_Pan-Germanism_ (CONSTABLE) is a seasonable cheap reprint of a study of that egregious creed by ROLAND G. USHER, an American Professor of History. With an almost cynical candour and detachment the author analyses the origins, assumptions, justifications and pretensions, and foreshadows with some insight the miscalculations, of those who have essayed to direct the destinies of modern Germany. It is as well that this essay comes from a neutral pen; it would else be discredited as a freak of prejudice. Pan-Germanism, as here seen, is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the doctrine that all is fair in war--and peace. It is no less than blank anarchy, philosophic and practical, and indefinitely less workable as a theory of international life than that of the so long discredited Sermon on the Mount. The honest Briton can find here solid justification of his cause. Perhaps it is not altogether unwholesome that our national withers don't entirely escape wringing. We are a little guilty, but much less guilty than our arch-opponent; so thinks this sober and wide-eyed critic.... Certainly, and the more significantly since it is without direction or intention of the writer, one sees behind all the tragedy of these dark weeks and of the long months and years to come the sinister picture of a man of no more than common earthly wisdom saddled with responsibilities that might well break the nerve of a council of the gods. Is it well, if the matches must be kept in the powder-magazine, to let the children in to play with them? * * * * * Illustration: PERHAPS THE LONDON PUBLIC WOULD FEEL MORE SECURE IF OUR GUARDIAN AIRSHIP WERE MADE IN THIS PATTERN. * * * * * That he will arm the German cat and dog The KAISER swears in language hot and heady; He leaves the swine out of his catalogue Because the swine, it seems, are armed already. * * * * * THE HORRORS OF WAR. "Another German officer prays for a decisive engagement which will put an end to bloody encounters. One evening he and his fellow-officers had to share between themselves a meal prepared for their men."--_Times._ The records of the war have furnished many instances of physical hardship, but none more terrible than this.