Since one of the major needs of the day is
the explanation of France to the United States and vier versa (France as re-
presenting the type of European culture which may be expected to resist most successfully " Americanization ") the publication in English of A Short Ihishsruj of thr French People, by M. Guignebert, of the Sorbonne, translated by F. C. Rich- mond (Allen and Unwin, 2 vols., 258. each), may do good. This book, printed in the United States, is dedicated to the American soldiers, " my audience in the Sorbonne in the Spring of 1919." It is a plain statement of historical facts from which M. Guignebert, as a psychologist, deduces certain elements which make up the concrete idea of the French people. He agrees, of course, that the Parliamentary regime needs amendment, but, we are glad to say, still more does he insist on the need for administrative reform. In common with most Frenchmen to-day, he sees the danger of excessive centralization, and points to the revival of regionalism as providing the driving force for a modelling of France to-day,— a score of administrative areas differing from the " Departe- ments " of Napoleonic design.
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