NATIONAL CHARACTER. By Ernest Barker. (Methuen. 10s. 6d.)-In a sense
this informing study of Civics has been published already, for it is based on a series of Stevenson lectures delivered in Glasgow during the winter of 1925-6. It only remains, therefore, to announce the appearance of the lectures in book form and briefly to indicate their scope. Citizenship, and notably British citizenship, with which the volume is principally concerned, is an historical formation and all of a piece ; if we know how it has become what it is, we may reach some reasonable guess as to its future. A nation cannot be born at once, and Dr. Barker accordingly considers the various factors which have contributed to its gradual de- velopment-the disposition and intermingling of race, the influence of geography, and the stress of economics. These are the material factors. Among the spiritual factors he dis- cusses the growth and significance of a national spirit, the influences of law, government and religion, and the moulding which literature, philosophy and education confer on a race. The book ends on a note of warning against the " febrility of temper and gregariousness of behaviour " produced by excessive urbanization, and with a lament that the old British characteristic of self-help " seems weak and dwindling."
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