5 APRIL 1919, Page 21

A History of Spain. By C. E. Chapman. (Macmillan. Ha.

net.)—This compact and readable history of Spain, from pre. Roman times to the present day, is based mainly on a popular Spanish work by Senor Altamim, but the chapters on the nineteenth century are new. Professor Chapman, of California University, is one of those American scholars who are studying the history of Spanish America, and in this new book he em- phasizes the part played by Spain in the New World rather than her relations with the rest of Europe. His closing chapter on modern Spain is very frank. He believes that the country is pre. vented from progressing by the land-owning nobility and the Roman Catholic Church, and that education is Spain's first need. Until the nation is educated, political changes, he thinks, can do no good. "The Spanish people, at bottom, are admirable material, still virile and altogether sane:'