Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/771
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BRIEFER MENTION
669
An Irishman Looks at His World, by George A. Birmingham (12mo, 307 pages; Doran), carries the reader into a temperate mental climate where the winds of doctrine are silent and the dust of controversy no longer threatens the eye. The method is expository; the author's judgements are equitable; and the conclusion is a fling at those who have created an Irish Problem by confining themselves to the political problem of Ireland. "We Irishmen, all of us, are spending most energy on what matters least, the form of the State; and far too little energy on what matters most, the making of men, that education which goes on continuously from the cradle to the grave."
The Opium Monopoly, by Ellen N. La Motte (12mo, 84 pages; Macmillan), is one of the best arguments yet advanced against the mandatory system pieced together at Paris. With personal observation and official records at her service, the author shows that Great Britain is benevolently drugging to death most of the subject races entrusted to her care.
The Monroe Doctrine and the Great War, by Arnold Bennett Hall (16mo, 177 pages; McClurg, Chicago), is an admirable summary of the foundation of the doctrine, its evolution, and its relation to the League of Nations. The author believes that "when all the criticisms of the Monroe Doctrine have been examined . . . most of them will be met by more tactful and diplomatic methods of its assertion, a scrupulous and sympathetic regard for the dignity and rights of Latin American republics, and the abandonment of the spirit and idea of the Umted States hegemony in Pan-American affairs."
The War With Mexico: 1846-1848, by Justin H. Smith (2 vols., 8vo, 1192 pages; Macmillan), presents an elaborate, but not very plausible, justification of the policy of the United States government in this conflict. The author contends that Mexico had systematically violated American rights for many years before the war and scouts the theory that the annexationist ambitions of the Southern slave-owners exercised any appreciable influence. And his final conclusion is that the war was a rather good thing for both countries!