work, Father Thurston: perhaps he thought that a Catholic priest could not be a scholar, and that the traditions of civilisation in some way unfit a man for learning. But if he will be at the pains of turning to that controversy, he will find what proofs I advanced for my contention that place names follow language rather than race, and my citation of the Latin forms in France, and Saxon forms in parts of Britain where there could be no question of a predominantly Saxon population. (8) Mr. Randall is so flabbergasted by my very simple remark about Roman Law that he says it could only be a rhetorical flourish. He is quite wrong. It is a deliberately formed opinion with regard to the development of law not only in England but throughout Western Europe. Society declined after the breakdown of central rule from Rome. Odd, primitive customs overgrew the old civilised rule, and everywhere, from those dark ages, descend bodies of custom which begin to be revised again with the renewed study of the old civilised codes in the twelfth century. Anyone who believes that the tangle of primitive customs which you find in Wales, as in Normandy, in the Low Countries, in the Rhine valley, in the Pyrenees-everywherewas a mighty system of law developed by the unknown savages of the German forests outside the Empire, must at least produce evidence to prove his case, and I, for my part, have seen none: only guesswork. The barbarian soldiers of the Roman Empire had their codes, in which primitive customs naturally appear; but so they do wherever society sinks back from civilisation to barbarism. (9) Mr. Randall cannot bear my suggestion that the origin of the English county unit is Roman, or even pre-Roman, and he instances the Anonymous Ravennas. The argument is a strong one, though I think that the disappearance of Bishoprics is much stronger. But stronger still in my view than either, and supporting my contention, are two points to which a man must wilfully shut his eyes if he is not to recognise their value: (1) The analogy of all the rest of Roman Europe (of which Britain was a province, like any other, though in the South and East badly raided from Overseas, and in the North and West from Ireland and the Mountains); (2) the plain fact, from which there is no getting away, that there is approximate correspondence between the modern unit and the ancient unit, in the only cases present to our scrutiny : Dorset, Devon, Kent, Essex, Sussex, Norfolk and Suffolk combined, are clearly units corresponding to known tribal or regional units of the Roman time, and in the case of three even the original name has survived. REFORM CLUB. 24th November, 1925. Very faithfully yours, H. BELLOC Sir, It is a curious coincidence that the number of Mr. Belloc's specific points should be that of the Muses; but it will be a great relief to your readers to know that owing to "considerations of space "mine must not exceed the number of the Graces. (1) The question of the supposed cavalry at the battle of Stamford Bridge affords a good example of Mr. Belloc's standard of historical evidence. Taking is statement as it stands, the "fullest traditional account upon which he relies was "written down from traditions not three generations old (Snorre was probably born little more than a century after the battle)." Now, suppose that somebody born little more than a century after the battle of Trafalgar-say about 1910had written an account of it from a tradition for the existence of which his statement was the sole authority, as soon as he could write, say about 1930 or 1935. Would anybody accept that as evidence at all, even if the details were themselves probable? If so, he might also accept the Heimskringla as evidence for Stamford Bridge in spite of its inherent improbabilities. (2) The imputation contained in the words " perhaps he (that is myself) thought that a Catholic priest could not be a scholar "illustrates Mr. Belloc's methods of controversy. It may be true that I write with "noticeable violence," that I "ought not to write history," or even that in the excellent company of Sir Charles Oman I have contracted the "sceptical itch "; but to attribute to me without any ground at all an opinion that no sane person could hold is, in his own words," simply silly." Neither have I accused Mr. Belloc of incapacity, as I should have thought that my article showed clearly. My main general criticism was that he had demeaned his ample scholarship and splendid gifts by applying them to the service of ecclesiastical propaganda, and by employing the common arts of the propagandist. (3) It is cheerful to find one point at least upon which Mr. Belloc and myself appear to agree, viz., his contention that place names follow language rather than race. In fact, I find it difficult to understand how names of any kind could follow anything but language. The English-speaking peoples, the Celtic-speaking peoples, and the Danish and Norse-speaking peoples have all left indelible marks upon our place names in exactly the manner that the historical theory of the invasions leads us to predict. But the Latin-speaking people have left practically no mark at all, and this fact is supposed to countenance the view that the Roman civilization was almost entirely destroyed. Will Mr. Belloc really accept this deduction from his own premises ? the tad from men I Finally, may I welcome the announcement that Mr. Belloc has a forthcoming book upon Gibbon. It should be a pure joy, and if his to d publishers will only be kind enough to issue it in a form that will enable one to have it bound in one volume with Mr. J. M. Robertson's monograph on the same subject, our pleasure will be increased tenfold. Yours very truly, THE ATHENÆUM, 14th December, 1925. H. J. RANDALL No. 496 will be published in April, 1926. finan FOL THE immediate cause of the financial crisis in France needs little investigation. When the flower of a race has been suddenly swept away, when its Lancashire and Yorkshire have been wrecked, and when the agents of that ruin have not paid the damages, small wonder that the financial outcome is of corresponding gravity. A much more fruitful subject of study is the cure, rather than the cause, of so formidable and threatening an event. It must be said at the outset that, for France, there is a special difficulty in the way of recuperation. The Third Republic, during the fifty years of its life from its establishment up to date, has rarely pursued a sound financial policy. During the first forty years of that period up to the outbreak of the Great War the chief aim of France was to regain her full place in Europe, and this mighty effort entailed outlays of proportionate extent. These imposed too heavy a weight upon the fiscal system which France had inherited in part from the Constituent Assembly, in part from Napoleon, and in part from the statesmen of the government of Louis Philippe, and which she had omitted to bring up to date. Hence France entered the war burdened with the heaviest debt in Europe. During the next five years, from 1914 to 1918, her main financial error was to tax too little, and therefore to borrow too All rights reserved. VOL. 243. NO. 496. N much. From 1919 to 1924 her mistakes were of a somewhat different order. It was her extravagant expenditure on the reconstruction of her Devastated Departments, rather than her want of effort in taxation, which is chiefly to be criticised. Accentuated by this long accumulation of blunders, a financial crisis developed at the opening of 1924. During the two succeeding years up to date it has not been remedied. The reason why the crisis broke out in 1924 has always appeared mysterious to the statesmen of France, and M. Poincaré himself, who was the Prime Minister at that date, has recently ascribed the outbreak to " a financial campaign launched abroad " (article in Morning Post, February 8, 1926). But the secrets even of the French finance accounts cannot be concealed for ever, and thus it has gradually appeared that, if all the expenditure of 1924 be set against the total revenue, there was a deficit of 16.5 milliards, or about £194,000,000 sterling, at the average exchange of that year. It was this reality which told, or began to tell, against all concealment, and initiated that crisis which, from then till now, has principally assumed the form of a decline in the exchange value of the currency. As the year 1925 opened and proceeded, the crisis, which hitherto had been mainly financial, spread to the sphere of politics. Just prior to the Revolution of 1789, France had in turn three Ministers of Finance in the course of the single year 1787. In 1925 she enjoyed-or, more exactly, endured-the services of no less than six Ministers of Finance. M. Clémentel was overthrown in April because he had been privy to the issue of erroneous balance sheets by the Bank of France. M. de Monzie, his successor, fell at once, having been party to a plan for a species of capital levy. M. Caillaux, who came next, survived from April until October, when, on the plea that he had failed to settle the foreign debt, or to fund the short-term debt adequately, he was set aside. Then M. Painlevé, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister as well, proposed a moratorium, or partial repudiation of some of the short-term debt. Away he went. M. Loucheur was the next Finance Minister, and during his eighteen days' tenure of office in December introduced no less than eight financial measures. Only one was passed, the rest rejected, and forthwith M. Doumer stepped into M. Loucheur's shoes. M. Doumer left office at the opening of March of this year, on the defeat of his proposal for a tax on payments. Thus, during 1925 most things were tried, and up to date nothing constructive has been done to stem the financial torrent, except the passage of one of the measures of M. Loucheur for a considerable increase in direct taxation. There is a third phase which we may conceive to be contained in the future, but which has certainly not yet arrived. The crisis which has raged, first in finance and then in politics, has so far not extended its baleful shadow over the industrial and commercial life of France. On the contrary, her prosperity in these respects during the last four years has been truly remarkable. Not to mention her wonderful achievements during this period in the sphere of her own particular speciality, the textile trades, let us glance at her progress in the most depressed industry of all, that of iron and steel. In 1913 her production of pig iron was almost precisely half our own. In 1925 she far outstripped us. As regards steel, her production in 1913 was immensely below that of Great Britain. But the figure of 4,614,000 tons of steel which France produced in 1913 has risen to no less than 7,299,000 tons in 1925, a figure approximate to our own output (Economist, March 6, 1926, p. 454). A most formidable record, indeed, at a time of universal competition and of extreme depression in that department, and particularly remarkable in an industrial arena wherein the United States, Great Britain, and Germany had reigned supreme before. Nevertheless, it is certain that a nation, even so powerful as France, cannot suffer from a financial and political crisis and escape otherwise scot free. Such diseases are too catching to be successfully isolated for long. The world has witnessed with dismay the terrible epidemics of this order which have affected Germany, Austria and Russia, spreading as they do from finance to politics and thence to trade and industry. It is true that when a nation has destroyed the value of its currency, the return to sound currency is, from the surface view, not a very difficult process. There is a void which, it seems, is merely waiting to be filled. But presently the nation discovers that no other process is so full of agony and even of domestic danger. For instance, during 1925, Germany seemed to possess at length, after her long orgy of devaluation, a stable currency duly related to gold. But as it was deemed that the stabilised currency could not be maintained without a restriction of credit, |