For years now newspaper paragraphers, “poets”, and editors have been saying such things as “It is time we are getting ourselves talked about” when mentioning Ezra Pound. Untermeyer stoops to it; he is still the “once born” when being “critical” about Amy Lowell: “A blue herring sings”. What he is really parodying here is his colleague Walt Mason’s prose-printed jingles which are syndicated throughout newspaperdom; he is not giving a “critical exposition” of polyphonic prose. It will need a keener critic or poet than he to do it—or to produce a parody or satire whose art equals that of the thing satired—Masters’s things for example. By ambling through thirty-seven lines Untermeyer imagines that he is being master of the situation as regards Masters. And the last line of the parody on James Oppenheim might very well have been written by Untermeyer himself as one of his own: “Clad in the dazzling splendor of my awakened self”.... No matter what may have been your attitude toward the poets parodied these things leave your feelings unchanged—except that he makes more definite your attitude towards him. Impartial and Otherwise _The Making of Germany, by Ferdinand Schevill. Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company._ _Great Russia, by Charles Sarolea. New York: Alfred A. Knopf._ _Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution, by Thorstein Veblen. New York: Macmillan._ These books are not war-literature—a compliment not often deserved in these days of ink-war demoralization. The lay, unbiased reader, who is inclined to learn facts rather than to find interpretations substantiating his prejudices, will enjoy the three books as a rare treat. They are very much unlike. Mr. Schevill is a historian par excellence, and lends a broad perspective to the related facts. He also lends a rich romantic flavor to his narrative, an emotional undercurrent—so unfrequent a feature with academic writers. His point of view may not be universally acceptable; even in history there are events and phenomena which belong to the autonomous region of taste and opinion. The scene of the triumphant Prussians solemnizing their victory in Versailles, for example, may arouse differing emotions and reflections. Mr. Schevill bows in reverence before the three heroic figures of Emperor William (“not unlike the legendary Barbarossa”), Bismarck, and Moltke. We may likewise not share his enthusiasm for the German idea of State, as superior to Anglo-Saxon individualism. But we cannot help admiring the general brilliancy of the treatment of the gigantic subject, and if we are capable of getting instructed, our reading of the book will amply reward us.