government (March 7, 1872): "Manteuffel fully shares your view as to the interest which his country as well as ours has in not drawing out the occupation too long;" on July 7: "Manteuffel, as far as is in his power, will ease the heavy burden by his endeavours;" on February 23, 1873: "The generous sentiments of Manteuffel make the occupation bearable for the population;" and ultimately, on September 27, 1873: "Manteuffel, too, though he is Prussian, deserves a page of sincere gratitude in our historical records." Mr. Stephane Lauzanne, however, without being able to cite a single outrage, calls the behaviour of the Germans during the occupation "bestial." This judgment of Mr. Stephane Lauzanne I should like to contrast with the following letter of his famous compatriot, Comte Gobineau, directed to the Earl of Lytton, later British Ambassador in Paris. He writes: "It is possible that one will speak to you of the personal atrocities committed by the Prussians. I ask you to tell all those who talk like that, that I have had in my house sixty officers and 500 soldiers of all arms, and on my country estate 3,000 Prussian troops, and that neither a blade of straw has been stolen, nor a woman insulted, nor a child terrified." HANS DELBRÜCK. JOHN MORLEY: 1838-1923 BY W. L. AND JANET E. COURTNEY "LIGHT rather than heat!" It is his own phrase, summing up what to him seemed the great need of the age in which he grew up to manhood. But it might well serve as an epitaph for the statesman and thinker-austere, remote, seeking always to keep burning the clear flame of truth undimmed by any concession to prejudice or superstition. His was not a personality to kindle enthusiasm, but he never failed to command respect, and as the years went on, and one by one the great Victorians passed into silence, John Morley came to symbolize for his countrymen that tradition of honesty, uprightness and uncompromising devotion to the truth as he saw it, which is the very opposite to the temper of the politician. Men might disagree with Morley,-they often did, especially with his Irish policy, but they never attributed his action to mean motives; they knew him at heart to be disinterested. He was Lancashire born, a North Countryman through and through. His father, a surgeon, came from the West Riding of Yorkshire, and his mother was Northumbrian. He, himself, was born at Blackburn, then a newly risen Lancashire cotton town, lying in a valley between bleak moorland ridges, a hive of industry with little of beauty to soften life for its citizens. "The punctual clang of the factory bell in dark early mornings, with the clatter of the wooden clogs as their wearers hastened along the stone flags to the mill, the ceaseless search for improvements in steam power and machinery and extension of new markets, the steady industry, the iron regularity of days and hours, long remained in memory as the background of youth, with perhaps a silent passage into my own ways and mental habits from the circumambient atmosphere of some traits of my compatriots." Though his up-bringing was not definitely Nonconformist, all his surroundings were Puritan. The prevailing spirit of the Lancashire folk was, as he says, "stiffly Evangelical." His own father had indeed turned from Wesleyanism to Anglicanism, why, his son never knew; but he retained an equal horror of Puseyites and German infidels, and he sent the boy to a school kept by an Independent. Young Morley seems to have inherited bookishness. His father carried pocket editions of Virgil, Racine and Byron about with him on his daily rounds, and strained his resources later to send his son to schools he could with difficulty afford; University College School in London, and then Cheltenham College. There the boy distinguished himself, especially in Greek verse-not, perhaps, the direction one would have expected. Indeed one of his tutors said of an attempt at a prize poem that his "verse showed many of the elements of a sound prose style". He won a scholarship, at the expense of a pious founder, to Lincoln College, Oxford, once the home of John Wesley, whose old rooms Morley now found himself occupying. The college at the moment had fallen on evil days; its Rector was a more or less illiterate clergyman, and its later famous Head, Mark Pattison, was sulking in his tents. But in Thomas Fowler, afterwards head of Corpus, Morley found a sympathetic tutor, who trained him in the Aristotelian philosophy congenial to his Lancastrian temperament. Conington on Virgil, A. P. Stanley (afterwards Dean) on ecclesiastical history, Mansel on the philosophy of intuitionalism, Goldwin Smith as an exponent of Liberalism, were amongst his teachers. He was a great hearer of sermons, having, as he confesses, "an irresistible weakness for the taking gift of unction" (how this must later have attracted him to Gladstone!) Newman's golden voice had long sunk to silence in another communion. Bishop Wilberforce now occupied the University pulpit, but he excelled in that special quality, his only later rival in Morley's opinion being Charles Spurgeon, the famous pastor of the South London Tabernacle, with his "glorious voice, unquestioning faith, full and ready knowledge of apt texts of the Bible, and deep and earnest desire to reach the hearts of congregations". It is interesting in this connection to recall that Morley himself had been destined to take Orders. Life at Oxford, he says, so far "shook the foundations" of his early |