The final blow appears to have fallen on June seventh, when, according to Di Cellere, Wilson personally delivered to Orlando a counter-proposal to the Italian demands. Italy was to be deprived of the Island of Cherso, which would be incorporated in the new buffer state of Fiume; Sebenico would go to the Jugoslavs and Zara be made "something free". This, according to the diarist, was "more or less Trumbich's program". The diary stops abruptly on June nineteenth after a record of Di Cellere's growing bitterness over his treatment by his superiors and of his urgent request to be allowed to return to Washington and there be relieved of his diplomatic duties. This request was refused even though it was known that President Wilson desired the Italian ambassador to go back with him. A few days after, the Orlando Cabinet went down to defeat in the Italian Parliament. With the advent of Nitti to power Di Cellere knew that thenceforth it would be a fight without quarter. And if we accept all that is set forth in the book which is the frame for the diary herein summarized, the fight against him was certainly merciless. Those who knew him when he finally came back to Washington were struck by the sadness of the man much more than by the disappointment of the diplomat. Without open warning, on October 12, 1919, the then foreign minister, Signor Tittoni, cabled Di Cellere to arrange for the early arrival of his successor in Washington. To this he promptly attended without ceasing his labors to break the deadlock over Fiume by finding a plan of settlement which President Wilson might consider favorably. But the disease which had been upon him for some time past now made rapid progress under the great strain of those days; an operation seemed the only hope and he made ready for it. Before the surgeons could begin, a sudden hemorrhage killed him. His last official message to the Italian Foreign Minister reads like the brief valedictory of a faithful servant: "I have furnished Lansing all complementary data. Am seriously ill and must undergo a surgical operation. Have authorized Baron Valentino. to act between Your Excellency and Lansing ". IRVINGTON, N. Y. GINO SPERANZA REVIEWS A History of the United States. Volume V. The Period of New York, Students of American history have come to look forward to the appearance of a new volume of Professor Channing's History of the United States with something of the same anticipation with which Englishmen of two generations ago awaited a new novel by Thackeray or Dickens. The Harvard scholar has been at work for more than a quarter of a century on the immense task of writing our history from the days of Columbus-a task which seems incredibly ambitious in these days of cooperative historical production. Professor Channing's fifth volume, entitled The Period of Transition, covers the ground from the end of the War of 1812 to the end of the War with Mexico. The author has made a radical departure from the method of his first four volumes, in that he devotes half of his book to a survey of economic and social conditions in the United States from 1815 to 1850. Only with chapter ten, at page 307, does he resume the political narrative where he had left it at the close of volume four. A precedent for this extensive survey may be found in the first six chapters of Henry Adams' History of the United States in the Administration of Jefferson and Madison; but there is this significant difference: while Adams sums up the social conditions of the country at the opening of the nineteenth century as a point of departure for his narrative, Channing runs his comments on such topics as westward navigation, the labor movement, the plantation system, religion, education and literature, all through the period of his narrative, and, indeed, in some instances (pp. 182, 183, 257) far beyond. This method causes some embarrassment to the student. He cannot avoid the impression of repetition in the second half of the book; for it is as impossible to deal with the social and economic features of the period without reference to the political narrative as it is to treat the political narrative without noticing the social and economic factors. At times one has the feeling of reading two books in one. For example, in chapter two the story of westward migration is traced down to the middle of the century, and the author returns, in chapter fifteen, to the subject of "Western Lands and Settlements after 1840". Chapter five, on "The Plantation System and Abolitionism", deals with the disaffection in South Carolina (p. 160), to which we return in more detail in chapter thirteen on "South Carolina and Nullification". The labor troubles in Jackson's administration are dealt with in chapter four, and the rest of the topics of the administration in chapter twelve. The index reveals Dr. Thomas Cooper as a champion of states rights on page 291, and again, in the same rôle, on page 415. "The Mormons" is the heading of both pages 237 and 493. The range of choice of topics in a survey of social and economic conditions is so large that it is difficult to find a footing for specific criticism. The author is tempted to indulge his permanent or passing interests in the selection of his material. We can well imagine that another writer than Channing would put more emphasis on labor unions and less on religious communities, or would begrudge affording two pages to an incident (Pittsburg, pp. 80, 81), when there are so few pages to devote to the principle. But there is no arguing with tastes-and Professor Channing has a remarkable aptitude for the acquisition and exploitation of curious sources in the shape of pamphlets, sermons, letters, and the like. The student may have misgivings at times that the particular matter which he is reading is not worth the space given to it by Professor Channing, but there is no doubt that the matter is presented in a fascinating way. Indeed, the first half of the book, in spite of its rather arbitrary selection of material, seems to the reviewer superior to the second half in originality of attack and freshness of treatment. Perhaps it is too much to ask originality and freshness in the presentation of our political history from 1815 to 1848. The big topics, like the tariff, nullification, the second bank, the Missouri Compromise, the Monroe Doctrine, Texas, and the Mexican War, have been so thoroughly worked out by McMaster, Schouler, Burgess (whom, singularly, Channing does not mention), and a host of writers of monographs, that there seems to be little more to be said about them. Professor Channing tells the story in orthodox fashion, with skilful arrangement to fit his limited space of 300 pages, and with careful documentation. On a few points, such as his rather favorable judgment of Jackson in the matter of removals from office (p. 389 et seq.) and his sympathy for the American position in the Mexican War (p. 550 et seq.), Channing departs from the traditional view. He also finds time now and then for a very illuminating digression or summary, like his pages on the farmer and the banker (p. 434 et seq.) and his exposition of our strained relations with Great Britain in Monroe's presidency (p. 330 et seq.). On the other hand, the exigencies of space, joined to a native inclination to a concise, and even laconic, style, sometimes lead the author to a seriously incomplete statement of important events. For example, he speaks of Canning's visible loss of interest in the Monroe Doctrine after some conversations with Rush, and assigns as a rather cryptic "probable" reason for Canning's coolness that "he had used such assertions as Rush had felt himself willing to make on the general theme of French interference in America to coerce the French government into holding its hands or, at all events, into not doing anything" (p. 344). But in place of this vague conjecture, which can connote little to the student, Channing might have cited the promise given to Canning by the French minister at London, Count Polignac, on October 9, 1823, that the French government would not interfere in Spanish America to restore the revolted republics to Bourbon rule. The vacillating behavior of Henry Clay on the subject of the annexation of Texas (p. 544) could have been explained more clearly by some discussion of the choice of the annexationist Polk instead of the anti-annexationist Van Buren as the candidate of the Democratic party in 1844. Again, the defeat of Clay in 1844 is dismissed with the conventional statement that " Birney drew enough votes away from the Whig electors in New York to give the electoral vote of that state to Polk and thereby made him President" (p. 545). This is not an adequate account of the election. Garrison has shown in his volume on Westward Extension in the "American Nation Series" (p. 137 et seq.) that the issue was a much more complicated one than the simple inroad of the Birney forces on the Whig vote of New York, and that Clay might well have carried New York and still have been defeated if he had failed to secure Kentucky and Tennessee. In an elementary textbook such points as these must often be omitted for lack of space; but one feels the lack of proper qualifications and explanations in a work as exhaustive and authoritative as Channing's. There are a few points on which the reviewer would take issue with the author. In the light of the fierce debates and defiances over the Missouri Compromise is it not granting a moratorium of a dozen years to say that "the failure of the anti-slavery movement in Virginia in 1832 . . . inflamed the abolitionists at the North, and pushed the two portions of the country farther apart " (p. 145)? Conversely, in view of the rapid formulation of the pro-slavery states rights doctrine by Calhoun, Dew, Harper and others, about 1830, is it not premature to say that in the presidency of James Monroe the Southerners "developed the solidarity of society to the southward of Mason's and Dixon's line that was to become apparent to everyone in 1850" (p. 307)? Certainly it is premature to speak of the Whigs in the presidential campaign of 1832 (p. 443), and misleading to say that "the Whigs put forward as their candidate General William Henry Harrison of Ohio" in 1836 (p. 458). There was no regular Whig nominee that year. The new party hoped to attract enough votes for "favorite sons" in various sections of the country to prevent a majority for Van Buren and throw the election into the House. Fulton was by no means the first man "to apply steam to the propulsion of boats" (p. 2); Eli Whitney did not "perfect" the cotton-gin (p. 121); not many critics, we think, would agree that "Ralph Waldo Emerson was the clearest thinker that the world has ever seen" (p. 304); many historians would question whether "Crawford, . . . had he been well, would probably have been elected" in 1824 (p. 354), and, indeed, Channing himself states three pages later that "long continuance in office and long-continued intriguing for the presidency had greatly diminished his [Crawford's] hold upon workers and voters" (p. 357). In cataloguing the tariff acts after the second war with England, Channing omits those between 1816 and 1824 (p. 72), and speaks only of the tariff act of 1832 as nullified by the South Carolinian Ordinance (p. 429). On page 359 Channing attributes the good feeling between Jackson and Adams in the election of 1824 to the fact that Adams had defended "the General's Florida deeds in 1818"; yet on page 424 he says that Jackson believed that it was Calhoun who had defended him, and that only some time after 1824, but exactly when cannot be stated . . . those around Jackson began to hear suggestions that it was Calhoun who had been Jackson's enemy in 1818." These statements are confusing. If criticisms and queries seem to bulk large in this review, they do not signify any lack of appreciation of the consistently high character of Professor Channing's work. Students of American history owe the author a great debt of gratitude for his fruitful devotion to an amazingly exacting task, and are well paid, with this new volume, for the patience in which Professor Channing's conscientious workmanship obliges them to possess their souls. DAVID S. MUZZEY |