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'he White Paper on United States relations with China/ released by the State Department on August 5, is the product of many factors. The two most im? portant are the recent debacle of American policy in China, and the conflict between the Department and a critical segment of Congressional, press, and other opinion?largely Republican?as to where the respon? sibility for the debacle lies and what the United States should do next.

The collection of George Peabody papers in the Essex Institute of Salem, Massachusetts, illustrates the value of private business correspondence in the study of economic history. Writers on the history of American commerce have complained of the lack of available business records, and students of capital movements have looked for more detailed information. The papers of George Peabody, merchant and financier, include material both on the importation of goods to the United States and on long-term investments during the period from 1830 to 1857.

G ENERALLY speaking, the decline in quality of paper can be attributed to the following factors: (i) increasing use of paper, which has lowered standards; (2) the fact that the public is not educated to demand better-grade paper; (3) production of paper by machine; and (4) low prices, which necessitate the use of cheaper materials. Basically, however, the reasons for this decline are: (i) damage to the fibers in the process of machine work; (2) use of minerals, especially the filler; (3) excessive bleaching, particularly by means of calcium hypochlorite; (4) use of alum; and (5) discovery of mechanical wood pulp by Friedrich Gottlob Keller in I845. In the period of transition from handmade to machine-made paper, the problem of upholding the high standards for papermaking arose. The resultant loss of quality in the properties of paper, especially that used in newspapers, called for a united effort on the part of those concerned over this decline. This effort may be traced from the beginnings made by Ernst Hartig and Fritz Hoyer in i88I and the foundation in I884 of a division for paper-testing in the present-day Materialpruifungsamt (Institute for the Testing of Materials), BerlinDahlem, to the year I886, when Martens succeeded in establishing the first standards for printing-paper. These standards led to the extended science of paper-making as recorded in the work of Wilhelm Herzberg, Papierpriifung. The question of paper-testing was studied by Delisle in France, Franz Ehrle in Italy, the Library Association' and H. M. Stationery Office in England, the Committee on the Deterioration of Paper in the Department of Agriculture in the United States, and, finally, it

Every generation has interpreted the monetary experience of the colonies in the light of its own problems. The Jacksonian period produced the interpretations of Gouge just as the silver controversy of the 1890's produced the work of Bullock and Davis. The reaction to the financial fundamentalism of the 1890's came largely from the work of R. A. Lester and the unpublished but celebrated work of L. Brock in the late thirties and early forties, heavily influenced by the experience of the depression. From the latter two, a new orthodoxy has emerged among American historians, under the authority of E. James Ferguson, whose important recent study, The Power of the Purse, defends the paper money currencies of the colonies by a well-reasoned appeal to the modern fiscal practice of financing war by inflation.

I am in entire sympathy with Mr. Nef's emphasis on historical synthesis or over-all interpretations, which is certainly in order after a period in which analytical fragmentation has been so stressed. We are also in agreement concerning the need for a study of the interrelationships between various aspects of history that are now usually treated as specialties.

The Equatorial of the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, is still in October 1887, unfinished, blocked against use, and entirely unusable. This lamentable outcome of so many years, is simply the consequence of the necessary funds for finishing and working the instrument having been withheld by Government, after they had been promised by the Board of Visitors, printed again and again in much detail, and thought to have been obtained.