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608 REVIEWS OF BOOKS October statesmen in our island and in Western and Eastern Europe, I should like to have seen some notice taken of the valuable arguments brought forward by Mr. O'Farrell in favour of the view that the indemnity imposed on France after 1870 was sufficient to make that over-prudent group of families limit the increase in the birth-rate some years before that approach - ing phase of timidity became a general phenomenon among white races. While his arguments cannot be finally accepted, they have not received the attention they deserve nor been authoritatively set aside, if that be possible. G. B. Djbblee. The Lebanon in Turmoil ; Syria and the Powers in 1860. Book of the Marvels of the Time concerning the Massacres in the Arab country, by Ishander Ibn Yaq'ub (sic) Abkariils, translated and annotated, and provided with an Introduction and Conclusion by J. F. Scheltema, M.A., Ph.D. (Yale Oriental Series, Eesearches, vol. vii. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1920.) A work called The Unveiling of the Troubles of Syria, published in 1895 in Cairo, claims to be the first account in Arabic of the massacres of 1860 ; it is anonymous, the author perhaps feeling that he was incedens per ignes suppositos cineri doloso. It was followed in 1908 by a work called An Eye-witness's Account of the Disasters of Syria and Lebanon, printed from the manuscript of one Dr. Mikhail Mashaqah by two editors who give their names. Of a third narrative, bearing the above title, there is a manuscript in the Landberg Collection of Yale University Library ; of this Dr. Scheltema has published an English translation with ample commentary, introduction, and conclusion. The whole work is a sort of political pamphlet, of which the object is to show that the Turks are not as bad as they are painted ; that the massacres of 1860 were brought by the victims on themselves ; and that the troubles of the Near East are in the main due to the greed and craft of the European powers. In the second and third of these propositions the author does not differ seriously from earlier writers on the events. In the Unveiling of the Troubles equal blame is bestowed on the Maronites and the Druses, and the English support of the Druses and the French support of the Maronites are branded as equally unscrupulous ; and Rosen, whose excellent Geschichte der Tilrkei goes no further than 1856, in his account of the Lebanon question evidently takes the same view. On the other hand, it does not appear that Iskander Abkarius contributes to the whitewashing of the Turk. It is a matter of history that the Turkish officers who should have prevented the massacres instead facilitated the work of the Druses and Moslems, and occasionally tried to profit by their atrocities ; some of the worst offenders were indeed punished, but without European inter- vention the probability is that they would have got off scot-free. The two other Arabic writers attribute the massacres to Turkish instigation, and since the Lebanon had been quiet for fifteen years there must have been some cause for the renewal of the disturbances. Mashaqah gives the name of the agent provocateur. The loss of dignity resulting from the part played by Turkey in the Crimean War is alleged as the reason