SLAVERY THROUGH THE AGES By Lieut.-General Sir George MacMunn
As Lady Simon observes in a preface, Sir George MacMunn's new book (Nicholson and Watson, I2S. 6d.) will serve a useful purpose by reminding readers that slavery is by no means extinct—notably in Arabia, Abyssinia and China. But it is a pity that his historical sketch was not revised with more care. " Pax Romanis," " Lex - Furia " and " Formorians," twice over, are doubtless misprints, but it is a bad mistake to say that slavery ceased in the Roman Empire in 377 when Justinian long afterwards had to legislate about it. The author is on safer ground with the Turks and the Barbary pirates who enslaved European captives by the thousand, and his account of the British abolition movement and the Navy's prolonged conflict with foreign slavers is well sum- marised. But the best chapters are those dealing with recent and indeed current problems, such as that of the Mui-Tsai child slaves in *Hong-kong. The author recalls the fact that British objections to the acceptance of Abyssinia as a member of the League were based on the existence of widespread slavery in that country.
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