Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/318

310 SHORT NOTICES April ' that there shall be no Bawdy Houses, Grog Shops or Gamboling Saloons ' in its borders. Each district fixed its own boundaries, and this brought Nevada and Spring Gulch almost to war over a disputed jurisdiction : the sheriff of Nevada arrested the Spring Gulch judge, who was tried for { contempt of court ', and Spring Gulch denounced this as a breach of 'the law of nations'. There is. however, no evidence of continual shooting and private war ; from the time when a mass meeting ' was Caled to orter ' the district records are more concerned with legislation on mining claims than with suppressing anarchy. The volume contains a few notes and a short introduction ; its chief interest is in the glimpse it affords of the formation of society in a western state. E. M. W. Professor Coolidge has now translated the second volume of the Secret Treaties of Austria-Hungary x (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1921) in which Dr. Pribram has discussed in detail the negotiations which preceded the Triple Alliance and its various renewals. Bismarck once remarked, ' We keep coming together again because we cannot get along without one another ; ' and the whole diplomatic history, contained in these pages, is little more than an elaborate commentary on that text. The relations between the allies were seldom harmonious ; and had the ultimate decision rested with Austria-Hungary the treaty would probably not have been renewed in 1887. That Germany should have consistently placed so high a value on the retention of Italy is surprising. It was, indeed, explained in 1887 by the Boulangist movement, and the violent expressions of Irredentist feeling in the Alsatian elections, and in 1891 by the conclusion of the Franco-Russian alliance. But in 1902 Italy had practically advertised the emptiness of her adherence by the declaration which Delcasse was authorized to make in the French chamber that ' In no event can these alliances constitute a menace to France either diplo- matically or through protocols or military conventions '. Even the Italian action in supporting France at Algeyiras, though bitterly resented in Germany, did not seriously shake Billow in his determination to continue the alliance. The hostility of Conrad von Hotzendorf to Italy was of course notorious, but it is a little surprising to find him urging the unsympathetic Aehrenthal to undertake a ' preventive ' war against her in 1907. The main effect and probably the intention of this volume is to attribute throughout the series of negotiations great cleverness, importunity, and even untrustworthiness to Italian diplomacy. The Italians had from the first two principal aims, which they followed with consistency. They were determined to gain a free hand in Tripoli ; and succeeded in 1887 in obtaining the promise of aid from Germany, if they found it necessary to declare war on France to secure that object. Secondly, they aimed at securing a full recognition from their allies that Austria and Italy were to be considered as possessing equal interests in the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean ; and from 1891 their success, at least on paper, was complete. Dr. Pribram's references to British policy in his volume are only casual, but he appears to make a very large assumption, when he states that Italy realized after the conclusion of the Entente in 1904 that 1 See ante,xxxvi. 151.