History

These Statesmen's Problems Look Like Trivialities Now The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamber The Life and Letters of Sir Austen Chamber lain. (Vol. II). By Sir Charles Petrie,
Bart. (Cassell, 16s.).
Joseph Chamberlain. By Sir Charles Petrie, Bart. (Duckworth, 2s. 6d.).
Europe in the 19th and 201h Centuries. By A. J. Grant and II. W. V. Temperley. (Longmans, 16s.).
The Grand Inquisitor. An account of Cardinal Ximenes and his times, By Walter Starkie. (Hodder and Stoughton, 18s.),
Reviewed by BERNARD BASSETT, Sal.
THE biography of Sir Austen Chamberlain makes sad reading in these days. So swift have come the changes in the past months, that., four years after his death, Sir Austen has assumed the prosaic dignity of a Gladstonian statesman worrying about trivialities which to-day seem quite unreal. The very photographs in Sir Charles Petrie's book add to this impression, recalling Doctor Stresemann at Geneva, or Mussolini on the Foreign Minister's yacht. dignity of the man. Sir Charles Petlic Yet the revolution which has swept away so much of Sir Austen's life work, only helps to enhance the honesty and dignity of the man. Sir Charles Petlic
has selected his materials well from this point of view, and if the biography is not very original or profound in its commentary on political and international matters, it is most satisfactory as a study of Sir Austen Chamberlain himself.
In his letters, the statesman reveals the delicacy and probity of his own character while commenting on the problem., and personalities of his day. In any estimation of Earl Baldwin, Mr. Lloyd George, Mussolini, Mr. Winston Churchill, and Mr. Neville Chamberlain, the balanced judgement of the great I-oreign Minister should not be ignored. Sir Charles Petrie has done us a great service in publishing Sir Austen's verdicts verbatim in this book.
FROM the pen of Sir Charles Petrie comes FROM the pen of Sir Charles Petrie comes a study of Joseph Chamberlain, too. It is an admirable little monograph and well up to the standard of the other studies in the series of " Great Lives " published by Messrs. Duckworth. Joseph Chamberlain seems less out of date today than does his rides:. son, and, in the pages of Sir Charles Petrie's study, his vigorous personality lives again. TEE recent biography ot Cardinal Ximenes TEE recent biography ot Cardinal Ximenes will bring home more vividly to English readers the history of Spain during its golden age. Cardinal Ximenes, perhaps more than anyone else, was the forger of Spanish Catholicism and of the culture which sprang from it, and for this alone he is a worthy subject for a biography. As rnight be expected, Professor Starkie, with his great knowledge of the literary sources, accomplishes his task admirably And his book is at once erudite and entertaining. It is perhaps a pity that he is so sparing with his references, for it makes us wonder, at times, whether the conversations which he puts into the mouth of Ximencs ever took place, arid whether, in classical tradition, he is attributing to him such words as seem proper to the occasion. The main title of the book is also to be regretted for, though Ximenes was Grand Inquisitor, this was only one of his claims to greatness, perhaps one of the lesser ones.
THE appearance of yet another impression of Messrs. Grant and TeruperIey's popular history of modern Europe deserves mention if only because the volume is now enlarged to cover the first months of the present war. The supplementary chapter is interesting and informative, but in common with the other recent additions to the book, it has little historical value. A balanced judgement cannot be passed on recent events until full details are available, and, as has already been pointed out in a review of an earlier impression of this volume, there is some confusion and contradiction in the more recent additions to the
Thus no attempt hook. is made to recon
cile the glowing account of the Red Army in one chapter with the extraordinary exhibition of incompetence in the •Finnish war. The additional chapters are good in themselves, but, corning from different authors, they lack the unity and co-ordination which makes the main part of the book so valuable.