Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/662

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652 Reviews of Books achievement, his leadership in changing the trend of historical studies at Oxford. Nowhere can his views be better seen than in the brief preface he wrote to the translation of Langlois and Seignobos's Intro- duction to the Study of History. One little piece of information I may give Mr. Elton ; the apologue of Froude which he admired so much (I. 171) was not "A Siding at a Railway Station", but "The Cat's Pilgrimage." H. Morse Stephens. The International Lazv and Diplomacy of the Russo-Japanese War. By Amos S. Hershey, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science and International Law in Indiana University. (New York: The Macmillan Company ; London : Macmillan and Company. 1906. Pp. xii, 394.) Two books in English have preceded this, bearing upon the same subject. One, by T. J. Lawrence, was written in 1904 in the midst of exciting events relating to war and neutrality. It is an unpretentious volume, stating briefly and with scarcely any citation of authorities what the author believed to be the law applicable to a variety of incidents which had deeply stirred the British public. It did not include even in the second edition the North Sea tragedy. Of necessity the acts upon which he commented could be but partially and inaccurately known to the author. But his conclusions were sound and their appearance timely. Professor Hershey quotes Lawrence freely and approvingly. The other book, by Smith and Sibley, appeared in 1905 and is charac- terized by Hershey (p. 172 n.) as a "bulky and pretentious volume". It certainly is not a very satisfactory treatise because it wanders inter- minably from the point and is sometimes absurd and inaccurate. It does not discuss the causes of the war but confines itself to questions of prize and of neutrality. The book under review has the advantage over its forerunners in that an additional year has enabled its author to secure a more accurate statement of facts, to marshal his authorities and precedents much more fully, to learn the result of appeal in certain admiralty cases, and to look at the war with rather more perspective. Professor Hershey has made excellent use of his time and opportunities. His book is an ade- quate, judicial, and thorough discussion of the many highly important events of the war in the East. As the title implies, there is diplomacy as well as law in it. The events prior to the war and its closing scenes at Portsmouth, with prize law and the rules of war and neutrality in between, form a kind of intellectual sandwich. That, like its predecessors, it finds Russia alone at fault save in one minor instance was inevitable, for this is the conclusion which the facts warrant. In the earlier diplomacy Hershey relies largely upon Asakawa's admirable volume, The Russo-Japanese Conflict. We have laid be- fore us a calm, patient, painstaking narrative of the diplomatic moves