A DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES By Samuel Flagg
Bemis
This book (Cape, 25s.) is especially timely, since President Roosevelt has seemed to betray hankerings after Wilsonian idealism and intervention in world affairs. Professor Bemis, the most eminent authority on American diplomatic history, is a converted Wilsonian ; he is now an acute, learned and resolute exponent of the isolationist attitude, a point of view that leads him, at times, to be unjust to the late associates of the United States in that unfortunate attempt to make the world safe for democracy. But the range of knowledge and the talent for clear exposition that this book reveals make it of so much use that its faults seem trifling beside its merits. There are details that can be questioned ; we now know, for instance, more about the San Domingo adventures of General Grant's adminis- tration since the publication of Pro- fessor Nevins's life of Hamilton Fish, but this book, already a great success among thinking people in America, well deserved the honour of an English edition.
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