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606 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October Inferentially, Holland is left out of the West European system. Nomi- nally a richer country than Belgium, she has had little part in our progressive civilization except that of an investing spectator, and perhaps it is one of the most interesting points in the industrial history of the West that the revolution of 1830, separating two such small countries as the two halves of the Netherlands, should have had such a far-reaching inter- national effect. The politics of that revolution Dr. Clapham leaves entirely aside, but the immediate results of it were shown in the magnificent development of the Belgian railways, which in its way has set an example in the commercial organization of transport, such as this country, with all its claims to be the mechanical inventor of railways, cannot pretend to rival. For instance, the new short line running from Brussels to Malines, opened in May 1835, carried more passengers over its short distance in twelve months than all the English lines together in the same year. The explanation lies in the fact that the Belgian railways had waiting for them a demand for passenger transport unequalled in many areas immensely greater. The statesmen of Belgium of that date at once saw their oppor- tunity, and with commendable promptitude took over this new instrument of civilization as a national enterprise. They were aware of the limitations of their own small country, and planned their system to be a subordinate one to the greater European extensions of the future. They recognized their favourable position as a land of passage, and thereby placed their country in the forefront of the railway building of Europe. It is pleasing to record the names of the two men responsible for this act of foresight : Lebeau and Rogier. In another respect Belgium led the way. In 1822, while the country was still united to Holland, she utilized the distinction made by the Napoleonic Code between credit fonder and credit mobilier to devise under the latter category a model of a general bank, which was less a bank of deposit or issue and more an industrial investment machine than any financial institution known at that time. In fact, it is quite correct to attribute, as Dr. Clapham has done, the origin of the ' Great Three ' German banks, so powerful before the war, to the essential parentage of the Societe Generate pour favoriser V Industrie Nationale of Brussels. While M. fimile Vandervelde declaims his indignation against ' this mighty capitalist machine ', he is paying his own country an immense compliment as having been the first to organize among the nations of Europe what is probably the most complete, and potentially in the future the most powerful, type of modern bank that we know. It is a pity that this promising line of argument was not followed up. In describing the share taken by the German banks in developing German monopolies and contrasting this movement with the similar and parallel development of the American trusts, no mention is made of the modern consortium, which is now well known in political circles in China. Dr. Clapham gets very near it on p. 394, where he quotes from the report of the Dresdner Bank of 1908 of the formation of a syndicate consisting of nine or ten banks and bankers to participate in laying a deep-sea cable line, but he fails to note the significance of this new creation. The consortium was a financial instru- ment, the product of German brains, invented not to originate, but to