volume, which deals with congresses and conferences, treaties and other international compacts, 'good offices and mediation. Here, too, the method is analytical rather than historical, but the subject-matter is presented in a form which will make the book an exceedingly valuable, if not an indispensable, adjunct to the study of European history during the last three centuries. For erudition, conspicuous and profound, has not converted Sir E. Satow into a Dry-as-dust; and he combines weight of learning with a skill in exposition which will gain for his words an audience far beyond the circles of professed diplomatists.

Mr Coleman Phillipson's work, as its title suggests, is more limited in scope and more strictly legal in form. Part of the ground covered by it is common to him and to Sir E. Satow, but the treatment is widely different. Mr Phillipson will appeal more definitely to the international lawyer, less conspicuously to the historical student. The latter will, indeed, welcome the collection of the texts of the principal treaties of the 19th century; and these texts occupy a considerable proportion of the book. The rest deals with two main topics: (a) the termination of war, either by reciprocal intermission of hostilities, or by conquest and subjugation; and (b) with Treaties of Peace-armistice conventions, the interposition of third parties, the constitution and procedure of peace conferences, preliminaries of peace, peace negotiations, and the treaty of peace. Through all the mazes of these topics Mr Phillipson will be found to be a preeminently trustworthy guide.

Mr Hill, like Sir E. Satow, has won distinction both as a scholar and as a diplomatist, but his work is planned on lines quite distinct from those followed by either of the other authors mentioned. As is clearly implied in the title, his book is historical rather than juridical. A history of diplomacy, as the author justly insists, properly includes not only an account of the progress of international intercourse, but an exposition of the motives by which it has been inspired and the results which it has accomplished.' More even than that--it must include also a consideration of the genesis of the entire international system and of its progress through the progressive stages of its development.'

What is the scientific terminus a quo of such an enquiry? It is customary,' writes Mr Hill, 'to regard the Congress and Peace of Westphalia as the startingpoint of European diplomacy, but this is principally due to the fact that so little has been known of earlier diplomatic activity.' That may be so. But the customary practice has something, as will be argued presently, to recommend it. Moreover, it is worthy of notice that Mr Hill sets out to write a history of diplomacy in the international development of Europe. It is, therefore, pertinent to enquire where the international development begins? Can it begin before the development of the nation-state? By implication Mr Hill answers this question with an emphatic affirmative. The first of his three substantial volumes starts with an analysis of the condition of Europe under the Roman Empire; it carries us on to the revival of the Empire in the West, to the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire and to the Holy Roman Empire of medieval times. Mr Hill then traces the conflict of the Empire and the Papacy, and so brings us to the development of Italian diplomacy. The real genesis of modern diplomacy he finds (1, 359) in the city-state system of medieval Italy.

'A little world by itself, whose component parts were numerous, feeble and hostile, Italy soon created an organism to take the place which the Empire had left vacant. To know the intentions of one's neighbour, to defeat his hostile designs, to form alliances with his enemies, to steal away his friends and prevent his union with others, became matters of the highest public interest . . The system long in use by Venice was now applied by every Italian State. . . . but Venice continued to be the school and touchstone of ambassadors.'

From the development of Italian Diplomacy, Mr Hill passes to the rise of national monarchies, and thence to the formation of modern states. With the expulsion of the English from France, the absorption of the feudal duchies, the overthrow of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and the unification of France under Louis XI and Charles VIII, we reach by general consent the dawn of the modern era. May not this be regarded as the true terminus a quo for a history of European

diplomacy, for the study of international relations? Mr Hill repudiates the suggestion with scorn (II, vi, vii):

'The essence of diplomacy does not lie in the character of its organs or its forms of procedure. Intrinsically it is an appeal to ideas and principles rather than to force, and may assume a great variety of specific embodiments. . . . What is to be said of the Italian cities winning their local liberties from the greatest emperors of the Middle Ages by means of their leagues and alliances? And what of the Republic of Venice, in particular, situated between powers of overwhelming magnitude, yet not only maintaining from the beginning its virtual independence but acquiring by its compacts a vast colonial dominion from the spoils of the Eastern Empire? If these were not feats of diplomacy, in what age shall we expect to find them? . . . The importance of that period both for the international development of Europe and for the part played in it by diplomacy cannot be overestimated. In it were elaborated and set in motion ideas and influences that have never ceased to affect the destinies of Europe.'

All this is, in one sense, true to the verge of truism. But it is true only if we are prepared to give to the terms diplomacy' and 'international' a somewhat elastic and non-technical connotation. The question as to the proper and precise connotation of those terms is one which must presently engage attention. Well before the end of the second volume, which closes with the Treaties of Westphalia (1648), we are launched upon the period when those terms may, beyond dispute, be appropriately employed. But to that period we shall revert.

To his third volume, published in 1914, Mr Hill gives a sub-title: 'The Diplomacy of the Age of Absolutism.' He prefaces the volume by a statement (III, v) which seems strangely self-contradictory, though somewhat characteristic of the author.

'Men,' he writes, had sought refuge from anarchy by establishing the supremacy of the State and concentrating power in the hands of a few. We behold entire nations moving en masse in directions not determined by their needs or their individual desires, nor yet in view of their well-being, but by the command of one man who-for reasons of his own, for which he had to give no account-acted as he saw fit.' .. 'Yet it is impossible to explain this period in terms of

individual action . . . it was the thought and feeling of the time that made monarchy absolute.'

Precisely. Power was committed to a ruler, virtually dictatorial, in order, on the one hand, to rescue the adolescent nation-state from feudal anarchy, and on the other to achieve territorial readjustments which, if not 'determined by national needs,' or conceived in the national interests, were distinctly so regarded by the mass of the nation. M. Albert Sorel cannot be described as an adulator of absolutism, but what says he of that traditional foreign policy of which the absolute monarchs of France were conspicuous exponents?

'La politique française avait été dessinée par la géographie: l'instinct national la suggéra avant que la raison d'état la conseillât. Elle se fonde sur un fait: l'empire de Charlemagne. Le point de départ de ce grand procès qui occupe toute l'histoire de France c'est l'insoluble litige da la succession de l'Empereur À mesure que le temps s'éloigne l'image du grand Empereur s'élève et prend des proportions colossales. De Philippe-Auguste à Napoleon elle plane sur l'histoire de France.'

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This is the truly philosophical view of a great historical tradition; but M. Sorel does little more than re-echo the language of Richelieu himself:

'Le but de mon ministère a été de rendre à la Gaule les frontières que lui a destinées la Nature, de rendre aux Gaulois un roi gaulois, de confondre la Gaule avec la France, et partout où fut l'ancienne Gaule d'y rétablir la nouvelle.'

It is perfectly true that the time came when Louis XIV, in the vain pursuit of dynastic ambitions, transgressed the limits suggested by geography, and departed from the policy hallowed by tradition; but it is mere prejudice to ignore the fact that, up to a point, the policy of the absolute monarchy was not one whit less national than that pursued by the statesmen of the First or the Third Republic. The doctrine of 'Les Limites naturelles,' the idea that the national frontiers of France were marked by the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees, has profoundly and continuously influenced the diplomacy of France, whether the agents of that diplomacy received their instructions from a Bourbon, from a Buonaparte, or from a servant of the Republic. A parliamentary minister is

not necessarily a more faithful interpreter of the national will than an 'absolute' monarch, as an historian like Mr Hill ought to have perceived. Alsace and Lorraine were acquired for France at the zenith of the Bourbon monarchy. Did the First or the Second Republic ever show the least disposition to restore those provinces? The United Provinces, under the Dutch Republic, pursued their colonial ambitions with at least as much eagerness as Spain under Charles V or Philip II. Dynastic motives do not account for national policy consistently pursued under varying political conditions. But we need not go abroad to find illustrations of so obvious a truth. No country in Europe has been less influenced, in its foreign policy, by the individual desires of an absolute monarch than Great Britain; yet no country has pursued certain ends with greater persistence or more undeviating consistency.

Mr Hill's argument would seem, therefore, to be somewhat vitiated by a prejudice, not to be expected in a philosophical historian, against the 'enlightened despots' of the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet the point must not be pressed against him too far; nor does the defect, if such it be, seriously detract from the value of a work which is conceived on original lines and is executed, in the main, with conspicuous skill. His erudition is undeniable, his style lucid and attractive, while the general treatment of an important theme is full without being prolix, and scholarly without being dull. The method and plan which he has chosen to adopt raise, however, a large question of historical principle which demands further discussion. Before proceeding to that discussion, we may glance briefly at the contents of the remaining books in the list prefixed to this article.

Sir Walter Phillimore's book, very recently published, deserves a much more detailed examination than is possible within the assigned limits of this article. It aims at two objects: on the one hand to provide an historical analysis of the principal Treaties of Peace concluded in Europe during the last three centuries; and, on the other, to offer certain suggestions as to the best means of preventing war in future, and for humanising and regulating the conduct of wars when they do occur. Both objects are very successfully achieved.