THE AMERICAN ADVANCE.
The American Advance. By Edmund J. Carpenter. (John Lane. 5s.)—Some critics will find "Jingoism" in this book, which its author quite frankly, indeed, terms "a study in territorial expan- sion " ; and others who do not take so pronounced a view may find a trifle too much national vanity in the spirit which dictates such a sentence as :—" The Republic may be said to have been erected upon the ruins of the Empire of Spain ; for from the Mississippi and the Gulf to the Pacific, or in the American islands of the Indies West and East, there is not a foot of soil—save in the vast region of the great North-West—over which has not floated, above mountain and plain alike, the red and gold banner of Spain"; and still more in the last sentence of the volume, in which is emphasised the surrender of the ex-Governor of Havana, "his last backward look at the historic palace as he crossed the plaza in his retreat, and his dramatic gesture of chagrin, despair, and hopelessness." But although this tone of " spread-eagleism " may be objected to as being here and there too pronounced, Mr. Carpenter's style as an historian cannot be complained of on the score of lucidity or straightforwardness. He tells in a series of chapters bearing such titles as "The Louisiana Purchase," "The Annexation of Texas," "The Gadsden Purchase," "Alaska," and "Hawaii" how the Union, which after the conclusion of peace with Great Britain in the end of the eighteenth century had only a population of about four millions, has advanced to its present commanding position in the New World. Mr. Carpenter has accomplished this task with the minimum of rhetoric ; he some- times quotes from Motley, but he does not pretend to imitate him. Occasionally, however, as when he tells the story of the fight for Texas, his narrative is very spirited. He contrives also not to offend British susceptibilities, although, of course, he has to tell how in certain matters of territorial expansion—the case of
Oregon is one in point—British and American interests clashed. Altogether this is a valuable and readable, if not indeed necessary, book
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