30 JUNE 1917, Page 21

Pour Lectures on the Handling of Historical Material. By L.

F. Rushbrook Williams. (Longmans and Co. 3s. net.)—Tho author of these able lectures on modern historical methods is the Professor of Modern Indian History in Allahabad University, and the book is the -first of a series to be published by his department in the University. There is a vest field in which he and his colleagues may labour profitably. He enlivens his lectures with illustrations from Indian history, as well as with the familiar Western references. Thus ho points out that James Mill's History of British India " stands unsurpassed for sheer unscrupulousness in the manipulation, and even the manufacture, of evidence in support of a preconceived theory," and shows that Mill, having started with the assumption that Warren Hastings was a thief, invented statements about the Rohilla War, the Begurns, and so on, to support his case—making his offence greater, as Sir John Strachey has remarked, by a fine assumption of impartiality.