“The new linking up of all parts of the world inevitably affects our view of history. In a sense, world history has just begun. Before, it was the history of more or less isolated groups: now, we must think in wider terms, we must emerge from our nation-caves into the wider world of to-day and to-morrow.'’ In these admirable sentences the authors of the most recent World History sum up their survey of human history from palæolithic beginnings to the Manchurian question, with which they bring it to a close: most fittingly, as they say, “since of all the problems of world history that of the relations of East and West, of European and Asiatic peoples, is perhaps the most important for the future of mankind.”

Messrs. R. Flenley and W. N. Weech have indeed provided us with a World History in a single volume, which compares most favourably with any similar attempt made hitherto. It not only tells the whole story—which is not merely one of conquests and defeats, but of cultural development, social changes, artistic and scientific achievements—but it tells it impartially and tells it remarkably well: concise and encyclopædic though it be, it can be read with real pleasure and sustained interest from cover to cover.