Books

...The Kaiser was cordial, even acquiescent in parley, but noncommittal in fact until Colonel House could convey to him word of what Great Britain would do...

...Canon Tatham is too cautious to commit himself absolutely to any of the schools that wage war in Italy and France regarding the actuality of the events related in the sonnets and canzoni, but contents himself with placing before us the findings of the best critics and scholars...

...If the version supported by documentation in the House papers is to be accepted, Wilson's personal sympathies were strongly on the side of the Allies early in the war, but he felt with equal conviction that he must keep America out...

...Arthur Machen contributes to literature, may still be puzzled to know the precise character of the landscape to the east of Carnarvon Bay...

...Therefore, Mr...

...Witch Girl, by Gertrude Callaghan...

...It is disclosed that House received an intimation from Grey that the British would give up the food blockade if Germany would abandon ruthless submarine war and the use of poison gas...

...Indeed, Wilson's resentment in 1916 over the British restrictions on trade might have led to serious complications with the Allies, had not Colonel House's unofficial relations with Grey, Balfour, and other statesmen been highly serviceable in smoothing out the irritation felt in London...

...The Berlin declaration of ruthless submarine war, and that alone, it would appear from the House papers, shook him from this position...

...Besides her millions, the said queen has a partisan in Montgomery, an alert Irishman, and calculated with the help of the inimitable Count Imre and the Baron, to produce one more revolution...

...Boston: H ought on, Mifflin Company...

...Who that travels well is wholly without it...

...In 1916, when the Allies found obstacles to accepting his peace offer, there came over him a revulsion of feeling because of Great Britain's attitude on the question of contraband, and for a time he was decidedly anti-Ally, though not pro-German...

...These volumes make plain the complete perspective of the offer by Wilson to the Allies in the spring of 1916—that if Germany would not agree to a peace conference on the basis of the terms outlined in the House-Grey memorandum (Alsace and Lorraine to France, Constantinople to Russia, the restoration of Belgium, and demilitarization all around) the United States would enter the war on the side of the Allies...

...Was Wilson bent on siding with the Allies from the first, and did he merely delay the decisive stroke until he could coalesce the opinion of the West and, in general, the hinterland far removed from the pro-Ally Northeast...

...Then, being a true-hearted pacifist, she suddenly shatters all their plans...

...In Praise of North Wales, by A. G. Bradley...

...For the first time the volumes give, in a fairly complete setting, the story of his effort in the spring of 1914, with Wilson's full backing, to avert the armed clash of millions which close observers, such as himself, felt to be impending in Europe...

...Canon Tatham gives us, in Who Was Laura...

...Individual testimony must always be discounted and compared with contributions on the same subject from different sources, but apparently not especially so in the case of the testimony of Colonel House...

...New York: Blue Faun Publications...

...If it were not for the overshadowing value of the evidence in these papers which bears on the European war, the setting forth of the history of Wilson's undertaking to form a PanAmerican compact in 1914 would appear of large import in an appraisement of these two volumes...

...For him, love has always "its life in feeling, and its root in sense...

...Those who plan on seeing the Berwyns for themselves will find here a canny and tactful guide...

...an illuminating study...

...Involved in the history of Petrarch is a statement regarding the conditions of his own times, in which he himself regretted that he lived...

...rAUL CROWLEY...

...As the old, downcountry carpenter once remarked of story-tellers—"Some can spin...

...All present enjoy a good time—none more, we are sure, than the writer who can indulge successfully in something so far from "material realism...

...House's estimate of the war President is, on the whole, eulogistic...

...While he says that the nation was fortunate "to have a Woodrow Wilson to lead it through dark and tempestuous days," he records his view that his chief sometimes "dodged trouble," and showed a "penchant for inaction," and that he was at first "singularly lacking in appreciation of the importance of the European crisis" (September 28, 1914...

...Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company...

...There are perhaps more local Eisteddfods and more sheep-dog trials, more village concerts and acting of Welsh plays, and more football than of old...

...1.50...

...Professor Seymour has gone, seemingly, as far as human nature can go in preserving a sense of detachment and poise in the impartial performance of his task...

...IMPRESSIONS will crowd the mind of every reader of these significant volumes...

...His thought, conceived cis-Atlantically, became trans-Atlantic by the inertia of stirring events...

...but House spoke almost with the finality of a note from the White House...

...and modern, by the prophetic spirit which heralded their advent...

...The study devoted to the Canzoniere is able and highly judicious...

...There seems to have been no doubt in the minds of these shrewd Britishers that House was the really authorized representative of the President in dealing with them...

...The editing of Dorothy Una Ratcliffe is a model for our publishers of special journals, showing how her chosen field can be illuminated by the variety of her table of contents, her studies in Yorkshire folklore, gardens, drama, and the illustrations of a highly artistic character of bird life, some of which include The Grey Crow, and The Lapwings...

...Bradley has a delightful feeling for the value of lore...

...This is the spirit of tempered daring in her poems—the trembling, singing note of her spirit...

...and when Germany undertook to play the role of traffic officer of the seas his burning indignation at the curb on American rights produced the quick decision that the time for action had come...

...HP HIS book is a merry satire calculated to awaken the ¦*• most drowsy of mortals...

...There is, of course, much more to tell, and further volumes may be awaited with expectations keyed up by this foretaste of what will ultimately be one of the most illuminating historical searchlights turned on the recent years when the civilized world was in travail...

...Students of Petrarch will agree with this summing-up of the fourteenth-century poet...

...The author outlines the character of Petrarch as that of a lonely man who sought distraction in travel...

...The compact that was sought for all America was strikingly similar to Article X of the League of Nations covenant, and was, in all probability, the germ of Wilson's League policy...

...Laura Benet...

...others will "be taught to open the inward eye to many a beautiful thing...

...Canon Tatham gives a gracious acknowledgment to the preeminence of America in the possession of the Petrarch Library of Cornell University, collected by the late Willard Fiske, and in the writings of J. H. Robinson, H. W. Rolfe, and M. A. Potter...

...Germany blocked the effort when House presented his plan to Berlin through Ambassador Gerard...

...A biographical sketch of House in the beginning of the first volume deftly links his personality and background with the larger work he did in his ripe years...

...5.00...

...HP HERE are two poems in Miss Callaghan's Witch Girl, A which seem to illustrate her most salient qualities...

...Page's voice was the voice of Page...

...Viscount Grey, in his Twenty-Five Years, has given a peep at this dare-devil attempt to cool the rapidly mounting war fever in Europe...

...Her sincerity of expression reduces rhetoric to almost the vanishing point, and shows that she has well pondered the old and nowadays rather neglected axiom—Ars est celare artem...

...But the whole book is a very good book, by a man who has fished in the streams he loves and shaken hands with the people whose guest he has enjoyed being...

...The Welsh names for everything date back to the era when Arthur was king, with a race of poets for his retainers...

...but that does not make them easier to pronounce or to visualize with their trappings...

...Grey, in the London Foreign Office, was sympathetic, but somewhat incredulous...

...One is: "I will break my fast, I who lived with snows— Lay me a repast Of heat that glows . . . I who played the clown Climbing to the stars, Met one coming down, White with scars...

...When House advised the appointment of Page to London, and actually notified Page of it by addressing him as "Your Excellency" in a telephone conversation, he was not aware, perhaps, as to the influence of the opinions of others besides himself in shaping Wilson's resolve...

...The hopelessness and distance of his affection, the wealth of imagery with which, for over twenty years, he continued to treat his affection for her, created a tradition among the Latin, Italian, and Spanish poets (many of them sonneteers) that resulted in those devotions to ideal ladies, in the fashion "a Petrarca," of which a great exemplar was that of the Spanish poet, Herrera, for the remote Countess of Gelves...

...London: The Shelton Press...

...Bradley's new book will be for many a very pleasant revelation...

...Saintsbury, make a fair study of the middle-ages—^as Canon Tatham declares Petrarch "illustrates ancient times by his whole-souled devotion to their study...

...Two volumes, $10.00...

...w The Lady of the Abbey, by George A. Birmingham...

...He sought and found, as John Adington Symonds truly says, a via media between the conventional passion of the troubadours and the ideal love of the "stil nuovo...

...and Canon Tatham, the author, a prebend of Lincoln Cathedral, attempts to outline the papal policies during the Avignon period, the conditions at Montpellier and Bologna, and the biography of the poet's earlier days—much of the latter naturally being based on nothing more thani supposition...

...The glory is of mountain peaks and green valleys—of historic memories and castle ruins— all scarcely modified by up-to-dateness...

...THOSE who have gathered impressions of romantic Wales from such fanciful accounts as Mr...

...There was a vein of loose speaking in the Kaiser's remark to George Sylvester Viereck, at Doom, years later, that "the visit of Colonel House to Berlin and London in the spring of 1914 almost prevented the world war...

...The adventure, it is evident, was scarcely less than Quixotic, but distinct progress had been made in the preliminaries— the easiest part of the plan—when the Austro-Serb involvement let loose the mad ambitions of the militarists...

...He takes you through the vale of Llangollen, because that "is beyond all question the best gateway into North Wales for a first, or indeed for any pilgrimage, through that glorious region...

...He thus constitutes a link between two widely parted civilizations...

...while he illuminates the gulf between the two by his contact with it in the flesh...

...THROUGH Petrarch (1304-1374) "the first modern man of letters," we may, in spite of the warning of Dr...

...Finally, the prospective owner will be glad to know that the otherwise attractive book is becomingly illustrated...

...This feeling for the past, joined with strong aspiration for the future, assures the sympathetic permanence of Miss Callaghan's muse...

...The quality of the tale is decidedly heady and gay, and like all excellent fantasy, bears its readers along in a boat whose sails puff out with the wind of its imaginings...

...He was commissioned by the will of the President, but not by any official document with a seal, to persuade Great Britain and Germany to work with the United' States for the peace of the world, and to agree to limit naval armaments as a first practical step...

...He felt a strong repugnance to the mysticism of the older school—it was too transcendental for his cast of mind, too scientific for his artistic sense...

...w Thomas Walsh...

...The other poem, entitled Older Poets, begins and ends with the following quatrains: "I like to listen to the older poets, It seems that they have found some higher thing Than new and modern poets who are singing With scarcely thoughts to sing...

...Not only was his correspondence ample and full of meaning, but beginning September 25, 1912, he dictated to his secretary every evening a record of the developments of the day which had come directly under his exceptionally keen observation...

...Yet even any move to lay hands on the finely-spun web of intrigue on whose frail structure the peace of Europe rested by the device of the balance of power, and to propose with the weight of American initiative a direct method of turning the vista from war to peace, was a victory in itself...

...He is to this day a cementer of friendship between his admirers, as he was in his lifetime...

...It is true that he is far too generous with his adjectives, and more than once wastes a long breath over vistas that could more pleasurably be swallowed with a gulp...

...His object, as he wrote to Wilson, was to achieve a coup "to the everlasting glory of your administration and our American civilization...

...The Microcosm, a quarterly issued in Yorkshire, England, on behalf of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, maintains in its last number the high standard of the earlier issues...

...He admits that we do not really know who she was, insists that she was actually named Laura, and for the explanation of the mystery he leans toward the belief that she was a married woman and could hardly accept publicly the platonic devotion of her poet...

...Granted that Colonel House kept frank and exact date of his activities during the period when he was, in Wilson's phrase, the President's "other self," and this is now fully established, his revelations were bound to be of the first importance...

...It has remained for House to disclose the exact measure of what Wilson wished, tried to bring about, and gave up as a forlorn hope when the Sarajevo murder sent the hot blood leaping anew in the veins of the militaristic powers...

...A lady abbess who owns a rocky island where arms can be concealed, aids and abets Montgomery and his party to the best of her ability...

...And so, undismayed, you can, if the spirit of adventure is in you, take Mr...

...It would be stating a truism to say that House, like any other man who was close to Wilson during that period, may have overvalued the potency of his advice and help when the actual decisions had to be made by the President...

...and his firm belief in revealed truth distinguishes him from many of his successors in the later renaissance...

...and Hendrick, in The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, has given more than a peep...

...He could not know, despite his acute power of comprehension, all that was in the mind of the often secretive Wilson, which was a sensitized plate for receiving the impressions of no small number of advisers, despite his almost shy aloofness exhibited to many others...

...Its kernel consists of the following idea: Karnonia, a fictitious kingdom, incorporated after the war into Jugo-Slavia, has lost its king but has in exile, a queen, who is the daughter of an American millionaire...

...It is clear from House's papers now printed that Germany would have refused these conditions, and thus America might have entered the war nearly a year before she actually did so if the Allies had accepted the tender...

...6.00...

...We are on surer ground when Canon Tatham comes to a study of Petrarch's literary forebears and his debt to the troubadours...

...2.00...

...They pour their liquid, silver notes, not caring Who hears them—they know not otherwise to do— While those who listen raise their faces skyward To see a rift of blue...

...Francesco Petrarca, by Edward H. R. Tat ham...

...A _ ,__ Allen Sinclair Will...

...House did his best to obtain a compromise between the German, submarine campaign and the British food blockade, and the pages prepared by Professor Seymour show the importance of that project in the general scheme of things...

...Many a person who, like Charles Lamb, has a passion for antiquities, will enjoy this statement: "I was surprised on returning to Wales in these post-war years to find the old home-staying instinct among the youth of the country people so little shaken...

...One learns from him ever so many queer and bracing things about old poets, soldiers and scenes of battle, abbeys and the destructive fires of the Reform...

...A rare sense of values is shown in the selection of the papers, and the interpretative comment which binds them together is clear, compact, illuminating, and thoroughly interesting...

...Colonel House's secret interview with the Kaiser on June 1 of the year 1914, from which even the ministers of that monarch, palpitating with curiosity, were excluded, was no mere gesture...

...A rare character with a tone of her own, she constitutes the best episode in the book, and Count Imre is a close second...

...Failure as a peace emissary, when European chancelleries were waiting fatalistically for the war to come, did not crush the spirit of Colonel House...

...Large in the view of historians in the future must be the question: "Why did America enter the war...

...He was highly affectionate and sympathetic, a "clubable" man, whose "personal magnetism," says Henry Cochin, "still survives...

...Further volumes may be counted on to show the development of the "break" between Wilson and House in 1919...

...The papers now made available to the public extend only up to the entrance of America into the war...

...The story is fascinating for the general reader, and doubly so for the historian...

...He had fits of vacillation...

...Life has returned very much to its old grooves...

...It is fortunate for the reader, and for the truth of history, that Professor Seymour should have been chosen to prepare the House data for publication...

...Bradley for a guide to Llanrhaiadr and its waterfall, to the crags and waves at Snowden, and finally to great Carnarvon itself...