Page:The Dial (Volume 73).djvu/788

670 has traced the disunions down to the present, patiently illuminating the racial psychoses of small nations, each of which can remember some old war in which others of the group were on the wrong side. The history of Greece is especially interesting to review at present, and here Dr Schevill has done a particularly fine piece of work. Since his book went to press, the Greeks have been adding another chapter to their national annals—but Dr Schevill predicted the chapter, and has explained carefully what claims to Thrace and the Smyrna salient each side can validly present.

Back of this by a few years, and a few chapters, is the still more absorbing story of the Balkan beginning of the World War. The "balance of Europe" becomes a live phrase to an American reader. This is the first book to stress the murder of the heir to the Austrian throne by Serbian conspiracy as a strongly determining cause of war. The road leading up to the assassination and on from it has been cleared to show distinctly the consequences of that momentous crime. Again a Balkan-brewed pot boiling over has scalded all Europe, not to mention reducing the Balkans themselves to an irritated remnant of their old, disunited, spasmodic strength.

In his interpretation of modern events Dr Schevill is likely to provoke discussion. He finds it impossible to remain above the clouds. He is frankly pessimistic over the basis of the Paris treaties and the results likely to accrue to the Balkans therefrom. It is, perhaps, with this in mind that he ends with the divided view that man is unlikely to "summon the wisdom necessary to restrain his passions," but that there is some hope, even for the Balkans, in concerted idealism, some prospect of justice through a—not the—league of nations.

But there can be no successful summary of this book. Without the author's lightness of touch, his human handling of epic events, his flexible vocabulary, and the humorous relief of his satire and his most enlightening figures of speech, the five hundred and fifty-nine pages would be of too great and complicated content for any but the professional historian who had already gleaned half its facts from a dozen books. As it is, this history will undoubtedly be read. It will add to the prestige Dr Schevill has already attained by his Political History of Modern Europe.