HISTORY.
The Development of the British Empire. By Howard Robinson, Ph.D. (Constable and Co. 12s. ad. net.) This book is not so much a collection of dates and facts as conclusions drawn from events : this ought to recommend it to the general reader. The student of history, however, will find it inadequate. Dr. Robinson has marred his-picture by over-emphasizing the background. Had he omitted such details as the fusion of the races in earlier Britain and the state of England during the Wars of the Roses, he would have left himself room on the canvas for fuller pictures of the growth of the rival empires of the Portuguese, the Dutch and the French, at the expense of which the British Empire largely developed. One realizes in reading this narrative that the growth of our Empire has been less the result of national action than of individual initiative. And this, Dr. Robinson thinks, is accountable for its possession of that vigour that caused it to expand and grow, whereas the empire of the French, nurtured by Colbert and Louis XIV., failed to attain an equal stature. This affords a still further instance—and Socialists and Communists would do well to note it—of the value of individual enterprise as against State control.
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