A Prologwe to American History. By S. E. Morison. (Clirendon
Press. 2s. net.)—Professor Morison of Harvard is the first occupant of the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth chair of American History at Oxford. His inaugural lecture, delivered on June let last, promises well for his Oxford career. He showed in a rapid survey that his subject is profoundly interesting and that America's problems have often differed from our own. He emphasized, for instance, the significance of the frontier. "The advancing frontier, that No Man's Land where the only law was force and cunning, explains the strange streak of lawlessness that runs through American society, paralleled by an equally passionate yearning for law and order, even at the cost of liberty. It explains to some extent the restlessness of America." There is much to ponder over in the remark that "Slavery may well have died out in the Southern States through wastefulness (as it did in the North) but for the invention of the cotton-gin." The lecturer touched on current questions. "We now seem to be pulling out of the general topsy-turviness of armistice days into 'normalcy.' But has normal American life since colonial days been anything but movement and change 7 " "American society is becoming more static, less ecstatic." Professor Morison's discourse is well worth reading.
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