Shorter notices
Metternich's Europe : Selected Documents edited by Mark Walker (Macmillan 84s). This volume in the Documentary History of Western Civilisation has often a very contemporary ring. Metternich was an enlightened conserva- tive whose disapproval of the role of change and fears of its effects on the Hapsburg em- pire he served led him into the repressiveness which, in the end, proved self-defeating and led to the revolutions of 1848. Professor Walker's interesting selection ends with revolu- tion imminent, with Alexandre Thomas's valedictory prophecy of 1846 ('Your enemy is the inevitable') and de Tocqueville's warning to the French Chamber of Deputies ('we are sleeping on a volcano); it is a logical ending to the period allotted him by the editors of the whole series, though a regrettable one. Om would have welcomed Metternich's views on the events that displaced him.
Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919- 1939. First Series, volume XVI edited by Douglas Dakin (iimso 110s). This, the latest volume in the official publication of British diplomatic documents, covers the period 1921-22 in relation to Germany. Disarmament, reparations, military control and the whole question of Polish claims to Upper Silesia and the plebiscite, form the meat of the book. They were questions which divided Britain and France, both governments and publics, to a degree from which Adolf Hitler was to benefit. The collection will be of considerable use to specialists. The amateur is likely to feel drowned in detail----a pity, since the Foreign Office under Curzon and Crowe was a robust organisation whose trenchant minutes make profitable reading even in this faint-hearted and self-doubting age.
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