commerce and finance tend to peace, and that war is dying" because it cannot pay its way"? Certainly the author has signally failed to make clear his opinion as to the effect of economic forces in causing or preventing war. ... Several other economic dicta seem equally inconsistent with the general tenor and purpose of the book: notably the admission (page 78) that "tariff protection . . . may have increased the aggregate of national wealth" (through diverting capital into less productive industries); the statement (page 80) that “if anyone grows rich in a community the whole community is the richer for it" (regardless of how he gets it); and finally, the declaration (page 73) that "the cost of high living falls on the man who lives high" (even though it does check the increase of capital). All of these strike the reader with surprise, coming from the accomplished author of The Fate of Iciodoeum. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. EDWARD VAN DYKE ROBINSON. The Audacious War. By CLARENCE W. BARRON. Boston, The Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915.-192 pp. During the winter, the Wall Street Journal and several other financial papers published a series of articles describing what Mr. Barron saw and heard in England and France. These articles are reprinted with little change in the book now before us, bearing date of February 15, 1915. The cause of the war is declared to have been economic, specifically the Bagdad railroad and the commercial treaty which Germany forced on Russia after the Japanese war, thereby turning Russia into an economic province of Germany. This treaty expiring in 1916, Russia was unwilling to renew, but required eighteen months more to complete her preparations for resistance. Germany, on the other hand, according to the author, was resolved to force its renewal at the point of the bayonet, and preferred not to wait until Russian preparations should be complete; hence the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, the German ultimatum to Russia demanding demobilization within twelve hours, and the German declaration of war on Russia a number of days before the Russian ambassador had even been withdrawn from Vienna. The bulk of the book consists of summary discussions of war finances, especially in England and France. The author is distinctly anti-German in point of view, though claiming to know Germany better than France, and predicts for the allies. speedy triumphs which events have signally failed to justify. On the general subject of military preparation he seems not to know his own mind. In one place he declares: "The United States does not protect its trade or its citizens anywhere in the world today. It shivers in war time and borrows of everybody else when it has a panic of its own. There is only one way to make trade, and that is to pay and protect" (page 120). And again: "The United States may be dwelling in a fool's paradise from the political, military and economic point of view." On the other hand, after recalling that the German ambassador at Washington asked who could question the right of Germany to take Canada and the British West Indies, and after likewise recounting what happened to Belgium, the author declares, "Uncle Sam only smiles and frowns, and the smile and frown are potential." In line with this assumed potency of the frown of unarmed America, the author also maintains that "for the United States to rush into the maelstrom of war, with organization of armies and the building of armaments, is to invite its own destruction." The reader is thus left in doubt whether Mr. Barron is a member of the Security League or of the Bryan non-resistance party. Perhaps the explanation of these inconsistencies is the belief that in some manner nowhere clearly explained, this war is to be followed by the age of perpetual peace whose advent idealists in the past have so often and vainly announced. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. EDWARD VAN DYKE ROBINSON. Economic Aspects of the War. By EDWIN J. CLAPP. New Professor Clapp's study of the effects of European interference with our trade during the war has already received wide attention in the press. Starting with a brief statement of neutral rights as they were supposed to exist previous to the war, the author traces in detail the story of arbitrary changes of sea law that have marked the present struggle, and indicates in each case the manner in which neutrals have been made to suffer. Inasmuch as Great Britain has held the seas, it is chiefly with her infractions of the older rules that he is concerned, and his book has in consequence a decidedly anti-British flavor. It is Professor Clapp's contention that Great Britain's attempted blockade of Germany is, in international law, no blockade and that it is a failure so far as bringing Germany to terms is concerned. He holds that the losses entailed by British interference with both our export and our import trade have fallen more heavily on the United States than on Germany. He maintains that Germany, under pressure of necessity, is developing substitutes for many articles previously exported from this country, so that the trade will not be regained after the war. He contends that the United States, as the most important neutral nation, has not only the right but the duty to protest effectively against violations of international law, and he urges that Great Britain should be brought back to the older practice by the threat of an embargo upon shipments of arms and munitions. It is an impressive list of interferences with trade that are here brought together, a list that will probably surprise any one who has not followed the commercial events of the past eighteen months with minute care. Whatever the reader's sympathies, he cannot fail to profit by this detailed study of the effect of war upon the fundamental commerce of our day. Nothing could show more clearly the manner in which the necessities, or supposed necessities, of belligerents inevitably result in neutral losses that run into staggering figures. While intended as a challenge to the United States to assert neutral rights against the aggression of both belligerents, it may be questioned whether the book will not be most effective in its demonstration of the commercial necessity of avoiding war. Without undue sympathy for belligerent as against neutral claims, we may fairly doubt whether the changed conditions of commercial intercourse and of marine warfare do not lend more support than Professor Clapp is willing to acknowledge to the declarations of the warring nations that they cannot avoid interfering with neutral rights. If such be the case, the pacifist argument is correspondingly strengthened. H. R. MUSSEY. Intervention and Colonization in Africa. By NORMAN DWIGHT HARRIS, with an introduction by JAMES T. SHOTWELL. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1914.-xviii, 348 pp. Within the last few decades a new continent has become part of the world. So rapidly have events transpired in Africa, and so important were they in the domain of world politics, that history has hardly been able to keep abreast of them. Long since have we needed something more recent than J. Scott Keltie's Partition of Africa, published in 1895. We have it in the volume under review, which forms the first of a series on world democracy. The introduction by Professor James T. Shotwell indicates that this series will pay particular attention to the rise of capitalized industry and commercial imperialism as new factors in international relations. This new imperialism, though using colonization for what it is worth, is not content with this, but prefers to let private financial interests penetrate a new country, and in due time to intervene for the protection of these citizens and their interests and establish direct control over the region. This feature of the case is neatly expressed in the subject of the book. After an introductory chapter on European expansion, there follow sections dealing with the Congo, Germany in Southwest Africa, Germany and Britain in East Africa, France in West Africa and the Sahara, the Nigerian enterprises, South Africa, and finally chapters narrating the "reoccupation" of Northern Africa, of Tunisia, of Morocco, of Tripolitania, of Northern Egypt, and of the Sudan. Why the term "reoccupation" is used has escaped the reviewer if it is explained. There are appendices containing a well-arranged and selected bibliography, and statistics of various kinds. Professor Harris's work is distinctly high-grade. It exhibits extensive and painstaking research and the greatest concern for accuracy. Happily the author is not overwhelmed by the mass of details, but has managed to keep a good perspective. Packed with information as this book is, one cannot expect too much of literary style. dox narrative style is employed, and with good results, for the importance of the subject matter furnishes all the interest that is needed. A number of well-planned maps, some of them colored, accompany the text and add materially to its meaning and value. The ortho Every kind of interest and conduct was displayed in the opening of Africa. Besides the natives, there were the English, French, Spanish, Germans, Italians and Turks competing for power. There was the conflict between Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism-though it is worth remarking that religion played less of a rôle than did nationalism or commercialism. There were wars, massacres, treachery, exploitation and diplomacy, often no better than trickery, commingled with endeavors to promote such worthy causes as the suppression of the slave trade and the spreading of western civilization. Amid this play and counterplay of motives and conduct it is no easy task for the historian to pick a dispassionate course, all the less because the events in question are not of the dead past but of the living present. The author's fairness and freedom from bias call for warm praise. With the exception of the chapter on South Africa, and to a lesser degree that on Egypt, which contain indications that the author approves of Great Britain's course in those two instances, the narrative is as impartial as one could wish. LELAND STANFord, Jr. UniveRSITY. EDWARD KRehbiel. The Panama Canal and International Trade Competition. By LINCOLN HUTCHINSON. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1915. -xi, 283 pp. History can record but three great changes in the world's trade routes. The first was accomplished by the opening of the all-sea routes from Europe to the Orient in the 15th and 16th centuries; the second, by the piercing of the Isthmus of Suez; and the third, by the construction of the Panama Canal. The changes wrought by the first two events are now a matter of history; those to be effected by the last achievement are still a matter of conjecture. Professor Hutchinson in his volume, The Panama Canal and International Trade Competition, gives an interesting and suggestive treatment of the possible and probable changes to be wrought by the completion of the canal and discusses the commercial opportunities opened thereby to the United States. The book is written for the "business men who have or may have dealings with the countries in question or are interested in forming some opinion concerning the possible or probable commercial influence of the new canal," as well as for the "general reader or student of commercial or economic history or geography." The author has succeeded admirably in his two-fold task. The volume presents an extensive array of statistics relating to the economic forces at work in the Atlantic and Pacific basins which render the countries of each economically interdependent. In studying the problem of the effects of the Canal upon the world's trade routes, many factors have to be considered (chapter ii). On account of their diversity and the consequent resort to limitation in making the study, the conclusions are of necessity most general in character and only indicate tendencies in the future trade development. In this connection interesting tables are worked out showing the relative cost of freight service between New York and Liverpool, as representative of the trade centers of the Atlantic, and nineteen selected ports representative of the various geographic and economic areas of the Pacific. A careful survey of the markets and trade conditions of the countries bordering on the Pacific and the Atlantic is contained in chapters iii and iv. In view of the present emphasis placed upon the establishment of American banks abroad and the development of American shipping facilities, one is led to dissent from the extent to which the author minimizes these factors. The work of the National City Bank of New York in setting up branches and securing credit information in South America, and the efforts to secure a more adequate American |