The New York herald., 1922-07-02
A REVIEW.
By ALLEN w. PoRTERFIELD.

5s5 pages mention is made of
but two women. Queen Eliza
beth of England and Christine Glib
bons. age Il. daughter of the author.
On the very last page there is a com
piete i.st OF books by Mr.. Gibbons.
fourteen in all, and all. as the titles
indicate. lead up to this. his fifteenth
volume. This is reassuring; 1t shows
that the writer Is no upstart More
over. in his preface he speaks as one
annoyed. He stakes off the whole
kingdom of knowledge. divides it up
into so many lots and then bids the
anthropologist work the subject Of
race, the diplomatist that Of the
technic of dealings among nations.
the demographer that of population
and so on through long series. And
then. by way of justifying the SUBJ
ject of world politics as a distinct
branch of political science. he cries
out in the voice of a man in a mob
asking that his uniformed friends
leave him alone: that they do not
encroach upon HIS field; that they
refrain from expressing opinions on
a subject about which their knowl-
edge is inadequate.
Mr.. Gibbons even becomes cate
gorical il not personal He claims
that professors of philosophy. math-
ematics. astronomy. languages. en-
gineering. chemistry. medicine, the
ology and law have written books
and articles and have lectured on
problems of world politics without
having acquainted themselves with
even the rudiments of the subject"
This he deplores. But though much
to be commended for attempting TO
raise his field to the rank OF i
science. he Is beaten at the going. III
his great volume proves one point
more clearly than another. it is that
world politics and human nature are
one and inseparable.
He himself states that all wars are
fought in self-aggrandizemen and
self-defense. That is human natures
code And hence. to borrow from Mr..
Gibbons's own illustration, the man
who has been in Algiers may be able
to speak quite intelligently about
Algerian politics. whereas the man
who has been in a Gothic cathedral
could not. other things being equal.
hold his own in a debate with a vet
eran student of architecture.
The same principle is seen in edi-
torial writing. Any man who can
write at all can write acceptable edi-
torials on things in general and
where nothing more is involved than
personal opinions. The most bril-
liant editorial writer on the other
hand is fioored and fioundered when
he steps of into some special field in
which he is neither trained nor doc
ulnCflNCu ncAC IL
bert Adams Gibbons comes in-he
knows the facts. He probably knows
more about world politics to-day than
any other man writing on the sub
ject in the English language.
Books sometimes fall into a re-
viewers hands which he tackles with
a.-f1fr,, e. tba;- r,.,,r, -,tra. - xra,t =.
them for his private library. This is
my position in this case. Packed
with facts as this volume is-and
they were assembled at first hand by
an expert feel that this treatise
will tell me all I need TO know about
world politics as long as l live. or at
least until the next last war"
The book is arranged like a great
Bach fugue. The first three chap
ters. showing. respectively. that world
politics began in the NapOleOnic era.
that the application of steam power
In transportation gave rise to na-
tiOnalism. and that the rise of world
Powers began in 1s4S. constitute the
three basic movements on which va
riations are played throughout the
remaining forty-six chapters. French
colonial expansion (1S30-l9O0) is
completed by page 81. You feel re-
heved TO think that you have
reached modern times so soon. only
10 fall back to 1915 in the fifth chap
ter on British colonial expansion.