Books

...He has a duty...

...the third, details for some twenty special excursions throughout the island...

...But the author herself remains more in-teresting, because more intense, than any of the little group brought together in these pages...

...The alluring and illuminating paths of the anthology are not for him...

...indeed he obvi- ously likes Americans---and what Englishman who has come to know them could fail to like them?rebut his method and the limits of a very small book rarely offer opportunity for anything but the pointing out, with a frequent exaggeration, of American faults...

...MaRY CAEOLYN DAVIRS, poet, is the author of Drums in Our Street...

...New York" Charles Scribner's Sons...

...The ethics of war, our author shows, had been so carefully thought out that there is little we can add now excepting experience...

...But she was not allowed on the mainland...

...The inevitable comparison is with Lizette Woodworth Reese," and certainly these two poets, so nearly contemporary, represent the best American achievement, by women, in what may be termed the school of restraint...

...We have no way of forming a judgment for our-selves, nor is it a method that inspires us to go adventuring for first-hand knowledge...

...Plato's American Republic, by Douglas Woodruff...

...THEOOOItE MXYNARO, poe~ and critic, is the author of Drums of Defeat...

...Since Mr...

...THE author of the present work is a practising psycho- analyst, and psychoanalysts usually write interestingly...

...Here is clearly shown--more dearly, I believe, than anywhere else in English --the Thomistic conviction that the institution of private property is lawful but "not a moral necessity arising from the absolute nature of man...

...and other books...

...MROORA C. ADDISON and NO~RRa" ENGRLS are new contributors to The Commonweal...

...Black has given us the result of thirty years' experience in the art of living by the hard work of others...

...slavery as a con- dition accepted, in true Aristotelian spirit, because imposed by the diversity of human natures, but not allowed to interfere with liberty of conscience or equality before God...

...Carncross has written a serious, dignified, readable book...

...New York: Harper and Brothers...

...Faith Brandon...

...The Escape [rom the PHmitive, by Horace Carncross...

...So there crowd on Ellis Island the wretched people whom America will not accept...

...Sections on slavery, property, and money-making are admirably lucid and terse...

...For those of us who may have a passable reading knowledge of the Russian language, and who for sheer love of it, have devoured even the reviews and magazines so dear to the older Russians of imperial days--no more informing, thorough and illuminating guide-book can be used than this volume of Prince Mirsky's, for further adventures on little traveled routes...

...Dora Jarrett himself grows a little impatient with Saint Thomas for being altogether too reasonable in the matter and arguing as if mothers were prol~sitions...

...In the last two decades of the nineteenth century in this country, however, she was a much admired figure, and her death last year calls for an estimate of certain elements in her now completed work which are more than transient...

...Terry's Guide to Cuba, by T. Philip Terry...

...The device is specially handy because the Americans can be com-pared, not with the English, who indeed come in for a few incidental hard knocks, but with the "Athenians...

...Marriage, divorce, faith, unfalth, all the paradoxes of our paradoxical modern civilization are touched upon: but touched slightly, impressionistically, as part of the never quite tangible or comprehensible pageant in which life itself passes before young Spencer Wade--newly back from the American Expeditionary Forces and trying to adjust himself to a family and a world grown strangely unfamiliar...

...The temptation to such facile facetiousness is great, and Mr...

...And indeed one marvels constantly at the wealth of information amassed and concentrated, and marvels also that modern scholarship should have been able finally to effect the detailed reconstruction of mediaeval cir- cumstance without which the historian of thought would be limited to guessing, sometimes to guessing badly...

...KATHERINE BRim...

...Woodruff has yielded to it rather too often...

...In the village, the church as a building was the centre of the village life, round it and in it moved the important events of life, individual and communal...

...brutalitymthe whipping-post, stralt-jacket, and third degree--does not reform men, but turns them into beasts seeking revenge...

...It is "to modify the hasty conclusions arrived at by Anglo-Saxons, and others, on the subject of my country...

...Miss Thomas was always a favorite of those with fastidious taste...

...2.50...

...There are maps, lists of current expressions and forms of address and lan-guage-hints that will make travel and social intercourse with the natives both pleasurable and profitable...

...Very illuminating also are the passages discussing the mediaeval idea of land as common prop- erty, title to which was guaranteed by service...

...Among the figures in that part of the harbor there was one that at once held my attention because she was so much greater and nobler than the rest...

...T.C...

...D OM JARRETT, in a modest introduction, calls the attention of readers to the difficulties involved in the com- position of his book...

...The quality o~ new writers seems to be enormous, we cannot see the forest for the trees...

...THEODORE MAYNARD...

...If one believes the sexual impulse of the "ego sense" creative beyond individual existence, "and therefore the core or symbol of all spiritual constructiveness," however, one may escape from the primitive and from the divine at the same time...

...Woman was, of course, judged divergently by the monk to whom she meant very frequently a temptation, and the courtly poet who compared her with a great variety of flowers and precious stones...

...Many emigrants think that they are emigrating to the United States when in fact they are emigrating to Ellis Island, which is not a land of opportunity at all...

...The story leaves Spencer still grop- ing at its close...

...JAMES E. TOBIN is a contributor of poetry to current magazines...

...But Prince Mirsky is not to be de- fleeted from the straight and narrow ways of the critic...

...The sub- ject is of such difficulty that the chapter allotted can serve only as an introduction, in which the theme of royal power is developed most amply...

...E DITH M. THOMAS is known to the general public as a one-poem poet...

...Acceptance of his conclusions, however, predicates a be- lief in their premises...

...New York: Houghton Mifflin Gornpany...

...It is simply a thorough, eminently readabIe presentation of what the thirteenth and the two following centuries thought about the temporal welfare of man...

...his life-story does that...

...L B. M. CLARK, now a journalist of Montreal, was formerly connected with the Los Angeles Times-Mirror Press...

...However much the mediaeval preacher might in- wigh against the evils of men's lives, and however distressingly he might lament the ignorance and superstitution of so many even of his audience, he could not but be conscious that life nevertheless was lived in surroundings that forever bore wit- ness to the Faith...

...Further, in the case of the villains of the story, the writer has made us feel, with Johanson, that few human beings are wholly bad, that in the most evil as well as the weakest of them, there is some bit of goodness...

...GEORGR D. MRAnOWS is an English reviewer, now writing in New York...

...the second, a thorough study of Havana and its environs...

...But, if we merely learn what is of today, are we really "up" to date...

...Rxv...

...2.00...

...Here the emphasis is entirely upon the Gospels as understood by religious reason...

...The author has divided his work in three parts: the first, an interpretation of general matters like exchange of money, railroads, boats, hotels, res-taurants, theatres and festivals...

...It is well to be up to date...

...usury as practice that grew out of the nature of money but was per-missible only under certain conditions...

...Through the mouth of Socrates, who has returned from a lecture tour in America, and who tells of his experiences to his friends Agathon, Lysis and Phaelon, Mr...

...KwEI CHR~ is a Chinest student in the University of Nebraska, and a contributor of poetry to American magazines...

...SXSTRR M. M^DRta~.VA, C.S.C., poet, is the author of Knight Errant...

...In short, "Ferry's Guide is a book to be recommended even to fairly well- informed tourists in Cuba, and a work with useful informa- tion also for the native of the island, who will learn much of the outlander in carefully considering the amount and quality of the information he is likely to have at his disposal...

...The hero himself is always lovable, if sometimes irritating: so is his good-hearted clerical friend, Tom Longstaffe...

...But there are many penetrating things said in his diverting and brilliant little book, though its general effect, owing to its one-sidedness, will probably be to irritate Americans and mislead his own countrymen...

...Going close to her I saw that it was Liberty herself...

...She also was classed as undesirable...

...G~NVILLE VERNON is a contributor on musical and literary subjects to American magazines...

...The gates of the golden age are closed at the death of Dos- toievsky in 1881, the retirement of Leo Tolstoy from the arena of letters, and Turgenev's death in 1883...

...The author makes certain facts stand out clearly: the nervous strain of a criminal career sends a man to dope to find repose, and this, more than any other thing, drags him into the gutter...

...BRIEFER MENTION You Can't I/Fin, by Jack Black...

...CONTRIBUTORS M.SIR BRRTRAM C. A. WINDLE is professor of anthropology in Saint lenael's t~ollege, Toronto, and the author of many books on the relations of religion and science...

...SVRER ST~HAN iS professor of English in the Catholic University of America...

...KATH~.RINE BR~OY is a critic and poet, and the author of The Poet's Chantry...

...M R. WOODRUFF, after having twice visited this coun- try as a member of the Oxford University debating team, has ventured to set down some of his views, which he conveys by a very clever use of the Socratic dialogue...

...As an example of a characteristic mingling of wisdom with a wise-crack take the following: "There is an island there called Ellis Island, the abode of the rejected of America, where I also spent two days...

...of Gogol and Pushkin, Lomonosov and Lermontov, Karamzin, Aksakoff, the three Soloviovs, Dostoievsky, Uspensky and Fet, Katkov, Mestchersky, Suvorin, Alexei Tolstoy, Chekhov, Nekrasov, and others of that golden age, how are we prepared to weigh and give true appreciation to those who come after ? Prince Mirsky frankly denominates his volume "a Baedeker," "a guide-book...

...3.50...

...Whether one regrets this depends on the point of view...

...Through the Page letters we were brought into intimate contact with the man at the very moment when an unforeseen crisis, which one can well believe he would have given ten years of his life to avert, tried his character as with fire...

...And so no one will be surprised that she has now written an ex-ceedingly readable novel--although it is another matter whether Foam is exactly the sort of novel one might have anticipated from her...

...Emily Dickinson stands by herself...

...It is not an apology for or an anathema of the thir-teenth century...

...New York: E. P. Dutton and Company...

...He bears in mind, as we all do, that the middle-ages had found not only an explanation of man, but also a noble and beautiful explanation...

...The artless biog- raphy wins its merit on the presentation of a type, and one feels that the examples offered in illustration are authentic...

...Dom Jarrett's comprehensive view takes in also such mat-ters as education and the position of woman...

...N O POLITICAL figure associated with the great war is so familiar to American readers as Sir Edward Grey, now Viscount Grey of Fallodon...

...Even Mr...

...and Their Choice...

...The great thing, the immediate pressing neces- sity for the western intellectual is to know that the few modern names we have somehow familiarized ourselves with-- Merezhkovsky, Artsybashev, Balmont, Andreev and Gorky, are not as important as we fancy (for which we thank heaven !) and that prominence should rather be given to such per- sonages as Leontiev, Rozanov, Remizov, to Bialy and the symbolists...

...Yet, after all, to us the clearest and most interesting chapters of the book are those opening ones, devoted to the few survivors of the great age whose literary activities extended into our era-- the aged Tolstoy, the aging Chekhov, the ever-youthful Lieskov...

...where this fails, the case is pathological and should be treated as such...

...It has become a tradition," he continues sarcastically--and we must admit, truthfullym"for the omniscient geniuses of the West, to exercise their intuitive powers on the subject of Russia where they can move freely, unhampered by excess of information...

...After this snub to Anglo-Saxon would-be intellectuals, Prince Mirsky makes no attempt to repair their errors and ignorances...

...THIS handy little guide-book to the island of Cuba will be welcomed by many who are planning a southern flight from the gathering chills of winter...

...Though mediaeval damsels were frequently quite as difficult to man-age as their modern counterparts, they really caused less trouble to the philosopher than their endlessly belligerent husbands and brothers...

...and editor of A Tankard of Ale, and A Modern Book of Catholic Verse...

...The teaching of Christian tradition was not always lived up to nor ever lived up to perfectly, hut the Church as the institution which in their eyes had been given them to be the living embodiment of that teaching could never wholly be put out of their lives...

...and the only character who achieves any sort of solution is the llghtly-etched but starry Laura, whose solu- tion is the convent because she is "in love with God...

...education and kind treatment meet with suc-cessful responses...

...Philadelphia: Dorrance and Gompany...

...Foam, by Mary Dixon Thayer...

...ERNEST SUTHERI~ND BATES t formerly professor of philosophy in the University of Oregon, is a writer on educational and literary topics...

...Nat-urally the brevity of this treatise precludes the full develop-ment of individual problems...

...Frost Tonight is deservedly familiar to all who love loveliness, but is often the only selection of her work given in anthologies...

...2.5o...

...She is a keen and sympathetic observer, crystallizing her ob- servations of people with unusual vivacity and of nature with delicate poetry...

...Dom Jarrett writes always as a scrupulous historian, conscious of the mingled facts in the story but in love with its beauty none the less...

...HENRXRrrA DANA SKINNRR, novelist and eritie, is the author of Espiritu Santo...

...Fallodon Papers, a collection of lectures de- livered by Lord Grey since his retirement from active politics, reinforces the impression we had received of a man naturally generous, a little aloof, liberal both by temperament and tradi- tion and, like nearly all naturalists, master of a singularly luc/d and unpretentious style...

...He is not malicious...

...Indeed he seems to find great comfort (and no doubt the reader will join him) in Pierre du Bois and his De Recuperatione Sancte Terre...

...A time which like the present listens to so much, deep black or radiant red as the poets refer, about mediaevalism, ought to give the book a wide and enthusiastic hearing...

...8elected Poems of Edith M. Thomas, edited ~oith a memoir by Jessie B. Rittenhouse...

...A modem reader, inured to the idea that his is the first age of pedagogy, will very likely" stare in amazement at the theories formed by Rober de Sorbonne and Marco Vegio...

...It is not, in fact, a very vital world, this carefully fenced in little backwater of foam--or is it froth...

...The whole book is a succession of pages all so interesting and so instructive that it is hard to choose between them...

...The mediaeval concept of law crystallized into the dictum of Saint Thomas that "law is something rational, relating to the common good, promulgated by that competent authority who has the care of the community...

...Since these points are most frequently insisted upon by economic controversialists-- erroneously, it too often happens--the skill with which Dom Jarrett has set them forth ought to be widely admired...

...New York: The Mac-millan Company...

...Fallodon Papers, by Viscount Grey o[ Fallodon, K.G...

...ROBERt W. MORSE was formerly instructor of English in Yale, and professor of English in Union College, Schenectady, New York...

...In fact, Dr...

...The little book is all the more deserving because, in an age where there is a growing tendency not only to contemn pleas- ures that cost no money, but to debar others from them by the sheer change the contemporary pleasure-seeker has set to the tempo of life, the recreations Lord Grey proposes for our attention are those which wealth, in America at least, has not yet preempted...

...The author does not attempt to prove these things...

...JOHN l~vvt.Ert is an American attorney and social worker, who has recently returned from a year spent studying conditions in Mexico...

...For instance, I feel that not enough attention is paid to the influence of what may be termed the "social teachings" of Christ...

...2.oo...

...Should we not have come up through the preceding centuries of the sowing, the first tender growths, the development, and full blooming...

...Following the mode of many recent novels, Miss Thayer tells her story episodically, with no particular finality of plot...

...In the present selection of her poems, made by the ac-complished Miss Rittenhouse, there is found an intense though somewhat stark spirit, at its best of fine intellectual and philo- sophical cast, touched very often with chaste beauty, and chiseled into lyrics of almost uniformly flawless taste...

...The fact that the scholastics were so deeply indebted to Greek thinkers certainly does not preclude their constant reliance upon patristic teaching...

...The book is an absolutely photographic and phonographic rendering of a certain slice of "official" Philadelphia society~ brought into relation with the larger world by its post-war transitions, and its perpetual guerilla warfare between the young, restless experimentalists and the old conservative tradi- tions...

...I36 THE COMMONWEAL December 8, 1926 BOOKS 8ocial Theories o[ the Middle .4#es: 12oo-15oo , by Bede Jarrett...

...Walpole's writings, there is excellent characterization in Harmer John...

...Woodruff casti- gates the "barbarians...

...and Poets and Pilgrims...

...He develops in detail a favorite present- day theory: Child Man, trying to escape primitive complexes with which Mother Nature has cursed him, invents Father God, thus inverting creation...

...GEORCE D. MEADOWS...

...Page's admiration for the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, touching as it did upon hero-worship, was, we feel, justified in the main, however poor the service it did his functions as representative of a great neutral power...

...Prior to this pronounce- ment and afterward as well, there was, however, a great deal of discussion which our author summarizes briefly...

...Reading, tramping, fly-fishing, the observa-tion of bird-life, have not yet been put out of any man's reach, 138 THE COMMONWEAL December 8, 1926 sures us, it was only the less cultured Russians who would have shared their preferences...

...Black proved an apostate to his profession, it is only fair to say for him that he was handi-capped...

...It is interesting at this point to compare the German scholar, Otto Schilling's sober but clarifying little treatise on The Christian Social Teachings...

...Boston: Houchton Mifflin Company...

...2.oo...

...fifteen of his thirty years he spent in various peni- tentiaries...

...HENRIETTA DANA SKINNER...

...We find ourselves longing for the pleasant and picturesque, if super- flcial, bird's-eye views and copious illustrations of an anthology like that of Leo Wiener...

...The first thing to say about Dom Jarrett's book, therefore, is that by comparison with earlier treatises on mediaeval ideas of society, property and law, it appears factual, discriminating and criti- cal...

...and Youth Riding...

...It is the fashion for visiting Englishmen to make such jests...

...N 'O ONE even casually in touch with Miss Thayer's activities in poetry, devotional writing, journalism, and sports can have the slightest doubt of her versatility...

...Many of our own great- est minds, like those of the past, in their hour of spiritual need continue "to fall back childishly upon the parent mysteries of God," rather than upon psychoanalysis...

...His is a critical review of the history, politics, theories, philosophies, and changing states of mind of the Russian writers of today, as they influence their literary output...

...EXCEPT for a bit of sentiment at the beginning, and a few pages toward the end in which he justifies his failure to live up to his early standards, Mr...

...Sz.oo...

...How otherwise can we compare and value ? If we know nothing of the folk-lore and fables, the historic legends and religious writ- ings from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries, literary forms so dear to the mature Tolstoy...

...The following lines from the sec-tion devoted to Christendom put the matter very well: "For the people of that time religion or the Faith ran through the whole of life, in the sense of being inextricably entangled with it...

...Chesterton said that the Statue of Liberty winked at him...

...Trained in love of the classics, Miss Thomas adapted the 14o THE COMMONWEAL December 8, I926 As always in Mr...

...Yet no psychoanalyst, by taking thought, has added one cubit to the explanation of the ever-renewed mystery of Christian faith...

...But of their writings we are given no illus-trations...

...With all our imperfections on our head we are jumped at once with both feet into the mediocrity and confusion of mind prevalent in the Russia of this generation...

...if we scarcely know more than the names of the great eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poets, historians, novelists, dramatists, and publicists...