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Rh majority had direct relations with the Wilhelmstrasse, the truth of history as they have written it is at best partial truth; many omissions must be supplied and a change of emphasis is in most cases essential. The whole of German history must be scrutinized in the light of PanGermanism.

The reconstruction is a task difficult in the extreme. So much was prepared for our perusal that we do not know what we dare accept from the older histories and documentary collections. Nor shall we for a long time have much else. Indeed the older material can be finally evaluated only in the light of information which will for decades be locked in diplomatic and official archives. It is this problem which Professor Andler has tried to meet by studying the older diplomatic materials in connection with the published works of the Pan-Germanists. He has sketched in his prefaces a history of German policy and statecraft since 1800 which makes Pan-Germanism an integral part of German development. The text of his volumes contains what he believes to be the most cogent evidence of the truth of his conclusions. He has deemed it wise to print it at such length because of the comparative unfamiliarity and inaccessibility of his sources. The convenience and usefulness of such an extended collection, so carefully chosen, so faithfully translated, handled in so scholarly and impartial a temper, is apparent to every student.

While Professor Andler has not been unmindful of the purely historical and chronological aspects of the history of Pan-Germanism, and has devoted much space in his long prefaces to them, his real purpose — and to this his text is devoted—is an exposition of Pan-Germanism itself in all its manifold phases and aspects. For its relation to past diplomacy is largely a question of definition; before we can intelligently trace beginnings, find originators and sponsors both past and present, we must first agree upon the thing itself. Nor has Professor Andler been able entirely to solve the riddle over which the Germans themselves are still acrimoniously disputing; one is by no means sure that he is describing in the second volume the same Pan-Germanism whose origins he discussed in the first, though the plan for the organization of Middle Europe seems to be his test formula. The first volume deals with certain intellectual antecedents of Pan-Germanism. The father of its military aspects was, M. Andler declares; its notion of economic supremacy should be traced to List; the religious mission of the Germanic race comes from , , and especially from. From Treitschke came its political philosophy, while Constantin Franz stated best its colonial and expansionist policy. On the whole M. Andler concludes that the Pan-Germanic programme is old and had until 1888 been repeatedly rejected by German statesmen, including Bismarck, as bad statecraft. The prefaces of the second and third volumes contain the narrative of German diplomacy from 1888 to 1914, and the texts furnish an elaborate and admirable exposition of