BRITISH HISTORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER, 1782-1919 By
G. M. Trevelyan
After the lapse of fifteen years since the first publication of this deservedly famous work (Longmans, I2S. 6d.), Professor Trevelyan has thought fit to add four chapters to its length, and bring the story down to the conclusion of the War. The task is done with r. effect finish and adroitness. The new chapters, like the old, maintain a difficult equilibrium between a text-book enumeration of dates and names on, the one hand, and the vague generality and theorising of the modern historian on the other. More important still, Professor Trevelyan surveys the violent and undignified party squabbles of the pre-War period with a masterly detachment, and nar- rates their course with a calm restraint which would cause some of his literary forbears to turn in their graves. In dealing with personalities, Professor Trevelyan concedes that Balfour has "a strong claim to be numbered among the successful Prime Ministers " : he is reticent in his handling of so contro- versial a figure as Mr. Lloyd George. It was inevitable that the biographer of Sir Edward Grey should tend to dwell with a slightly disproportionate emphasis upon his hero's various achievements, from Algeciras even down to the Putumayo : but he acknowledges that Grey and Campbell-Bannerman were wrong to keep the Cabinet in ignorance of the military conversations with France. It would seem, also, that his copious praise of Haldane's Army Reforms might have been balanced by some mention of Mr. Churchill's work at the Admiralty. But these are matters of opinion, and small matters beside the excellence of the narrative as a whole.
Previous page
