British readers will naturally turn with chief interest to those passages in which Prince Lichnowsky deseribhig short official career as Am= bassador in London, hich opened in 1912 and was cut short by the outbreak of the world war. He is memoirs, this section actually consists of a long historical criticism of Bismark and his successors.
Lichnowsky has the rare courage to deny Bismark's infallibility. considers the Tron Chancellor's: whole Russian and Austrian policy 'a mistake. Germany, he thinks never had any real conflict of interests with Russia. Austria chose to consider that she had such a conand Bismark, the unimportance of the Balkan question for Germany, yet largely out of personal pique against Gortschakov took the "disastrous step" of concluding an alliance with Austria. Yet whil Bismark lived the results came to his rescue. But after his fall the "Epigones," Holstein (whom Lichnewsky considers the man really, responsible for the war) and the rest, carried on his mistaken policy blindly and_unintelligently, erinany found herself committed to a European war in defence of Austria's. Balkan policy.
This argument is certainly not one likely to make its author popular in Conservative Germany; but it contains a great deal of very sound sense, and the section in it is set out, together with those relating to the author's own work in England, combine to make his book one of the most important political works of recent years, and worth " score of the publications of the official German apologist.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.