quests in the Western Hemisphere. Lincoln's best biographer is an Englishman. The first great exponent of American democracy was a Frenchman. The master treatise on the organization and operation of the American Commonwealth was written by an Englishman, and a comparable work on the Government of England by an American. These are the landmarks. The spaces among them are filled with a multitude of others, increasing in number year by year; a highly desirable process. For the giftand the exercise of the gift-"to see oursel's as others see us is splendidly profitable, both subjectively and objectively. It is well to have each nation made to know how it, and its institutions, and its great men, look to others; and it is well for those of one nation to study other nations. Thus is promoted that reciprocity of knowledge and appreciation which is one of the best bases of peace and friendship. So we must regard it as one of the encouraging and hopeful signs of the times that people are more and more writing about others: Specifically, Americans are writing about other nations more than they ever did before, and so are men of other nations writing more and more about America and Americans.

It might be excessive to suggest that Mr. Hirst has done for Thomas Jefferson what Lord Charnwood did for Lincoln. It is possible to praise his work very highly without going so far as that. And indeed his Life of Thomas Jefferson merits cordial though not unstinted commendation, for its comprehensive view, for its painstaking industry, for its generosity of estimate, and for its lucid, often epigrammatic and always interesting style. The fact that it appears to have been written in a measure as a counterblast to Mr. Frederick Scott Oliver's essay on Alexander Hamilton probably explains some of its most striking features, of both merit and demerit. Seeing that the traditional view of Jefferson is that of one usually unsympathetic and often actually hostile to Great Britain, it is a little unexpected to find an English writer making from first to last, and especially in his international policies, at least as favorable an estimate of him as any of his most enthusiastic eulogists in America. In some important particulars, indeed, Mr. Hirst gives him greater credit than any American panegyrist of whom I have knowledge.

Certainly it is going far for an English writer to point out, with demonstrative citations, that Jefferson's conception of the Common Law of England was in some essential respects more just, logical and authentic than that of Hale and Blackstone. And when we reach the chapter which tells of his "glorious task" in drafting the Declaration of Independence, we involuntarily turn back to the title page to make sure that it is an English life of Jefferson and not a compilation of American Fourth of July orations. "Of a document," says Mr. Hirst, "which stands in the history of liberty with the Magna Charta, praise is superfluous criticism is vain;" for that document is "an imperishable expression of a great moment in the history of freedom, in the history of nationality, in the history of republican government.”

For the reason which I have already suggested, it is not surprising to find Mr. Hirst a strong champion of Jefferson in his quarrel with Hamilton. His description of the latter as possessing "French morals and English politics" is a deft touch, and far more just than some other of his reflections, not to say aspersions, upon his hero's adversary. But the antagonism between those two great men-both truly great-was so intense that it seems to be entailed, even after the lapse of a century and a quarter, upon nearly all who write about them. It is the rarest of things to find the eulogist of one restraining himself from injustice to the other. In several other particulars, too, the author seems to be unduly moved by his profound admiration for Jefferson. Thus he passes over the Genet episode so lightly as altogether to ignore the indiscretion to use no stronger term-of which even his best friends have had to admit Jefferson to have been guilty. And seeing that by general consent the foreign policy of Jefferson's second term is esteemed as the least admirable passage in his public services, it will excite comment that Mr. Hirst roundly declares that it was equal to the best of all his achievements: "Jefferson's statesmanship never shone brighter than in those dark and difficult days of the embargo policy, for which he has been so often and so unjustly assailed."

It might properly be wished that more attention had been given to various essential details of the Louisiana Purchase, which Mr. Hirst scarcely treats adequately; and it is impossible to es

cape amazement at the extraordinary performance of giving practically the entire credit for the Monroe Doctrine to Jefferson, and never so much as once mentioning John Quincy Adams in connection with it. On the other hand, there is an unnecessary dwelling upon various economic, educational and other phases of Jefferson's career. But these imperfections and faults are more than outweighed by the undoubted merits of the work; and indeed are to be noticed chiefly, perhaps, by way of contrast to the general excellence of a work which we must be glad to accept as an English estimate of a great American statesman.

From the stormy policies and passionate hatreds of Jefferson's time we have not altogether emerged. But it is at least heartening to have publicists give earnest attention to the propagation of better things. Such is the motive of Mr. Guérard's volume with the suggestive title Beyond Hatred. Taking for his major theme the contrast between American and French republicanism, or democracy, he discusses searchingly the racial, religious, lingual and other estrangements among the peoples of the earth; arguing and exhorting against them with a fervor which by contrast makes many a League of Nations propagandist seem coldly indifferent. Born in France, educated in England, naturalized in America, fighting against Germany in the World War, he loves all nations, and would have them all love each other. And however much you may dissent from some of his ways and means, the end is of course irreproachable as irreproachable as, I fear, it is unapproachable. The volume is, however, not unprofitable reading; with an almost incessant sparkling of wit, irony and epigram which suggests that the author may be a lover and disciple of Voltaire. When he tells us that America has principles and Europe has traditions, he suggests a volume in a phrase. When he says that "Germanophobia was merely a passing fever, a sharp reaction against a temporary danger; but Anglophobia is an endemic disease throughout the world," he tells us that which may be quite true, but which surely discounts hope of getting beyond hatred in our time.

Indeed, we may say that a veritable propagation and perpetuation of hatred has been established along what Mr. Stephen Graham appropriately calls by the title of his book, The Dividing

Line of Europe. It is a dividing line, extending from the shore of the Euxine to the Baltic and thence northward to the Arctic Ocean. So much for its geographical significance. But still greater is its political and social significance as a sanitary cordon, separating Russia from Western Europe. Mr. Graham, who knows his Russia thoroughly, makes clear the necessity of such a barrier, for civilization's sake, until the final curtain shall be rung down upon the hideous tragi-comedy of Bolshevism. Meantime it is perfectly clear in his vivid, vital and often fascinating views of life and speech and thought in those border regions that racial animosities and lingual differences are there being cherished and developed as never before, while the cynically immoral propaganda and intrigues of Bolshevism in France and Britain are making for enlargement and confirmation of international suspicions and hatreds.

If Mr. Graham discloses to us an Englishman's views of Europe, an equally illuminating and even more authoritative American view of much of the same field and of some other fields is presented in Mr. Child's volume, A Diplomat Looks at Europe. Mr. Child had the double advantage of being at once a trained observer and writer and the American Ambassador to Italy and incidentally an American official looker-on at the international conferences at Genoa and Lausanne. In these capacities he came into intimate and authoritative contact with all phases of international complications in Europe, and these he was able to analyze and estimate, and to expound to his American readers in a manner as authentic as it is vivacious. Moreover, it is gratifying to perceive, he continued always to look at Europe not merely as a diplomat but also as an American, loyal to those principles which Mr. Guérard, as we have seen, contrasts with the traditions of Europe. He flouts and scorns as sheer nonsense-as of course it is, despite the petty patter of our Internationalists-the pretense that America lacks a foreign policy and that it is isolated from the rest of the world. He points out convincingly that America since the World War has done much more for the peace and welfare of the world than has the League of Nations; and he exposes the folly and worse that would be involved in our entering the League. Since our greatest service to the world is to be able,

when requested, to be an impartial mediator or arbitrator between contending nations, why should we sacrifice that capacity for service by making ourself a party to all their broils?

Mr. Nicholson, in The Re-Making of the Nations, surveys the world almost literally "from China to Peru". Most attention is given, however, as is fitting, to Europe, Egypt, and Asia. In Europe a transition period prevails. Some States have shrunk, some have grown, and some have come into existence, or at least had a new birth. To what extent the changes thus far effected are finalities, or how long they will remain as they are, if nothing in this world is really a finality, is a commanding problem. The re-making to which the author refers is not, of course, merely that which has been effected by the Treaty of Versailles, but even more that which, either because of or despite that instrument, shall hereafter take place. In Asia, too, there are new States, under the Treaty of Versailles, while the old empires are being mightily stirred by political, economic and religious motives. Upon the problems of all those lands, and upon the efforts which are being made for their solution, Mr. Nicholson looks with an intelligent and impartial eye, always with an inclination toward optimism, though with full realization of the folly of "expecting all things in an hour". Void of dogmatism, he suggests rather than dictates; and for that very reason reaches, like Rasselas, a conclusion in which nothing is concluded.

In China and the West, also, Mr. Soothill strives to tell, with admirable brevity, what has occurred, leaving it to the reader to draw conclusions and to make forecasts. So far as comments are made and opinions are expressed, these are instinct with a benevolence and an optimism above all praise. A finer spirit animates no other book that I have seen upon the subject:

East sought West and West sought East. It was destined the twain should meet. They each had ideas and commodities to share. They have met and are sharing them. Friction was the inevitable result. How to ease the friction and live together in a shrinking world is the present problem. Other means than those of force must be evolved. It is the office of men of reason, of goodwill and of large statesmanship, to discover and apply them. . . . Whether we like it or not, the nineteenth century has brought East and West to each other's doors. We are no longer strangers, with all the uncouth notions pro