Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/323

 1920 SHORT NOTICES 315 rank as ' eastern '. Mr. Butler's special interest appears to lie in the centre of his field rather than in its extremities, and in politics rather than in history. He leaves German and even Polish untranslated, but explains Mazeppa ; declares that the Estli movement has proceeded on parallel lines with the Lett ; and even states that before the war there were no sources of information in English at all on Lithuania and the three races of the Baltic Provinces. Minor inconsistencies are likely to arise in a work thus written, and we are not surprised to find Herr Erzberger all things to all men in one place, the stormy petrel of politics in another, and absent from the index. Mr. Butler's essays have the rare advantage, in relation particularly to Poland, of being written with Uving interest and personal familiarity and yet with dispassionate judgement. He finds, for example, the Poles infinitely the most attractive of the peoples of eastern Europe, the only one in whose composition there is included that subtle differentia which marks off the ' big ' nation from the ' small '. Yet their political capacity is, as it were, negative. They seem unable to develop their own strength. To-day they are free to rebuild their fallen state, yet they sit disputing amid the ruins whether they shall ally them- selves with Babylon or with the Mede, while their trumpeters and shawm- players march in procession to all the cities of Philistia to proclaim, when their greatness is re-established, how great that greatness will be. Such is the writer's style throughout, informing, stimulating, perhaps exas- perating, but achieving a distinguished book which, owing to the author's courage in reprinting just what he wrote at successive stages of the war, ranks also as a document of value. W. F. K. Mr. Harold J. Laski describes his Authority in the Modern State (New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, 1919) as a sequel to his earlier book on the problem of sovereignty. Like that earlier work, it con- sists partly of a theoretical discussion and partly of special studies on the questions with which particular writers are most closely associated. In the present volume we have such studies of Bonald, together with his disciples in traditionalism, Brunetiere, Bourget, and others ; of Lamennais, with an appendix on Tyrrell ; of Royer-Collard ; and of the recent history of administrative syndicalism in France. In each case the main points on which the given writers or groups insist are clearly and sympathetically stated, while the criticism, which is often eloquent in expression, is such as might be expected from a wide-minded believer in democratic liberty. But after all it is easier to show why other people are wrong, or that certain suggested solutions are impossible, than to give a reasoned theory of the state which is not open to equally serious objections. Consequently the reader will turn with the greatest interest to the fii-st essay in the book, which undertakes to give an account of the right position of authority in the modern state. Here it must be confessed that the results are largely negative. There is some valid criticism of the conception of an omni- potent state ; a good deal of reproof is addressed to lawyers, which is also valid if the lawyers have failed to distinguish between the legal and the political sovereign. Much is said about the failure of the state to promote the good life : this is perfectly true, but it testifies to the high