of his positions, crush the fragments of his defeated units, and take in the rear the remaining portions of his original line. No army on the western front has yet had the privilege of executing this inspiring manœuvre, so this chapter is necessarily imaginative, or perhaps, we might say, prophetic. It is just as logically and scientifically worked out as the chapters dealing with operations in which the author has actually participated. "The War of Positions," then, is as complete as it is compact. It is capable of almost indefinite expansion and illustration; in parts it is controversial, and no doubt subject to modification when further experiments have been made and recorded. But so far it stands alone as a careful, thorough, and lucid exposition of modern methods by an expert who has studied the war at first hand, and has known how to shake himself free from personal bias and trivial detail to follow to their logical conclusion the great underlying principles on which all operations, whatever their apparent diversity, are ultimately based. The translation shows the result of conscientious and sympathetic collaboration with the author. Technical terms are consistently used throughout, and explained in a useful glossary at the end of the volume. The language is so direct and natural that one is rarely reminded of the fact that the book was not originally written in English. A few clumsy constructions remain, but a comparison of this edition with earlier impressions shows even the smallest irregularities and inconsistencies are being rapidly eliminated. Barring a few very trivial slips in proof-reading, there is only one thing that is likely to jar on the most sensitive ear: the use of the words "deplace" and "deplacement.” The introduction of these words, which are applied to the changes of position of artillery, (cf. p. 135) seems unnecessary. "Deplacement" is not to be found in any of the standard English dictionaries, and "deplace" is given, in the Oxford Dictionary only, as a rare variant of "displace." On the whole, as this rather minute correction suggests, the onerous task of finding comprehensible English equivalents for French military terms, many of them recently coined to describe new weapons and methods, has been admirably achieved, and the terminology of this book might profitably be adopted as a standard by American military writers. THE VALUE OF THE FRENCH UNIVERSITIES.1 The editor of this handsome volume of four hundred and fifty pages is Professor John H. Wigmore of Northwestern University. With him are associated as authors of the twenty-six chapters, beginning with Anthropology and ending with Zoölogy, about one hundred well-known American scholars. The vice-chairman of the Authors' Committee is Professor Grandgent of Harvard. 1 Science and Learning in France, with a Survey of Opportunities for American Students in French Universities: An Appreciation of American Scholars. The Society for American Fellowships in French Universities, 1917. In addition to the roll of authors the book contains a list of about one thousand sponsors, also Americans; and an examination of this list is enough to show that the scholars of this country are, as a body, favorable to the movement this publication is intended to forward. It should be understood, however, that only the editor and the authors are responsible for the text of the book. First in the list of authors stands the name of President-Emeritus Eliot, who in the "Introduction" sets forth, as characteristics of the French mind, "broad sympathy, constructive imagination, and a tendency to prefer the concrete or realistic to the abstract, and fact to speculation." He celebrates, too, the nicety and elegance of the French language, declaring it to be "wellnigh impossible for a teacher or expounder to be clumsy, obscure, or disorderly" therein. Next Professor George E. Hale, also in the "Introduction," writes sympathetically of the "Intellectual Inspiration of Paris," taking the reader through the Latin Quarter and discoursing in charming fashion of those monuments to scientific achievement which are to be seen there on every side. The chapters on special subjects are necessarily short, averaging about thirteen pages of reading matter. As a rule each chapter is illustrated by the portrait of some distinguished representative of the science or field of learning there dealt with. These chapters are historical and, in a general way, descriptive, but give no details of educational organization and administration. They need to be supplemented and are supplemented by the Appendices, the first of which, by Professor James Geddes, Jr., of Boston University, print of an earlier paper by this writer, — describes and discusses the University system of France, undertaking to show why this system has not, until recently, been attractive to American students and why it should be so now. - a re About twenty years ago, the French universities, which had not before given much attention to students from outside France, adopted a change of policy in this regard, and since that time many Americans, including the heads of leading American universities, have coöperated with Frenchmen, in a Franco-American committee, to encourage the resort of American students to the higher institutions of learning in France. Harvard men who have frequented the south entry of University Hall during the past fifteen years must have seen occasionally displayed there cordial invitations to spend their summer vacations in courses of study at French universities. These invitations have not been altogether neglected, but it is doubtful whether they have as yet been widely accepted, save among those wishing to pursue the study of the French language for itself. The movement which has produced this book aims evidently at results of a more extensive and general character. It is pleasant to note, however, that this propaganda is free from any vilification or depreciation of the German universities, the service of which to American science and scholarship is freely acknowledged. To what extent is the effort of this book likely to be successful? One cannot say with confidence. The sentiments of friendship or of hostility inspired by the events and associations of the present war will not alone determine for any great length of time the course of American students going abroad. They will probably go in the future as they have gone in the past, where they can get most readily what they want. Will they find what they want in France? It is not to be expected or desired that France should ever become for American students in general such a Mecca as Germany was a generation or two ago. Leading French investigators and scholars, though glad to admit competent students from any country to their courses, have not been willing to spend their time and strength on raw and unproved aspirants for university degrees. Moreover, American students hereafter, as a rule, may well be content to win their doctorates at home. American institutions will offer, as they already offer, excellent instruction of the higher sort, and their physical equipment will be of the best. In the future, American students will go to Europe in search of something beyond scholastic routine, something beyond the prescriptions of candidacy; they will go as scholars already formed, craving the leadership and the fellowship of the best men there to be found, the men of genius so placed that they have been able to develop their genius. Will France be able to give these visitors what they need? That is, will France continue to be, intellectually, what it has been, what it was just before the war? The writer of these words was in France when the Germans made their first use of poisonous gas on the war-front; and it was touching to see the confidence with which the populace turned to the savants of the Institute for help in this emergency. Is not chemistry a French science? Have we not produced for the world Lavoisier, Gay-Lassac, Berthelot, etc.? If the Germans can make noxious gases, cannot our great men make still worse gases? But these were not the vital questions of the moment. The need of the time was not for profound learning but for thousands and tens of thousands of experts trained to produce certain materials or machines in great quantity and with great speed. It is, I believe, a safe prediction that university education will in general become somewhat more utilitarian in France within the next decade. But it would be the world's misfortune if her most gifted men should hereafter be so restricted or so loaded down with work as to hide their quality and check their leadership. And even if the purely intellectual loss could somehow elsewhere be made good, there would still be cause to mourn. For Americans before all others need to sit at the feet of Frenchmen, to learn that regard for the art of expression and that reverence for the purity of one's native tongue, in speech and in writing, which are instinctive with men of Latin blood and tradition. Edwin H. Hall (Rumford Professor of Physics). A NEW BIOGRAPHY OF GRANT.1 Mr. Coolidge has produced a useful book and an interesting one; but perhaps its greatest value arises from the fact that, unlike all previous biographies of Grant, it devotes the principal space to his record in political life and treats it, moreover, from a friendly and approving point of view. Since most of the biographical material recently published, covering the stormy years after 1865, has been, if not violently hostile, at best indifferent to Grant and his personal record, this is a welcome piece of historical work on the other side. And it is worthy of note that Mr. Coolidge does not seek to show Grant in a favorable light by any habit of evasion or omission. On the contrary, he expressly includes any and all charges and criticisms brought against the "silent man," and abundantly admits the existence of shortcomings, errors, and animosities on his part. His method of defense is based wholly on the assumption that, if the nature of Grant's character is grasped and his actions are all interpreted as an outgrowth of that character, there is no need for special pleading. He also makes a strong demand for a proper perspective, forcing home the truth that the main business of a president, as of a general, is to carry on the administration and policy whether of the country or of the army; and by success or failure in. the larger absolutely unavoidable problems must he be judged, not by his manners, his foibles, or his blunders in methods. Swayed by such principles, Mr. Coolidge has written a distinctly personal volume. The sense of Grant's odd, strong, yet very limited nature is instantly established in the opening chapters and is made to pervade the volume to the last page. At every turn of Grant's career the personality of his supporters or opponents is similarly dwelt upon, frequently, as in the case of Sumner and Schurz, with an eye to dramatic contrast. It makes the book distinctly alive. Mr. Coolidge is, however, unmistakably partisan, and sees men and events as Grant himself saw them. This is especially marked in his consideration of the Civil War record, which falls far short of critical accuracy in a score of places. The whole treatment of the Virginia campaign of 1864-65 is inadequate, and glides over controversial points with the lightest of touches. There is, further, this peculiarity to be noted in the work, that Mr. Coolidge abstains from finding fault with Grant to a degree which becomes at last conspicuous. He has the habit of giving Grant's record, in full, including highly questionable acts, without any comment. Such, for example, are the passages on the Black Friday affair, on Grant's protection of his discredited friends, on his appointments and removals of cabinet members and others. He apparently will not condemn Grant, but the reader may, on the evidence furnished. In contrast with the earlier volumes of the Statesmen series, Mr. Coolidge's The Life of Ulysses S. Grant, by Louis A. Coolidge, '83. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917. book is a product of the times, for it is patently "human" and "red-blooded ' and full of sentiment. The style is colloquial, not hesitating to bring in current slang such as "stunts," "putting across," and the like, and the author's severest criticism is reserved for the "reformers" whose fault-finding embittered Grant's presidency and has obscured his memory. Almost equally low in his esteem stand "historians." Had Grant, he suggests, "urged a civil service propaganda... and made 'reform' the cry of his administration, he would no doubt have held the adoration of essayists and historians, and faults which they have emphasized might then have been excused." Mr. Coolidge analyzes Sumner with apparent respect in spite of his dislike, but for Schurz, Greeley, and their associates he has nothing but contempt. Of the Conkling group of "Grant Men" he says: "Here was an 'Old Guard' in truth, whose members had no squeamishness about the name, whose faults at least were manly faults, and who were strangers to hypocrisy." Perhaps the most remarkable example of this tendency is shown in the judgment that the Liberals of 1872 "were lacking not only in the sagacity of the professional politician, but in the impulse of an absorbing moral issue." One is inclined to wish that the author had extended toward the unfortunate "intellectuals" some of that charity with which he so copiously bathes their antagonists. Another striking feature in the book is the impartial condemnation visited on carpet-baggers and Ku Klux alike. Both, according to Mr. Coolidge, are unpardonable. There is nowhere in the book an attempt at the authoritative political analysis which made some of the earlier volumes in the Statesmen series memorable, as, for instance, in Lodge's "Washington," Morse's "Franklin," Sumner's "Jackson," and above all Schurz's "Clay." Sympathy, and respect for strength, personality, and practical success in politics,qualities of the present day, have supplanted the earlier literary ambitions and ideals. Perhaps to Mr. Coolidge the latter smack too much of the despised "essayist." Theodore Clarke Smith, '92. THE UNIVERSITY. THE AUTUMN TERM. BY THE UNIVERSITY EDITOR. In the last issue of the MAGAZINE there were some predictions concerning the extent to which the enrolment both in the College and in the professional The War schools would be affected at the opening of the present year by Shrinkage reason of war conditions. From the indications of last summer it seemed altogether probable that a decrease amounting to from one quarter to one third of the entire student body might be looked for. These anticipations have been rather more than fulfilled; the autumn enrolment shows |
