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1922 SHORT NOTICES 471 That was largely due to the needs of the situation. The conservatives were in power during the greater part of the Dominion's first thirty years, and felt it necessary to assert the fundamental unity of the country ; when the liberals came in a relaxation was possible. Professor Kennedy calls the '90's the ' golden age of provincial rights ' and shows the importance of privy council decisions after 1893, but he omits one reason for the line then taken by the judicial committee, that Edward Blake, formerly minister of justice in a liberal government, was practising before the privy council, knew more about the Canadian constitution than any of the judges, and was generally briefed by the provinces whose ' rights ' he had supported when in office. E. M. W. In Europe and Beyond : A Preliminary Survey of World-Politics in the Last Half-Century, 1870-1920 (London : Methuen, 1921), Mr. J. A. B. Marriott has written a very lucid and well-balanced account of an interest- ing and difficult period. The book does not profess to give the domestic history of the states of Europe ; and this perhaps is the only thing that is lacking. It is difficult, for instance, to understand the development of French policy without some knowledge of the cabinets and statesmen who have guided France since 1875. But to these Mr. Marriott makes only incidental references when dealing with French foreign policy. In the same way, the domestic history of Germany, especially the history of the political parties, receives little attention. Mr. Marriott, however, can defend himself, by saying that space did not permit him to include more than he has done. The book in fact is an essay in European states- manship, and is primarily concerned with international relations. As such it is a great success. The narrative naturally centres round the Great Powers : their relations towards each other are traced carefully and with much knowledge. References are given not merely to standard works but also to important monographs written in recent years upon particular topics in English, French, or German, and also to parliamentary papers. Thus within the limits which Mr. Marriott has set himself, he has constructed a useful and also an entertaining work. Important texts, such as those of the ' Monroe Doctrine ' and the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902, are quoted almost in extenso. It is the quotations and the references to authorities which lift this book out of the plane of the ordinary text-book. T. The main interest of the eighth volume of M. Lavisse's Histoire de France Contemporaine depuis la Revolution (Paris : Hachette, 1921) does not lie in the detailed account given of the internal political history of the Third Republic, which fills three-fifths of the total space. The author, M. Seignobos, is indeed scrupulously impartial ; but the intrinsic dullness of a succession of parliamentary struggles in which great questions of principle were seldom involved is not brightened by his methodical pen. He gives us careful extracts from every election programme, statistics of every important division, but the greater figures of the period, Clemenceau, Delcasse, even Gambetta himself, are but shadowy portraits. Programmes and measures rather