It is curious that in the abundant literature produced in the greatest democracy of Greece there survives no statement of democratic political theory. All the Athenian political philosophers and publicists whose works we possess were in various degrees oligarchic in sympathy. The author of the pamphlet on the ‘Constitution of the Athenians’ preserved among Xenophon's works is bitterly hostile to democracy. Socrates, so far as we can trace his views from the works of Xenophon and Plato, was at least highly critical of democracy. Plato's views on the subject are too well known to need stating. Isocrates in his earlier years wrote panegyrics of Athens, but in his old age, when he wrote his more philosophical works, became increasingly embittered against the political régime of his native city. Aristotle is the most judicial in his attitude, and states the pros and cons, but his ideal was a widely based oligarchy. With the historians of Athens, the same bias is evident. Only Herodotus is a democrat, but his views have not carried much weight, partly because of his reputation for naïveté, and partly because his explicit evidence refers to a period before the full democracy had evolved. Thucydides is hostile: in one of the very few passages in which he reveals his personal views he expresses approval of a régime which disfranchised about two-thirds of the citizens, those who manned the fleet on which the survival of Athens depended. Xenophon was an ardent admirer of the Spartan régime.

The earliest literature on the massacre of St Bartholomew, we are told, was dominated by the attempt of Henry, the Duke of Anjou, to secure the throne of Poland. Henry needed the support of the Protestants in that country—then a more considerable body than they have ever been since; and, as he had been one of the chief culprits in the massacre, the Huguenots were determined that the world should know the magnitude of the crime. He secured his election in 1573, but, in the face of the storm which was raised against him, he was supposed to have been seized with remorse in Cracow, and to have made a confession to his doctor, Miron—a narrative which we shall have to notice later.

James I succeeded to the English throne not by act of parliament, not by election, not by the will of his predecessor, but by the will of God in making him an heir. The right by which he ruled was accordingly not less than divine. Further, partly by the circumstances of his succession but in greater measure by the tradition of English public law, he exercised his rule as the absolute king of a free monarchy. On this all Englishmen were agreed. They seem to have taken great pride in the fact that their king had no superior on earth. They shared, as his free subjects, in his greatness. At this time most Europeans did not belong to politically independent nations.

In the voluminous historiography of international relations between 1871 and 1914, one of the thinnest patches is the middle 90's. Documents Diplomatiques Français had in 1939 not reached the years 1893–1900, and even now are filling this gap only slowly; the British archives for 1885–1902 were not opened until 1948; Russian material is slight. The consequent dependence of students upon Die Grosse Politik has had profound effects. French policy stands in especial need of re-examination; there is much interest in the early, vain attempts of French statesmen to end the baleful conflict with England. Mr A. J. P. Taylor has gone so far as to say that the Russian alliance was for France a means of achieving British friendship in more favourable conditions. The latest volume of French documents makes it possible to take this study further.

The Portuguese had the honour of discovering and naming the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, but it was the Dutch who first settled there in 1652 and thus began the opening up of Africa from Capetown, still the most civilized centre in the continent. During the century and a half of rule by the Dutch East India Company, the Cape Colonists dispersed themselves thinly over an area about as great as that of the United Kingdom, and then saw their country annexed by the British. After having handed over the Cape to the Dutch Government, the British took it finally in 1806 rather than risk seeing it fall into the hands of Napoleon, who had so recently failed to hold Egypt, the other halfway house to the Indian Empire of his dreams. In the course of the nineteenth century, the Cape Colony gave birth to Natal, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia. The Cape and its three earlier offshoots became a Dominion as the Union of South Africa in 1910 and, at the close of the Kaiser's War, obtained the mandate for South-West Africa. Southern Rhodesia, the Old Colony's youngest child, was subsequently given self-government.