Carmarthen to Curzon

THE CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY-- Ward and Gooch--Macmillan. Three volumes (Vol I--$6.00. Vols. II and III--$7.50).

Upon the bookshelf of knowledge goes another of those historical works for which Cambridge historians are justly famous.

Sir Adolphus Ward and George Peabody Gooch, heading an imposing list of Cambridge dons, with here and there an "alien savant," have contributed a work of significance which is consistent in its excellence of quality and in its forceful authority with any work that has yet emanated from that seat of learning, universitas cantabrigiensis.

The books, as their title indicates, are a history of British foreign policy from Lord Carmarthen to Lord Curzon (1783-1919), or from the time Britain can be said to have had a defined foreign policy up to the end of the Great War. On the period anterior to 1783 Sir Adolphus Ward, Master of Peter-house, Cambridge, has written a long introduction in which he has skilfully outlined the main considerations and salient characteristics of those early days. The work as a whole can, therefore, lay serious claim to being a complete review of the whole of British foreign policy.

Historians, like other writers, are human. They have their virtues and their vices and they cannot please everyone. The writers of these volumes are men of intrinsic theories and are necessarily at variance with other leaders of speculative thought. They have interpreted here too conservatively and there too liberally, according to their individual tenets. But truth, that beacon of good scholarship, is everywhere apparent. The sources are unimpeachable, the composition is exact, the theorizing is at least authoritative. These are the reasons why this history is of importance and why it must be considered of permanent value in the study of British history.