Roots in the Past A Histony or Burns Fore lan C. Hannah, wr.
son & Watson, London.
Another very interesting addition has been made to the University Extension Library in the above book by Mr. Hannah. The volume is obviously not of much assistance to deep students of the history of British foreign policy, though in its 200 odd pages it gives a very rapid survey of the development of British relations with the various countries of the world, and in doing so it gives food for a considerable amount of thought. How many people nowadays would realize how deeply rooted British foreign policy is in all that has happened in the past; that with certain interregnums there has been a consistent logical progress towards ihe establishment of Great Britain as a Power not only in Europe but throughout the world. There are not many, for example, who realize that during the Protectorship, Cromwell carried out a very vigorous foreign policy, lifting a government from abject humiliation, when it could not even defend its own coasts against the Barbary pirates, to a pinnacle of power, in the space of a very few years, The fact that he did so gives rise to a very interesting thought. The Commonwealth was Britain's one and only experiment in what would now be called Fascism; as the author says:
It was efficient in a rather fe les "age. A large number ai individuals, including almost tne entire mercantile community, must have felt the personal peneñit of all it did. But the kind of freedom Briton Drize Was very largely lost. Their lives were regulated in a way they could not bear. In 1660, with something approaching unanimity, the nation registered its preference foi the old democratic liberty over maticnal power, efficiency and in many cases personal gain. And eon-sidering the continuity, of British ways the fact is not without signi-nce today
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.