Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/166

158 SHORT NOTICES January this territory by the United States. When in 1783 England restored the Floridas to Spain, already in possession since 1763 of Louisiana, she made it possible for that power to block the southward expansion of the Americans. But access to the gulf was essential to their ever- growing western settlements, and their right of navigating the Mississippi, claimed on the grounds of usage and the law of nations, was recognized by Spain in the Spanish-American treaty of 1795. Friction between a growing state and a weak neighbour is difficult to avoid and could only have ended in one way. Yet it was fortune that put into the hands of the Americans the principal means of opening wide their southern outlet to the sea. Napoleon, who had seemed Louisiana from Spain in 1800, sold it to the United States in 1803, The boundaries of Louisiana east and west were uncertain, or could be held to be so, and it was easy to claim that they extended far into west Florida. With this sword for the diplomat and then the discontent and revolt of Spanish subjects and the pushful enterprise of American frontiersmen, the United States had the excuse, as it had the power, for one annexation after another. In two successive steps, 1810 and 1812, it occupied west Florida, though not until the treaty of 1819, when east Florida was purchased and the claims to Texas aban- doned, was the annexation finally settled. The course of these events Mr. Cox has traced with great fullness and considerable research, and his conclusion is that it was to the pioneers, the people in occupation of these districts, who wished for American sovereignty, and not to the diplomats, who blundered, that the final result was primarily due. E. A. B. A melancholy interest attaches to the prize essay on Palmerston and the Hungarian Revolution (Cambridge : University Press, 1919), by the late Captain Charles Sproxton, for its author fell in the war. His essay shows much research in the English documents, and he proves that Palmerston had one measure for Italy and quite another for Hungary, although he saved the Hungarian refugees in Turkey. Students of south Slavonic and Rumanian history will thoroughly endorse his judgement that the failure of the Magyars * was largely due to the arrogance and injustice they had displayed . . . towards the neighbouring races ' (p. 28). The description of Ponsonby's diplomatic methods (p. 60) will not surprise Englishmen who have lived abroad, and those who have been behind the scenes of international politics will appreciate the author's choice of a motto for his essay : En fait d'histoire contemporaine il n'y a de vrai que ce qu'on n'ecrit point. There must be a mistake in the statement on p. 76 n. *, that the crown of Hungary, Croatia, and Dalmatia was offered to Prince ' Arthur ' in 1849, for the duke of Connaught was not born till 1850. Perhaps Prince ' Alfred ' is meant. Captain Temperley, the historian of Serbia, contributes a memoir of the author, of whom there is a portrait. W. M. Sir Charles Lucas's paper, Tfie War and the Empire (Oxford : University Press, 1919), makes interesting deductions from the empire's experiences in the war. There is a clear differentiation between the feeling of nation- hood, which the war has fostered, and * the much less wholesome senti-