Sandwiched between the Saint-Cyr law of 1818 and Niel's dazzling if futile effort to reform the army in 1867, the Soult law of 1832 has been sadly neglected by historians. Not only is the law a crucial piece of military legislation, but by studying its history one can trace the conservatism of the July Monarchy under the Périer Ministry.

The deep-seated hostility of the railway companies of the United Kingdom to trade unionism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is well known to students of labour history. The foundations of that hostility were two-fold. Railway companies objected to the organization of their employees by outside bodies because this was felt to endanger discipline; in consequence, directors saw the growth of collective bargaining procedures as an attempt to divide responsibility for die running of the railways, and hence as a threat to public safety, for which they, the directors, were responsible. Moreover, the large companies had strong paternalist leanings, and provided their men with many of the housing, educational, recreational and medical facilities associated with a welfare state; they expected loyalty in return, and were quick to react when this loyalty was not forthcoming. Though trade unionism on the railways can be traced back at least to 1848, none of the early organizations survived. Collective bargaining, even in its most elementary form, the presentation of petitions by elected representatives of the men, was strongly discouraged.4

Sir Charles Lucas once made the comment that ‘South African history consists largely of wars and treaties between Boers and natives’. This is an interesting generalization but one that ignores the conflicts between the British and the natives. The imperial problem in South Africa during the period of this study was the provision of an adequate defence against actual, and in some cases, imagined attack from the Bantus. To people living in British South Africa this was a real problem; up to 1854 there had been seven ‘Kaffir wars’ involving the Cape Colony alone.

As a result of the Great War, the Zionist movement came of age. For the first time since its inception as a political organization, Zionism gained a backer of international and worldwide repute. The political charter which Herzl had hawked around the chancelleries of Europe found its consummation in the Balfour Declaration. The British Empire, in its moment of supreme crisis, stamped its seal of approval on the concept of a Jewish National Home in Palestine.

The main way in which the second Home Rule Bill differed from the first was in its provision for the retention of Irish M.P.s at Westminster. Cecil Rhodes played an important part in bringing about this change, both in the way in which he obtained Parnell's support for continued Irish representation in die Imperial Parliament, and in the assistance he gave to the Liberal Party to regain power in 1892. But while most of the facts about Rhodes' only major incursion into British politics have long been well-known, his actions have been obscured; either through misunderstanding, or because they have been considered as peripheral to the more important aspects of their subjects by biographers of Parnell and Rhodes himself and by writers on the home rule crises, and so have been underestimated.

During the eighteen months which immediately preceded the general election of 1906 many workers in Britain were adversely affected by the generally stagnant state of the economy and there was a considerable amount of agitation on behalf of the unemployed, particularly in 1905. Nevertheless, the economy began to improve in November of that year and unemployment as such did not play a very important part in the election, although the Labour candidates frequently gave it a leading place in their manifestos, putting forward a great variety of remedies. These ranged from demands for the recognition of the ‘right to work’ and the eight-hour day to pleas for the creation of a labour department with ministerial status. When Unionist candidates mentioned unemployment it was usually in the wider context of tariff reform, while Liberals who bothered to refer to the subject at all generally contented themselves with a passing reference to the need to approach the problem by reforming the land laws.

One of the most fertile grounds for diplomatic and journalistic speculation in the late 1920s was the series of private meetings between Sir Austen Chamberlain and Benito Mussolini. During Sir Austen's tenure of the Foreign Secretary's portfolio, from November 1924 to June 1929, the two met five times in complete privacy, without aides or even interpreters, since both spoke fluent French. The communiqués they subsequently issued were conglomerations of clichés, stressing their personal friendship and political harmony but omitting any specific reference to the subjects discussed. It is not surprising, therefore, that rumours of secret agreements and cynical deals abounded. Indeed, Mussolini was compelled publicly to deny the widespread assumption diat he sought and received Sir Austen's approval for Italian foreign policy at these meetings,1 while Chamberlain was obliged to take his holidays in 1927 in Spain to avoid the ’ undesirable political speculation ‘ that would have followed another visit to his beloved Italy.2 The evidence of the Chamberlain Papers and the British and Italian diplomatic documents suggests that much of the speculation was very wide of the mark.3

Only at four by-elections in twentieth-century British history has there been a turnover of more than 18,000 votes: at Dudley in 1968, at Orpington in 1962, at East Fulham in 1933 and at Dartford in 1920. Dartford and Orpington have been commented upon as landmarks in the histories of the Labour and Liberal Parties respectively, and Dudley is likely to be seen as the outstanding manifestation of discontent with the economic policies of the Labour Government in the 1960s. East Fulham, however, is the most notorious of all the “boilover’ by-elections. Taking place in a decade troubled by depression and fear of war, it resulted in a National Government majority of 14,521 votes being transformed into a Labour Party majority of 4,840, on a massive swing of 26–5 per cent.

In the aftermadi of replacing Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916, David Lloyd George forged a greater change in the style of administration than in the content of the British Government's actions. Not until the spring of 1918 was he able to secure the replacement of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, ‘Wully’ Robertson, and even at that time he dared not move against the all-too-entrenched commander of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir Douglas Haig; meanwhile, die war of deadly attrition persisted in France and Flanders.

It is often suggested that the Far Eastern crisis of 1931–3 marked tlie beginning of the Second World War, that ‘the road… is now clearly visible… from the railway tracks near Mukden to the operations of two bombers over Hiroshima and Nagasaki’. In many eyes, too, this episode was also crucial for die League of Nations and the cause of collective security, an opportunity to vindicate the peace-keeping machinery of 1919 which, had it been taken, might have proved decisive in preventing the slide into international anarchy which followed. ‘This has been the vital test for the League,’ Philip Noel-Baker wrote to Gilbert Murray at the time, ’-– and the greatest opportunity it has ever had, especially in view of U.S.A. cooperation’. When Japan had triumphed nearly two years later, he saw the whole structure of organized international co-operation as being ‘in grave danger’, and the League as ‘never having sunk to so low an ebb in influence and prestige’.