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 1922 SHORT NOTICES 311 if war were to break out between herself and France ' she must now count on England's participation in the war as an ally of France '. Dr. Coolidge has added some useful appendixes containing the chief documents dealing with the Franco-Russian Alliance, and the Franco-Italian agreements 1900-2. C. K. C. During the years 1880-90 Mr. J. F. Baddeley was the special corre- spondent of the Standard at St. Petersburg, and he has used the diaries he then kept as the basis of his work Russia in the Eighties (London : Longmans, 1921). He has been careful, however, to add notes from modern works, chiefly biographical, to correct or supplement the informa- tion he acquired at the time. Little can be learnt from this book about the social or industrial conditions of Russia, and domestic politics are generally ignored, though there are some useful notices about nihilists and their activities. Much of the space is occupied by accounts of sporting parties, which, though in themselves interesting and well described, are of impor- tance only because they gave opportunity for the reminiscences of Count Peter Schouvaloff. This diplomatist was the intimate friend of the author, and told him many anecdotes about his embassy in London and else- where. The most important of these confidences concern the congress of Berlin, and, although they contribute few new facts, they make the attitude of Russia much clearer. A valuable account of a debate which took place between Russian ministers in the presence of the tsar about May 1878 makes it quite plain that Russia was compelled to accept the revision of the treaty of San Stefano by the impossibility of continuing the war. Another event on which some new light is thrown is the Penjdeh incident. Mr. Baddeley's view is that after the tsar had at first refused to submit to arbitration the question whether his troops in Penjdeh had broken the agreement of 17 March, Gladstone persuaded him to accept on condition that no award should ever be delivered, and that this proposal of a sham arbitration was a device to give time to allow the effervescence of jingoism in England to subside. If this is the true explana- tion of the tame ending of an episode which nearly produced a great war and proof is difficult as the foreign office records cannot be examined for so late a year as 1885 secret diplomacy won a great victory over the public press, which in Russia as in England exercised all its influence to precipitate an armed conflict. G. D. Dr. A. B. Keith's War Government of the British Dominions (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1921) describes somewhat discursively, but most com- pletely and with abundant knowledge, 'the influence of the war on the activities of the governments of the dominions and on their relations to the government of the United Kingdom '. The chapters on the economic and military efforts and achievements of the dominions are admirable ; the summary on pp. 107-8 is convincing. The main point of the constitu- tional side of the book is the rapid approximation of the dominions to the position of independent states whose approval of the treaty with Germany was made a condition precedent to its ratification by the British empire. Dr. Keith rightly criticizes a loose dictum of Mr. Bonar Law as to a