Alsace - Lorraine Past, Present, and Future. By Coleman Phillipson, M.A., LL.D.,
Litt.D. With 4 Maps. (T. Fisher Unwin. 25s. net.)—Dr. Phillipson is known as an authority on international law, and in his Preface he describes the tone and object .of his large book on Alsace-Lorraine as "judicial impartiality," which may involve "giving the devil his due." The principle has the respect of Englishmen ; the practice may mean difficulties ; and Dr. Phillipson himself finds it hard to decide what is the devil's due. The book may be recommended to those who wish to know something of a question which, although some German speakers and writers pretend that it does not exist, will certainly be one of the most important and most thorny to be settled at the end of the war. Dr. Phillipson proposes different solutions of the problem,
treating the obvious one as unlikely. The others would offer little satisfaction except to the Power that is still, it seems, to hold the provinces in economic bondage. Their coal and iron safely secured, Germany might conceivably permit either autonomy within her Empire, a new neutral buffer-State between herself and France, or a readjustment of boundaries ; and she might be too much lacking in self-knowledge to fear the proposed Referendum, which, in our opinion, would bring her a disagreeable surprise. But in these suggested arrangements, one more impracticable than another, we may well ask : Where is France ? And it cannot be too often repeated, and even Dr. Phillipson's book proves it once more, that the facts of history, not to mention international equity and human nature, are all on the side of our Allies.
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