war, being coupled, as I have indicated, with the question of what voice the colonies shall have. Yet to admit this is not to agree with Mr. Philip Snowden when he says:

The demand for publicity in foreign affair is one phase of the age-long struggle for democratic liberty. It is a demand for the extension to the sphere of internationalism of the principle of popular government, which, whatever its weaknesses may be, is manifestly the only form of government possible with the advance of education and modern economic and social developments. The destinies of nations have been entrusted to kings, nobles, and plutocrats, and they each and all failed. We must now trust the people.

This would assume that the English people have been impotent; but has such been the case? There exists essentially the same check on foreign policy that there is on internal policy: Parliament can overthrow a government of whose policy it disapproves and the people can express their wishes through their chosen representatives. A great many Englishmen were no doubt stupefied when they found that their country must embark on a war, but had they a right to feel aggrieved? Are not the facts that the people could have known but did not care about Britain's engagements? In 1870, Gladstone, the most pacific of Prime Ministers, declared that England would go to war with the power that violated Belgian territory; the terms of the Treaty of 1839 were well known, for it was reinforced during the Franco-Prussian War; its burdens were fully realized; there were international crises in 1874, 1887, and 1911, and that there was some publicity and some popular control following the Panther incident is evident from the fact that the people clearly expressed the opinion that there should be no secret engagements pledging the country to fight in behalf of any power. From then until the outbreak of the war, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary repeatedly told the House of Commons that there were no secret engagements.

The trouble has been not with the lack of machinery, not with the limitations on debate, not with the refusal of the Cabinet to disclose negotiations while in progress, but with the people themselves who did not care. Why, parliamentary candidates

in England have been advised not to discuss foreign affairs; the constituencies were ignorant and uninterested. And as for the knowledge of the candidates themselves, Mr. Ponsonby, who makes out the best case for democratic control, admits that "since the death of Lord Percy there has been no one on the Front Opposition Bench in the Commons, with the exception of Mr. Balfour, who has any special knowledge of foreign affairs, or any experience of foreign administration." There has in fact been tolerably substantial agreement between the parties as to the foreign policy, and the British Cabinet and the British people, far from manifesting any desire to get out of the Belgian guarantee and the Triple Entente, actually suffered the land forces of the country to be reduced and did not insist upon that absolutely essential correlation of foreign policy and armament which is so ably shown to be necessary by the author of Ordeal by Battle and by Mr. Norman Angell in some of his American lectures, and which was fully preached to the people by Lord Roberts.

It is anomalous that the most unimportant bill should require the consent of Parliament, while treaties do not; and it is only by the grace of the Foreign Secretary that such an undertaking as a general arbitration treaty is submitted to the Commons for discussion. It seems desirable that some change should be made, perhaps through a committee, perhaps in some other manner, realizing of course that a large number of international agreements attempt to remove causes of quarrel and require secrecy until they are practically completed. But constitutional changes are unimportant compared with the lack of interest on the part of the people. There must be "a public opinion well informed on the general position of foreign affairs, enlightened by much more definite ideas than we now have of right and wrong in international dealings, and, above all, keenly alive to the overwhelming importance of this aspect of state action," for, while the judgment of working classes is soundest on moral questions, it is by no means true that democracies have been pacifically inclined.

Secret diplomacy has failed; we never hear of its many successes; but this, its most recent failure, is so stupendous as

to overbalance every triumph. It is futile, in arguing for popular control, to digress, as do Messrs. Morel, Neilson, and Hayward, on tortuous discussions as to Germany's liability; it is futile to insist that had not the secret system kept the people from being fully informed, there would have been no war, and that democratic control will make for continued peace. Reforms there should and must be, but the first and most important is Education. This can be effected with no constitutional change. In domestic affairs, through somewhat hard experiences, the people have learned that great power without knowledge does not avail them as much as knowledge with less power. The people "are called upon now to widen their horizon, and to apply the democratic conception of education to the new problems which have arisen owing to the part which Great Britain is now playing in the affairs of Europe"-in a word, to see that British foreign policy is kept in consonance with their own intelligent wishes. That is possible under the present system; it would only be easier with parliamentary control.

University of Virginia.

LINDSAY ROGERS.

BOOK REVIEWS

THE NEXT STEP IN DEMOCRACY. By W. S. Sellers. New York: The Macmillan Company. $1.50.

The initial chapter of this book is entitled "The Spirit of Modern Socialism," and the final one "Can we Universalize Democracy?" Thus socialism is to be the next stept in democracy and democracy is socialism. This suggests strongly a march in a circle, although the author carefully lays down as his major premise that socialism is a "movement." According to Mr. Sellars, then, socialism is, in a word, equality (pp. 16, 214, 219, 246). Those that have shall give up to those that have not; the skilful shall step only with the clumsy. Parents shall not produce a child with better equipment than another. "Socialism is essentially a daring challenge to the dominant notions of justice characteristic of present-day society." No need to add that "the socialist absolutely refuses to be the timid sycophant of things as they are."

"Private profit" is roundly abused, evidently under the erroneous impression that it is gained at the expense of some individual or of some group of human beings; whereas, in fact, profit is the measure of achievement in skill, self-restraint, and wisdom, and it is drawn not out of one's neighbor, but from the resources of the earth, from the sun, and through the prevention of waste.

Another erroneous statement should be corrected. "Legal justice," our author declares, "is not interested in the individual, but in the maintenance of order" (p. 167). As a matter of fact it is only before the law that men are equal and only through the order thereby gained come the equality and the freedom which they enjoy. Of course, however, if the socialist directs his attack against some institution, such as property, he will find grievous faults with the society that protects the object of his dislike.

The frequent recurrence of loose statements in the book calls for protest. For example: "Whatever breaks down national barriers and habits prevents isolation and quickens the social

pulse"; "machinery is more stimulating to the mind than the hoe or hand looms." To support such a view he cites the example of the Roman Empire which ended in isolation and stagnation, giving place to feudalism, which was eminently based on inequality. On the other hand, the difference between the hand loom and the power loom is largely one of quantity not of quality. But how equality can lead to anything else than inaction and stagnation the author does not make clear.

On the concluding page the author pleads for a wide and inconspicuous charity. No objection can be raised to this for the individual; the evil of it appears when it becomes universal or compulsory. HUBERT H. S. AIMES.

FILIBUSTERS AND FINANCIERS: THE STORY OF WILLIAM WALKER AND HIS ASSOCIATES. By William O. Scroggs. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1916. Pp. 408. $2.50.

This book is entertainingly written and is a contribution of value to the knowledge of our relations with Latin America about the middle of the last century. But the chief interest of Professor Scroggs's story lies in the fact that he has caught and reproduced the Westward-Ho spirit of the forties and fifties. He shows that the filibuster of those days was more than a buccaneer: he was also a missionary of civilization, a pioneer of that "manifest destiny" in which so many of our forefathers believed.

Filibustering was partly that conflict, common to all periods of history, between a superior or more energetic people and an inferior or less energetic one. "From the point of view of the American aborigine even the Pilgrims and Puritans were filibusters." In the light of this larger synthesis, and backed up by a thorough study of the services, Professor Scroggs interprets anew the career of William Walker, the greatest of the filibusters. He shows that Walker, in attempting to swing himself up to the dictatorship in Nicaragua, utterly repudiated any idea of annexation of his conquests to the United States. Walker cannot

therefore be regarded as a mere propagandist of slavery extension.

S. L. WARE.