Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/485

 1920 SHORT NOTICES. 477 Especially interesting to Englishmen is his treatment of the Venezuelan controversy. H. E. E. Dr. A. F. Pollard is the first English historian of the front rank to have written a complete survey of the war. His Short History of the Great War (London : Methuen, 1919) is an excellent record of the facts, combined with a true representation of their relative importance. He appreciates that all men, however distinguished, and all methods, however ingenious, were dwarfed by the dominating background of uncontrollable world tendencies. This view is insistent in his repeated onslaughts on ' vox populi '. These pages recall with almost too much relish our many succes- sive fallacies and miscalculations, which were so rashly fostered in the early years of the struggle by supposed experts in military history, and later on by unduly optimistic politicians. Dr. Pollard makes a great point of our general ignorance of the uses of naval supremacy, which led to the ill-judged retention of a large army at home which ought to have been in France. Some of his opinions will not be generally accepted, and he has a strong prejudice against the present prime minister. Original views will not, however, detract from the great and patriotic interest of the book. The style is vigorous and sometimes eloquent. G. B. H. Dr. E. Eduardo Ibana y Kodriguez of the university of Zaragoza has published, with the title Origen y Vicisitudes de los Titulos profesionales en Europa, especialmente en Espana (Madrid : Tipografica Renovacion, 1920), a lecture read on 29 February 1920 to the Spanish Royal Academy of History. He gives a narrative account of the learned degrees from the earliest times when the first universities were those of Salerno, Bologna, and Paris. The writer traces the fortunes of the guilds, the ' titulo indus- trial ', to the university degrees, ' el bachillerato ', ' la licenciatura ', and ' el doctorado '. In regard to the work it is interesting to see that Sala- manca and Lerida followed Bologna, and Alcala, Paris, and the other Spanish universities the first with modifications. The Spanish reforms of later days (and the cognate French reforms in pedagogy which perhaps influenced them) are also fully considered. There are important notes and a good bibliography. A. F. S. We have received a series of handbooks numbered, though not con- tinuously, from one to fifty-six, which make up the first nine volumes of a series of Handbooks prepared under the Direction of the Historical Section of the Foreign Office (London : Stationery Office, 1920). These contain historical, geographical, and economic information about various countries, regions, and races of Europe and the Russian Empire, prepared for the use of British representatives at the peace conference. The general editor is Sir George Prothero, but the names of the individual contributors are not given. U. In the Law Quarterly Review for January 1920 (no. 141) is an interesting article by Judge W. J. Johnston (' The First Adventure of the Common Law '), upon the introduction of Anglo-Norman institutions and, more particularly, of the common law into Ireland. The paper will help to make clear several doubtful points, but unfortunately the references to ecclesias-