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can company has reached a degree of concentration surpassing that attained by the German combination, he doubts if its monopoly power is as great. Notwithstanding the control of the principal sources of raw material which the Steel Corporation enjoys, it is subject to considerable competition from independent concerns. The author intimates that its power may be reduced if the tariff on raw and crude material should be lowered or abolished and independent companies are enabled to rely on foreign ore and coal-a matter of considerable present interest in view of the recent testimony on the tariff taken in Washington. It is also, according to the writer, more difficult to purchase a controlling share in a formidable competing corporation under the American system than it would be to secure its coöperation in a syndicate under the German system. Dr. Gutmann, while recognizing the splendid organization of the Steel Corporation, doubts if it has secured as great technical efficiency as has the German Steel Syndicate.

WASHINGTON STATE COLLEGE.

A. BERGLUND.

La Vie politique dans les deux mondes. Edited by ACHILLE ~ VIALLATE. Paris, Felix Alcan, 1908.-xv, 696 pp.

Fahrbuch des öffentlichen Rechts. Edited by JELLINEK LABAND and PILOTY. Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1908.-x, 669 pp.

Wirtschaftspolitische Annalen. By FRIEDRICH GLASER. Berlin, J. G. Cotta's Nachfolger, 1908.-xxxvi, 500 pp.

Die Weltwirtschaft: ein Fahr- und Lesebuch. I. Theil, Internationale Ubersichten; II. Theil, Deutschland; III. Theil, Das Ausland. Edited by E. VON HALLE. Berlin, Teubner, 1907.—vi, 368; viii, 284 ; vi, 288 pp.

At the opening of the twentieth century, when the world has become a great economic unity and momentous changes are occurring hourly even in the most ancient institutions, it is an alert teacher who does not find himself constantly talking about "contemporary" ministries that are dissolved and gone, statutes that have been repealed, economic policies that have been abandoned and cherished doctrines that, if not obsolete, are obsolescent. Bewildered as he is by the ceaseless grind of the printing press, he ought to welcome heartily these new attempts on the part of French and German scholars to give systematic and authoritative guidance to our contemporary history so feverishly in the

making. For general purposes, the most noteworthy of the three enterprises is the French annual published under the direction of M. Viallate, supported by a corps of eminently qualified assistants more or less intimately associated with the School of Political Sciences at Paris. In order to include most of the parliamentary activities, the volume covers the twelve months from October 1, 1906, to September 30, 1907; it is prefaced by an eloquent introduction by M. Leroy-Beaulieu ; and it opens with a general survey of the international political situation from the pen of M. Tardieu. The various countries of the world are then taken up seriatim, and their domestic history is chronicled in a manner that commands confidence and excites admiration by its clearness and discrimination. The chief international agreements are catalogued and calendared, and the economic tendencies of the world are succinctly reviewed. A full analytical table and a careful index facilitate the discovery of any fact regarding which one may desire information. It is impossible within the limits of this review to give a sufficiently impressive notion of the excellence of the work. It is to be commended to all students of contemporary history for its brevity, pointedness, arrangement, proportion and good temper.

The second volume of the Jahrbuch published under the high auspices of Professors Jellinek, Laband and Piloty partakes more of the character of an annual register of public law than its predecessor (reviewed in this journal, vol. xxiii, p. 177), and a steady improvement in this respect is promised in the preface. This will be gratifying to students, for it was to be feared that the Jahrbuch might be encumbered with special articles which, however excellent, more properly belong in the Archiv für öffentliches Recht. Professor Laband reviews the German imperial legislation for the year 1907, and this is followed by a survey of important developments in public law in Prussia, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, Hesse and Hamburg. Recent legislation of Belgium, Greece, Finland and Denmark (including the new Danish bill dealing with the problem of unemployment) is summarized. The separation of church and state in France is treated in a long and splendidly documented paper, both timely and well balanced. From the pen of Professor Ulbrich we have two articles on the new Austrian electoral law and the recent economic readjustments between Austria and Hungary. Professor Siotto-Pintor sketches the constitutional evolution of Italy from 1893 to 1907; Professor Posada puts us au courant with Spanish politics of the present day; Dr. Steinbach does the same for Hungarian constitutional law; Dr. Schlessinger cuts a way through the tangled institutional development of Russia during the last troublesome

years; and Professor Huber discusses the second Hague Conference. The editors are to be congratulated on the intrinsic merits of this volume and on its advance over the first.

The political economist, growing ever busier with problems of taxation, finance and social policy, will find helpful guidance as to the most recent happenings in Glaser's Wirtschaftspolitische Annalen, now in its second year. This work is not a balanced survey of the whole world after the fashion of the Vie politique, nor a collection of articles like the Jahrbuch, but a register of contemporary events arranged in chronological order and carefully indexed. All countries are included within its view, but more than one-half of the book is devoted to Germany, while the United States gets less than thirty pages. Nevertheless, the volume is an excellent key to the study of the important features of social legislation for the year, the economic measures considered or acted upon by governmental authorities, the social policies of various political parties and semi-political associations and matters of a kindred nature.

Scientific work in economics and social economy is further facilitated by the Weltwirtschaft prepared under the direction of Dr. Ernst von Halle by a large number of eminent specialists. This truly monumental annual falls into three parts: (1) a general review of world politics, social policy, production, intercommunication, insurance, finance, mechanics, poor laws and industrial legislation; (2) a detailed study of all branches of German industry; (3) special studies of economic progress in the various countries of the world during the year 1906, written by scholars possessing the requisite intimate knowledge. Obviously no reviewer can pass judgment upon the vast mass of descriptive and statistical materials brought together in this work, but it seems that nothing of importance can have escaped so intensive a study of the world's business. Whoever would know the dividend of the United States Steel Corporation, the total colonial trade of France, the exports of Java, the public-works expenditures in Roumania, the state of railway construction in the Cameroons, the number of German workers affected by strikes in 1906 and a thousand other things of economic character, will find in these pages either full information or satisfactory guidance.

CHARLES A. BEARD.

BOOK NOTES

The second Hague Conference has caused the production of several books on international arbitration. Among those which have recently appeared in the English language we note: International Arbitration as a Substitute for War between Nations by Russell Lowell Jones (St. Andrews, Scotland, University Press, 1908; 269 pp.). Mr. Andrew Carnegie, the rector of St. Andrew's University, offered five prizes for essays on this topic, and the present volume received the first prize. It is written in a stilted, disconnected fashion and in a tone that is excessively complacent. The writer claims a "measure of originality" in treating his topic historically. He has consulted a large number of the writers on arbitration, and he has freely quoted their opinions. The book was written before the second Hague Conference completed its work.

Two Hague Conferences (Boston, Ginn and Company, 1908; 516 pp.) by William I. Hull, an American journalist who was at The Hague during the second conference, is written for the teachers of this country, to whom the National Educational Association has commended the careful study of " the work of the Hague Conferences and of the peace associations." Mr. Hull's method of presentation is one of description and assertion; the "whys and wherefores are generally omitted, as is also the historical setting of the several points discussed and acted upon by the Hague conferences. Though the book contains a clear statement of the happenings at the conferences, it is doubtful whether it will prove interesting or intelligible to the majority of American teachers; for unfortunately their work and experience have not been such as to give them an understanding of the present problems of international law and diplomacy. No effort is made by Mr. Hull to indicate collateral reading on any of the points discussed.

Texts of the Peace Conferences at The Hague, 1899 and 1907 (Boston, Ginn and Company, 1908; 447 pp.) is edited, with an introduction, by James Brown Scott, the solicitor for the Department of State and the technical delegate to the second Hague Conference. This will be a useful volume. It contains in parallel columns in French and English the conventions, declarations and resolutions formulated at the Hague conferences; a table of the signatures and reservations of the several states, indicating the final vote given in each case; the official corre

spondence relating to the calling of the two conferences, and several documents which are by nature related to the Hague convention, e. g., the declaration of Paris, Lieber's instructions, the Geneva conventions of 1864, 1868 and 1906, the declaration of St. Petersburg, 1868, the Brussels project of 1874, the laws of war on land recommended by the Institute of International Law in 1880 and the convention of 1904 regarding hospital ships. The whole is well indexed. There is only one defect; the extent to which these finely formulated instruments have become by ratification binding upon the several states is not indicated. The interesting account of the two conferences by Dr. Scott which appeared in the second volume of the American Journal of International Law is reprinted as an introduction. The secretary of state, Mr. Root, points out in a prefatory note that the test of the achievement of an international conference must always be "not merely what it has accomplished, but also what it has begun, and what it has moved forward. . . . Each necessary step in the process is as useful as the final act which crowns the work and is received with public celebration."

Under the title The Laws of War on Land (London, Clarendon Press, 1908; 149 pp.), Thomas Erskine Holland has painstakingly formulated into a code the written and unwritten "laws" which appear to him to govern the conduct of land warfare. Mr. Holland is the recognized authority upon this topic of international law; his "handbook", issued by the British government in 1904 "for the information of his Majesty's land forces" corresponded in a general way to Lieber's "Instructions issued by the United States in 1863. In an introductory chapter, Mr. Holland brings down to date the chapter entitled "The Progress towards a Written Law of War" which appeared in 1898 in his Studies in International Law. The process of systematizing the laws of war by international discussion which commenced with the Convention of Geneva in 1864 and which has "since intermittently continued," says Mr. Holland, "has, for the present culminated in the results achieved by the Peace Conference of 1907." The sources from which he gathers his written law are: (1) the Hague convention number IV of 1907, "concerning the laws and customs of war on land"; (2) the règlement annexed thereto; (3) the Hague convention number III of 1907," concerning commencement of hostilities"; (4) the Geneva convention of 1906, " for improvement of the condition of the wounded and sick in armies in the field"; (5) the St. Petersburg declaration of 1868, "concerning the prohibition of explosive bullets in time of war"; (6) the three Hague declarations of 1899 concerning respectively the launching of explosives from balloons,

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