all made in Germany before the War, but as they are exceptionally
disagreeable and quite unlikely to inspire anyone with an unjust
tenderness for their nation I have no hesitation in recommending the
book as a clever study of temperament and a just picture of a part
of the German musical world as it was when one last knew anything
about it.

* * * * *

It is all a matter of taste, of course, but personally I don't
envy Mr. J.G. LEGGE his self-imposed task of convicting the Hun out
of his own mouth of--well, of being a Hun. Germans they were and
Germans they remain, and the author goes to great lengths, even to
the length of 572 pages, to show that their peculiar qualities date
back at least as far as 1813. His _Rhyme and Revolution in Germany_
(CONSTABLE) is not so much a history of the scrambling undignified
revolutionary movements culminating in the year 1848, as a collection
of contemporary comment thereon, in prose and verse. The prose is
generally bad; the verse is generally very bad; and one turns with
relief to the author's connecting links, wishing only at times that
he would not worry about proving his point quite so thoroughly. The
bombast and the bullying, the self-pity and the cruelty, and, most of
all, the instinctive claim, typical of Germany to-day, to prescribe
one law for themselves but something quite different for the rest
of the world, run through all these quotations, even the earliest.
But the particular value of this book at the moment is its reminder
that twice already has the House of Hohenzollern humbly pledged its
All-Highest word to give constitutional government, only to resume
"divine right" at the earliest convenient moment. Ruling Germany, and
as much else as possible, with a view to the glorification of one's