20 JANUARY 1923, Page 26

THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

Mr. Bernard Holland's excellent article on "Central and Local Government" deserves special notice. As the editor, Mr. Harold Cox, points out in "A Conservative Programme," "one of the most hopeful means of diminishing the burden of bureaucracy and, at the same time, restoring real liberty to the nation" is to be found in decentralizing— giving the great municipalities and the county councils more power over finance and aaministration and liberating them from the expensive and needless control exercised from Whitehall. The cost of educational administration, for example, might be reduced if the London County Council's Education Committee had not to refer in trivial details to the Board of Education, which insists, so to say, on doing the work twice over. Mr. Holland's plea for a clear demarca- tion between national and local services is well worked out. Mr. Cox, in his political article, insists on the need for Making a Poll of the People part of our Constitution, particularly as a check on subversive policies to which the House of Lords has ceased to be an obstacle. Sir Valentine Chirol reviews "Four Years of Lloyd-Georgian Foreign Policy," and shows how dangerous a situation, especially in the Near East, the late Prime Minister has bequeathed to his successors. An unnamed writer contributes an instructive article on " tiropean Finances " ; the politicians, he fears, will not avert disaster. Mr. Ameer All writes on "The Caliphate and the Islamic Renaissance " ; wonderful things, he believes, are to come from Angora. Canon Barnes discusses "Move: meats of Thought in the English Church" temperately and not unhopefully. Mr. Wyatt 'filly's essay on Mr. H. G. Wells is caustic and entertaining.