1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 605 of law and order ; secondly, the permanence of the lines of political cleavage, which is noticeable not only in such well-defined areas as Brittany and Alsace, but in the violent legitimism of the department of Vaucluse, which is not extinct to-day, or in the radicalism of Mamers, the con- stituency of M. Caillaux. The treatment of foreign policy, on the other hand, is short and, in the case of M. Charlety, generally summary. He makes the curious statement that Alexander was ill-disposed towards France at Aix- la-Chapelle because she refused to join him in a crusade against liberalism, whereas Alexander's conversion to the Metternich system was not completed till Troppau, and had not begun in 1818. He repeats the fable that Great Britain was responsible for the disastrous decision of the Porte in declaring war on Mehemet AH in 1839 ; and his account of the Spanish marriages is so discreet in its omissions as to be seriously misleading. It is unfortunate that he should not have availed himself of Sir John Hall's work on England and the Orleans monarchy, but, as is usual with French historians, the admirable bibliographies which accompany each chapter contain very few, and those neither the better nor more recent, of English authorities. M. Seignobos's treatment of foreign affairs, however, though short, is clear and exceedingly impartial. It is impossible to find elsewhere within a few pages so scrupulously fair an account of the origin of the Franco-Prussian war. The engravings which accompany these volumes are a great improvement on those chosen to illustrate the earlier part of the series. They are as a rule both useful and illuminating. It is a pity that no maps are included ; for though military history is designedly treated in the merest outline, the student would often find them of great service, as for instance in assimilating the distribution of political parties, the value of which has already been mentioned in this review. It is to be hoped that more attention will be paid to the binding of these volumes, as loose pages and engravings are still an unnecessary annoyance to the reader. C. R. Cruttwell. The Economic Development of France and Germany, 181-5-1914. By J. H. CLAPHAM,Litt.D., C.B.E. (Cambridge : University Press, 1921.) The year 1815 is a good starting-point for a true comparison between two countries which never went through an industrial revolution themselves, but which began rather late to profit by the experiences of our islands and were able to develop their own life at their own pace. Dr. Clapham reveals his own preference for agricultural France as against industrial Germany, and all through this extraordinarily able comparison, for that is what it amounts to, he makes every point tell that he can in favour of that country which in Europe has remained almost stationary in all fundamental economic tendencies, in spite of political developments which, at the time, appeared to be sensational in the extreme. He has selected rather inevi- tably Belgium as the meeting-point between the rival Latin and Teutonic civilizations, and although nominally Belgium is not considered as a separate identity in the European system, its economic influence creeps in at every stage of his general review.
