This book (Hutchinson, 18s.) is partly a series of sketches
of women of different types and stations. All the women played some part in history ; apart from this undoubted fact, and apart from the sequence of time, there is little connexion between the Pompadour, Marie Antoinette, Charlotte Corday, and the Countess Walewska. One might bring these women together in a picture gallery, or introduce them into a large ' general history ; it is difficult to find a logical plan for a book about them, unless one chooses to isolate women as such. There is no more reason for isolating women in any history of the revolution than there would be reason for isolating men. Mr. McNair Wilson has found a connecting link of a peculiar and rather tenuous kind. He attributes the French Revolution, ultimately, to the sinister activities of financiers, bankers, and money-lenders. He describes this many-sided Revolution as " an experiment in philosophy, and a battle to the death between monarchy and money-power." With this general thesis in mind, he is able to place most, though not all, of the women in his book. Directly, or indirectly, they can be catalogued in their relation to the bankers ; wives, daughters, mistresses, agents, victims and so forth. The thesis is not altogether.ill-founded ; it can be exaggerated almost to absurdity, and if it is to carry any weight at all, it must be carefully worked out, and supported by facts. Mr. McNair Wilson makes little attempt to work out his thesis ; he lays down a number of very doubtful generalisations. He admits that historians tell a different tale about the Revolution, but he says that " few historians know anything about money." One may point out that there is such a study as economic history, and that this study includes problems of public finance, currency, banking, and fiscal systems. The study of these questions is extremely complidated, and does not lend itself to facile simplification. It lends itself even less easily to gossip, true or false, about the 'Pompadour, the Diibarry, Madame Roland, Madame Tallien, the Countess Walewska and all.
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