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294 REVIEWS OF BOOKS April this was ' the great betrayal ', to another ' the great exposure ' of President Wilson's statesmanship. The financial terms are discussed in detail in chapter i, section iv ; the decisions as to international communications in section v. Chapter ii, section i, is vitiated by the assumption (ii. 127) that the reinsurance treaty between France, the United States, and England was likely to be ratified. There follow two chapters on the naval peace terms. Chapter iii, on the territorial settlement of Europe, seems to be one of the best in the book. It contains pregnant remarks, justified by recent events, concerning the possible effect of the acquisition of Alsace-Lorraine upon the centraliza- tion of French administration. The next chapter explains clearly the rearrangement of lands and boundaries upon Germany's eastern frontier. There follows a chapter on the territorial resettlement of Africa in which an impartial critic gives it as his judgement that ' in the main the primary consideration was the welfare of the aborigines '. The two hundred pages of chapter vi are devoted to an exhaustive analysis of the claims and counter-claims of Germany and the allies on every point which peace negotiations raised, or have since raised, for discussion. A careful reading of it only heightens the doubt, prompted by many events, recorded since the signing of the treaty, as to the wisdom on the part of the allied and associated powers of accepting with so little discrimination the doctrine of ' self-determination '. There is the less excuse for refraining from this incursion into the realm of subsequent events in that the last chapter of the second volume contains a summary of the last twelve months of German history. It opens (see ii. 421) with a misconception as to the attitude of German socialists before the war, to whom are attributed practical qualities which they were conspicuous in not possessing. At the same time, its laborious compilation of detailed information strikes the note manifested in general by this history. To the editor and authors of the work the public owes a debt of gratitude, but one may be forgiven for saying to a very brilliant set of young men who are its authors that they must not do this sort of thing again. We cannot afford to have the talent of the coming generation of historians stifled by the compilation of encyclopaedias. For their own good let them leave alone for a time 1 contemporary history '. Volume iii is confined exclusively to documents, chronological tables, texts of the treaties, and pronouncements of importance by President Wilson, General Smuts, M. Clemenceau, and Mr. Lloyd George. It cannot fail to add to the usefulness of the history. Geoffrey Butler. The Place-names of Northumberland and Durham. By Allen Mawer, M.A. (Cambridge : University Press, 1920.) This is the best of the many books that have been written in recent years on the local etymology of particular English districts. Professor Mawer has, what few of the writers of such books have had, a really adequate mastery of the English and Scandinavian philology necessary for his task ; and he has recognized, at any rate more fully than skilled philologists are wont to do, that for the interpretation of place-names historical and