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 388 Revieivs of Books have to thank Mr. Paul for a book which, if not profound, has at least the merits of putting great matters clearly, attractively, and simply, of heing at once instructive and entertaining. Wilbur C. Abbott. BOOKS OF AMERICAN HISTORY The Philippine Islands. By John Foreman. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1906. Pp. xxii, 668.) Probably no other writer on the Philippines has been so often quoted in the United States since 1S98 as John Foreman. Certainly no other has so often been made sponsor for garbled versions of Philippine his- tory and half-truths or downright inaccuracies regarding Philippines and Filipinos. For a number of years, off and on, Mr. Foreman lived in and travelled about the Philippines in behalf of British manufacturers of machinery for tropical agriculture. Thus he naturally gained expert information about Philippine resources and some general information about the peo- ple and their government. Before bringing out his treatise, first in Hong- Kong, then in London, in 1889-1890, he apparently " read up " at random in Philippine history, relying chiefly upon Friar Concepcion's tedious and not always reliable chronicles for the early history and on miscella- neous fragmentary writings for the rest — his sources are rarely indi- cated. With a tendency to launch suppositions as facts where data were wanting, a lack of sympathy with the Spanish viewpoint, ignorance of Spanish history and colonial administration, and prejudice against the friars in the Philippines, the book he produced was a jumble of facts and fancies, of information and misinformation. This as to its histori- cal pretensions; the chapters on agriculture, etc., and on the author's experiences, though by no means devoid of inaccuracies, were more valuable. Except for a translation of Jagor in 1875, no treatise on the Philip- pines had appeared in English since Bowring's of 1859. On the strength of the reputation earned by his book. Foreman was summoned to give information and advice to the American peace commission at Paris in 1898 — advice which reads very strangely if paralleled with his contribu- tions to periodicals in 1900 and thereafter. While discussion of the Philippine question was at its height in 1899, another edition of Fore- man's book of 1890 appeared, with some new chapters giving a very fragmentary and incorrect account of the Tagalog rebellion of 1896- 1898. To this account he has in the 1906 edition, under review, made various additions, with inaccuracies as numerous and as glaring as his original errors, which, moreover, for the most part remain uncorrected. There follow some two hundred new pages devoted to a review of the events of American occupation, 1898-1905, and a description of Ameri- ■can government, in military and civil phases, and its workings. Before taking up these new portions of the book, something should be !