1920 SHORT NOTICES 159 ment of nationalism ', as developed in South Africa, Quebec, and Ireland. The writer's admirable observations on how to reform the teaching of overseas history in English schools should be utilized by the Board of Education. G. B, H. Dr. Ellsworth Huntingdon's World Power and Evolution (New Haven, Connecticut : Yale University Press, 1919) is an attempt by a specialist in geography to explain the course of civilization, the development of racial character, the successive periods of literary activity and decline, and other historical processes, by an examination of climatic conditions, and especially of atmospheric humidity and of variability of temperature, as affecting human beings. The use of statistics and climagraphic curves gives, perhaps, an appearance of precision hardly to be expected where the data are necessarily insufficient and where a good deal of speculation is inevitable. But the direction of attention to climate as affecting physical, mental, and moral health, is perhaps useful if it is not exaggerated. A. G. Mr. E. H. Davenport's Parliament and the Taxpayer (London : Skeffing- ton, 1919) contains a well-informed sketch of the growth of parliamentary control over expenditure written in sprightly and sometimes extravagant phrase, though we do not think that the account of the origin of parlia- mentary committees (pp. 120-1) will bear examination. The wider topic of parliamentary control over taxation is excluded from consideration, but within the limits imposed upon it Mr. Davenport's little volume will be found useful by students of constitutional history. He, like his introducer, Mr. Herbert Samuel, is mainly concerned with the problem of to-day, and we are not sure that both are not pursuing a will o' the wisp. They seem (pp. Ill ff.) to want parliament to prevent the administrative departments from spending sums which parliament has itself raised and given to those departments to spend, or in other words to become the departments itself. The problem is like that suggested by James I's question, ' Can I issue a prohibition against myself ? ' No constitutional machinery can protect constituencies and parliaments against their own spendthrift moods, but the economy always comes when the taxation consequent upon extravagance has made a sufficient impression. A. F. P. The bibliography in Dr. Carl Russell Fish's Introduction to the Historij of American Diplomacy is useful, but the letter-press is hardly up to the standard of other volumes in the series of Helps for Students of History published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (no. 19, 1919). There is only one mention of Canada, and that a passing allusion. Dr. Fish says that Canning in his famous phrase showed a desire to extricate America from its isolation, and mix it in European affairs : it has not generally been considered to bear this interpretation. There is no mention of Lord Salisbury and the Venezuela crisis, nor of Disraeli's attitude towards America. The foreword suggests it was wiitten under pressure. When the pressure is eased we hope Dr. Fish will rewrite the pamphlet, for there is room for a pamphlet on this subject from his pen. B.
