we have discovered that he has a very good subject and has written,
in many respects, a very good book. The book itself proves that he is
well equipped with knowledge and has made full use of the intensive
and microscopic study of the modern historian. But he approaches
history from the standpoint of enthusiastic and large-minded youth.
He has thrown away his microscopes and determined to look back at
history through a telescope. Immediately a large and dominating fact
has attracted his attention. The age we live in is pre-eminently
the European Age. The world is dominated by Europe and Europeans:
there have in the past been eras in which a race or races have by
migrations and conquests spread themselves and their civilisation and
government over wide spaces of the earth, but never before has there
been so universal and permanent a domination and expansion from one
small quarter of the globe. Professor Abbott, seizing his historical
telescope, has looked back and tried to discover the origin, the
causes, and the courses of this amazing phenomenon. And the more one
investigates the phenomenon the more amazing it appears. Take the case
of migrations. The European Age or the modern world, as Professor
Abbott has no difficulty in showing, began in the fifteenth century.
(In history, of course, there is really never any real beginning
or any real end; there are no abrupt transitions, only faster or
slower currents in the stream of change; nevertheless there are
periods in which the movement quickens so perceptibly that they are
clearly turning-points in human history; and the fifteenth century is
undoubtedly such a turning-point.) Now one of the most striking facts
in the modern world has been the migration of Europeans. In North
America, Northern Asia, Australia, South Africa, and to some extent in
South America we see the Europeanisation of vast regions of the earth
still being accomplished by the most ancient form of migration and
colonisation. At the same time Europe has sent out a continual stream
of conquerors and traders by whose efforts practically the whole of
the rest of the world, where the inhabitants were not exterminated,
has been subjected to European rule and the European's political and
economic system. As Professor Abbott points out, this was a complete
reversal of the rôle of Europe and the European in history. "Between
the fall of the Roman Empire and the discovery of America Europe
had been rather the passive than the active element in that great
shifting of population to which we give the name of folk-wandering or
migration." And it is a curious fact that the new period of history,
of the expansion of Europe, and of the modern world begins with
an event--it is the event mentioned in the very first sentence of
Professor Abbott's book--which involved not the expansion but the most
notable shrinking and invasion of Europe and was characteristic of the
old world. To the European of 1453 the fall of Constantinople before
the victorious Turk seemed to portend one more desperate and disastrous
struggle against a horde of Asiatic invaders, and the inevitable
and universal blindness of contemporaries to the great movements
and currents moulding their destiny and history could not be better
illustrated than by this fear and foreboding of the European in 1453.
Within a hundred years of the fall of Constantinople, instead of Europe
fighting desperately against the non-European world of invaders, the
non-European world was already engaged in a hopeless struggle against
the swarm of European invaders. In fact, however, the movement, which
within a generation was to send Portuguese and Spaniards ranging
over Africa, Asia, and the New World, had already begun in 1453.
Contemporaries thought the end of a European world had come with the
capture of Constantinople; they should have seen that the fall of Ceuta
to the Portuguese prince in 1415 and the discovery and colonisation of
the Madeiras in 1418 marked the beginning of a new European world of
colonisation, conquest, and territorial expansion.
It is the story of this expansion, this change from the mediæval to
the modern world, which Professor Abbott seeks to unfold in his two
volumes. The estimation of his success or failure raises an important
question for the historian. He is clearly right in his view that "a
proper basis for the understanding of what has happened during the
past five hundred years" cannot be found merely in the history of
territorial expansion. If you look at the past through his historical
telescope you soon see that you cannot isolate the voyage of Columbus
from the break up of the feudal system and mediæval institutions,
or the exploits of Hernando Cortez from those of Martin Luther.
Consequently Professor Abbott attempts, as he says in his preface, to
combine three elements into a narrative of European activities from
1415 to 1789. The three elements are described by him as first "the
connection of the social, economic, and intellectual development of
European peoples with their political affairs"; second, "the progress
of events among the peoples of Eastern Europe, and of the activities of
Europeans beyond the sea"; and third, "the relation of the past to the
present--the way in which the various factors of modern life came into
the current of European thought and practice, and how they developed
into the forms with which we are familiar." The real question for
the critic of Professor Abbott's book is how far he has succeeded in
this tremendous undertaking. The undertaking is so tremendous and the
attempt so gallant that we hesitate to give an answer which is in fact
so easy. With all its good points, its wide learning, its scholarly
arrangement, its great interest and enthusiasm, the book cannot really
be said to succeed in its chief aim. To judge from our personal
experience, the reader, when he is about a third of the way through the
two volumes, begins to have an uncomfortable sense of having lost his
way, and this feeling gradually grows stronger and stronger. The man
who writes a history of the world which is not to be a mere catalogue
of facts, but is to illustrate and explain the present by the past and
is to keep us on the track of great world movements, has to select his
facts, and it is mainly upon his intuition for relevant facts and his
skill in selection and presentation that the success of his enterprise
depends. Professor Abbott's failure to keep our vision clear and our
feet steadily upon the right path comes from a failure to select and
an error in method. His book as it proceeds tends to become more and
more a catalogue of facts, divided into chapters and labelled with such
labels as "Europe beyond the Sea" and "Social and Intellectual Europe";
the general theme which should connect these innumerable facts becomes
lost and forgotten, or at least no longer visible to or present in
the consciousness of the reader. The measure of this failure is the
frequency with which Professor Abbott makes the connection between his
facts purely one of time, for it is almost a confession of failure on
the part of a world historian with a synthesis when he has to point
out to us that the summoning of the Imperial Diet at Nuremberg, the
conversion of John Calvin, and the conquest of Peru all happened in the
same year. Professor Abbott's mistake seems to us to consist largely
in having overloaded his book with detailed facts. As it stands it is
invaluable as a mine of facts bearing upon the change from mediævalism
to modernity and upon Europe's conquest of the world; but an immense
number of these facts are irrelevant to his general theme and purpose.
Open the book at random and this immediately becomes apparent. Here
is page 384 in a chapter called "The Rise of Holland," and on it we
find ourselves immersed in the details of the Thirty Years' War. Here
Professor Abbott has failed to decide whether he is writing a text-book
of history in which the military exploits of the Margrave, John George
of Brandenburg-Jägerndorf are relevant, or a wide survey of the great
currents of history in which John George had but a microscopic place.
Here the author abandons his telescope and world history for the
microscope and John George, with the result that the feet of his reader
wander from the path and his eyes are clouded. It is fatal to attempt
to use a telescope and a microscope at the same time on the same object.
BOCHE AND BOLSHEVIK. By HEREWARD T. PRICE. Murray. 6_s._ net.
The author of this book was born an Englishman, but at the outbreak of
war he was living in Germany, a naturalised German. He was called up
and served in the German Army on the Eastern front, was taken prisoner,
sent to Siberia, and was a witness of the Russian revolution there.
The book is a record of his personal experiences and views. He is as
bitterly hostile to his adopted country as he is to Bolshevism and
Bolsheviks. His book does not add very much to our knowledge of the war
or the revolution, and his own knowledge may be measured by the fact
that he apparently thinks that the "secret treaties" published by the
Bolshevik Government were made by Kerenski.
TO KIEL IN THE "HERCULES." By LEWIS R. FREEMAN. Murray. 6_s._ net.
Mr. Freeman was Official Correspondent with the Grand Fleet, and he
accompanied Admiral Browning to Kiel after the surrender of the German
fleet as "Keeper of the Records" to the Allied Armistice Commission.
The book contains an interesting record of the various inspections and
of conditions in Germany immediately after the armistice.
MY KINGDOM FOR A HORSE! By WILLIAM ALLISON. Richards. 21_s._ net.
If he never sacrificed a kingdom, Mr. Allison at least abandoned a
first-class in his schools for the sake of horses. That day was,
indeed, evidently the turning-point of his life. He was an admirable
writer of Latin verse, and when he was in for Moderations at Oxford
the Latin verse paper fell on the same day as the Derby. He left
his composition unwritten to go and see whether Prince Charlie had
won the Derby. Mr. Allison, with the modesty proper to heroes, now
calls his action "extremely silly," but few readers of this book
of recollections will agree. Many men get firsts; few men pursue
horse-breeding and racing with the poetic fervour which Mr. Allison
brought to them. His recollections are of Rugby under Temple and
Balliol under Jowett, and this part of his book is an amusing mixture,
recalling now _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ (for Rugby still kept the Arnold
stamp) and now _Ruff's Guide_. When he left Balliol he was called to
the Bar, but never gave it undue preference over the paddock. He ran
a famous breeding establishment, and when the Stud Company Limited
failed Mr. Allison combined practice at the Bar with journalism.
As editor of _St. Stephen's Review_, which was started with £500
capital in 1883 and lasted till its famous conflict with the Hansard
Union in 1891, Mr. Allison deserves praise for one notable act--he
discovered Phil May. The cartoons of May's which he reproduces will
not compare with the artist's later drawings, but it is not possible
to estimate the value to May of the training he obtained in this early
political work. The Fleet Street of the '80's, when Romano's was a
place the quieter journalist entered with trembling, is portrayed
in a dry, matter-of-fact way far more effective than any elaborate,
highly-coloured description. There may be people who are not interested
in horses or journalism; to them we can recommend the pleasant tributes
to Bacchus which lace engagingly the more serious chronicle. As a boy
Mr. Allison was not strong, and a good old-fashioned doctor ordered
him a glass of port every morning at eleven; this "advice was followed
scrupulously, both at home and when I went to school," and Mr. Allison
never actually says that he has abandoned the prescribed dose.
Mr. Allison writes with no pretensions to literary art, and he
sometimes chronicles very trifling occurrences; but he has an engaging
modesty and a genial "take it or leave it" attitude which redeem his
book from the charge of triviality. _My Kingdom for a Horse!_ should
be invaluable to the historian of social manners and to the novelist
who is anxious to get material for the reconstruction of a time which
already seems historical. There are plenty of illustrations--mostly
process reproductions of old photographs and examples of Phil May's
work. We wish, by the way, if Mr. Allison owns the copyright, that he
would persuade some publisher to issue a new and worthier edition of
May's _The Parson and the Painter_, which first appeared in the _St.
Stephen's Review_.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
HOW THE WAR CAME. By the EARL LOREBURN. Methuen. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.
There is very little disagreement to-day, we suppose, as to who were
the prime authors of the War. But on the minor question, whether any
blame attaches to the Entente Powers, opinion is, as it was from the
beginning, far more divided. The controversy as to our own position in
the crisis, which had almost faded out of the public mind, is sharply
revived by Lord Loreburn's book. Lord Loreburn, let us hasten to say,
does not deny the guilt of Germany. Indeed, he is at pains to show how
the Bismarckian tradition, improved upon by chauvinistic professors,
a more or less demented monarch and a ruthless military caste, had
sapped the morality of the German nation and made it all too ready to
follow its rulers into a deliberate attack on the peace of Europe. Nor
does he lend any support to the suggestion that the British Government
or the British people wanted war with Germany. He pays a tribute to
the efforts made by the Foreign Secretary to avert the disaster at
the eleventh hour. And yet Viscount Grey cannot, in his mind, escape
a large share of responsibility for the final conflagration. For what
made the war inevitable, he asserts, was our entente with France.
That entente was a departure from the traditional British policy of
holding aloof from all Continental entanglements. It was developed by
Sir Edward Grey, with the assistance of Mr. Asquith and Lord Haldane,
behind the backs of Parliament, and even of the Cabinet, from the end
of 1905 onwards. Not only was Sir Edward Grey working in secret; he was
committing this country to the support of France (and through France
of Russia) without taking the necessary steps to increase the army so
as to make that support effective. And, worst of all, he had nothing
in black and white to define exactly to what amount of support we were
committed. The result was seen on August 4th, 1914, when it became
manifest that we were under an obligation of honour to join our arms
with the French against Germany. Sir Edward Grey, of course, maintained
that we were not so bound, that we were free to decide whether to
declare war or not. And it is certain that a large part, if not the
whole, of the nation, was convinced that it was the attack on Belgium
which did finally bring us in. But this, says Lord Loreburn, was a
delusion, which flowed from the arch-delusion of Sir Edward Grey that
our hands were free.
Lord Loreburn's case, it will be seen, clearly has two heads. He did
not like the policy of the French Entente, and he did not like the
methods by which it was promoted. On the first point most readers will
disagree with him, and, in any event, the matter is now of merely
historic interest. On the second point, public opinion will be more
interested in his criticisms. Some will say that Lord Loreburn's old
hostility to the Liberal Imperialists inclines him to magnify the
faults that were committed between 1905 and 1914. Some will say that he
exaggerates the ignorance under which we are alleged to have laboured
in regard to our relations with France. His opponents will certainly
suggest that everybody knew where we stood, as towards France, and that
the secrecy was secrecy in name only. But these are not matters for
discussion in these columns. Lord Loreburn thinks that "the persistent
danger of secret diplomacy is hitherto tolerated and abused in this
and other countries" is one that the nations ought to lose no time in
taking to heart.
THE MASTERY OF THE FAR EAST. By A. J. BROWN. Bell. 25_s._ net.
This massive volume (it runs to some 650 pages) is a very interesting
account of the Japanese and Korean peoples, their customs, their
religions, their politics, and the influence of Christian missions in
their countries. Dr. Brown is an American with an agreeable style, a
sense of humour, and, in general, a nice critical faculty, and, though
we are very doubtful of some of his conclusions, we do not hesitate to
say that his book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the
Far East.
From a political point of view the Far East means to-day--and it will
mean more and more in the future--Japan. Every schoolboy knows the
story of Japan's rapid emergence from feudalism to the position of a
first-class modern Power, of her successful struggles with China and
Russia, of her mastery of the Korean peninsula, of the great part she
played in the late war. And schoolboys, as well as statesmen, may
presently watch the effects upon world politics of her status in Asia.
Dr. Brown is a candid friend of the Japanese. He is not under the
illusion that they are a model people, nor is he of those who describe
them as "varnished savages." He comments severely on the lamentable
labour conditions that prevail under their newly-created industrial
system. He is no lover of the autocracy of their government. He does
not deny the faults of their diplomacy. Nevertheless he is their
friend, who believes in them. He expresses his sympathy with Korea
and with China in their subjection. But he takes what he calls "the
large way" of viewing Japan's Korean policy. "The large way," he says,
"is to note that, in the evolution of the race and the development
of the plan of God, the time had come when it was for the best
interests of the world and for the welfare of the Koreans themselves
that Korea should come under the tutelage of Japan." As for China,
she is "an enormous and backward country ... like a ship without a
captain or pilot, helplessly drifting on the high seas, apparently
unable to right herself and, in her present water-logged condition,
a menace to other ships." And so he sympathises "with the feeling of
the Japanese that they cannot ignore this incontestable situation."
He is an enthusiastic believer in Christian missions, and he hopes
that Christianity will be the salvation of Japan. Japan's great need,
he says, is to be spiritualised. Neither Buddhism nor Shintoism have
the necessary moral influence. But Christian missions are a great
reconstructive force--economical, social, intellectual, political,
spiritual, international. What, then, is the position of Christianity
in Japan? Dr. Brown produces statistics to show that it has made
enormous strides, and quotations from Japanese statesmen and publicists
as evidence that its growth is welcomed by the rulers of the country.
Yet all the public schools are forbidden to teach religion; Buddhism
has been driven to reform itself; Shintoism, as he admits, is a waxing
rather than a waning force. In another passage he says that the old
religions of Japan are losing their hold on the educated classes.
Thus a recent census in the Imperial University of Tokio showed fifty
Buddhists, sixty Christians, 1500 atheists, 3000 agnostics. It would
appear, therefore, that the missionaries have a long row to hoe before
Christianity becomes the general religion of the Japanese.
RACE AND NATIONALITY. By JOHN OAKESMITH, D.Litt., M.A. Heinemann.
10_s._ 6_d._ net.
There is some chance, now that the heat and passion of the war are
past, that the vexed questions of nationality and nationalism will
be discussed with a little more intelligence and discrimination. Dr.
Oakesmith certainly sets a good example. He tells us that he was
formerly one of those (they were the vast majority, we think) who had
but a vague idea of what they meant by nationality, till he set himself
to study the question and classify his mind. The results appear in this
very interesting book. He criticises alike the theory that nationality
is based on "race," and the opposing theory that there is no such
thing as nationality at all. In his own view nationality develops as
an evolutionary process, and the full-grown thing may be defined as
"organic continuity of common interest." He argues strongly against the
internationalist pacifist's contention that nationality is the cause of
war, and that peace is to be obtained by the spread of cosmopolitanism.
On the contrary, he avows, nationality is "actually the one instrument
destined, if wisely directed, to secure lasting and universal peace."
This is a statement which most sane persons to-day will accept easily
enough. But the crux is the "wise direction." Dr. Oakesmith does
not give us much practical guidance on this point. Generalities and
fine words are not very helpful, whether they come from the side of
passionate enthusiasts for the League of Nations or from those who,
like Dr. Oakesmith, are a little doubtful whether the world is quite
ripe for it. However, the book is well worth studying, especially on
its critical side.
WAR-TIME FINANCIAL PROBLEMS. By HARTLEY WITHERS. Murray. 6_s._ net.
Mr. Hartley Withers is not only a "financial expert"; he is also a
really interesting writer. Even though one may not agree with all his
views, one can enjoy this collection of vigorous essays on war finance,
company law and banking, currency problems at home and abroad, the
conscription of wealth, the theory of Guild socialism. Mr. Withers does
not spare his criticism of the Government's financial policy, which has
brought us to the verge of bankruptcy. He dismisses the "capital levy"
as impracticable; but he advocates a high income tax, with super-tax
beginning at a much lower level, and "with skilful differentiation
according to the circumstances of the taxpayer."
THE GREAT UNMARRIED. By WALTER M. GALLICHAN. Werner Laurie. 6_s._ net.
This book is a painstaking attempt to show the evils of celibacy
(including the common state of "pseudo-celibacy") both to society and
to the individual. Mr. Gallichan arraigns the false ideals and the
economic pressure of our industrial system, the perverse influence of
ecclesiasticism, and the other causes which produce the myriads of
involuntary or voluntary celibates in the western world. He advocates
no "fancy" remedies, such as free love, polygamy, or the taxation of
bachelors, but rather an attack on poverty, the spread of education,
the moralisation of the marriage laws. The book is not a profound or
scientific study, but it might be instructive to those who have never
given any thought to the subject.
ULSTER AND IRELAND. By JAMES WINDER GOOD. Maunsel. 6_s._ net.
This little volume is one of the clearest and the most interesting
books that we have seen on the Irish problem. Mr. Good gives us a
survey of Ulster history from the seventeenth century, which shows the
unifying influence of the genuine democratic ideals common to both the
contending parties. He argues that this unification has been, and is,
thwarted by "religion," and by "Carsonism," "the supreme example in
modern times of the triumph of the influences that make for divisions
in Ireland." Sinn Fein, in Mr. Good's view, offers no practicable way
out of the difficulty of Ulster. "If Sinn Fein is," he says, "as it
can now claim to be, the creed of the Irish people it must propound
a solution of the Ulster riddle based, not on abstract theories, but
on the realities of the situation." Mr. Good's concluding chapters
on "Ulster as It Is" are excellent reading. We do not suppose Ulster
Unionists will agree with all the views he expresses there, still less
with his conclusions--one of the chief of which is that Ireland is
really one nation and not two. But his book may induce a good many mere
Englishmen to take a more intelligent attitude towards Irish politics.
THE GUILD STATE: ITS PRINCIPLES AND POSSIBILITIES. By G. R. STIRLING
TAYLOR. Allen & Unwin. 3_s._ 6_d._ net.
Mr. Taylor is an enthusiastic Guildsman, though a heretic, in that he
stands for a localised system as against the orthodox National Guilds.
His book is a very naïve account of the Guild proposals, and we can
hardly imagine that it will convert anyone to his views. There is a
vast amount of idealisation of the Middle Ages--an idealisation which
frequently verges on the ridiculous. Many of the historical statements
are extravagant. We are told, for instance, that Queen Elizabeth "had
perhaps the most honest and most efficient ministers of State that this
nation has ever possessed." And is it not going rather far to say that
"the French peasant remains much as he has been for centuries--the most
substantial fact in European civilisation, and perhaps its highest
product"? Mr. Taylor's style would not suffer if it were less arrogant
and less splenetic. He lets us know, till we are sick of it, that there
is but little wisdom in the world save in the common-sense simple man
and the hard-headed Guildsman. And his virulence against politicians
and University professors almost assumes the dimension of a disease.
RECONSTRUCTORS AND RECONSTRUCTION: A PLEA FOR COMMON-SENSE. By OXON.
B.H. Blackwell. 1_s._ net.
The greater part of this brochure is taken up with a defence of the
capitalist against the attacks of revolutionaries, impossibilists, and
all the tribe of intellectual "high flyers"--such as Mr. Bernard Shaw,
Mr. Chesterton, Mr. Orage, and the late Mr. Sidney Ball. The author's
own plan is to harmonise the interests of capitalists and workers
in a system of "separate autonomous industries co-ordinated with a
National Federal Parliament of Industry." It is in fact something like
Guild socialism with the socialism left out. "Oxon" hardly appears to
appreciate the limitations or the difficulties of his scheme.
A PRIMER OF NATIONAL FINANCE. By HENRY HIGGS, C.B. Methuen. 5_s._ net.