SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleton "IT IS A MATTER of common observation," says Frederic Austin Ogg in the preface of his new book, The Governments of Europe, (Mac-millan), "that...
...Well,' said the other, 'if the devil hasn't got that fellow, all I can say is that I don't see much use in our keeping a devil at all...
...Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleton "IT IS A MATTER of common observation," says Frederic Austin Ogg in the preface of his new book, The Governments of Europe, (Mac-millan), "that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government The United States is happily among those countries in which the phenomenon can be observed, and we have witnessed in recent times not only the organization of societies and the establishment of journals designed to foster research within the field but also a notable multiplication and strengthening of courses in political science open to students in our colleges and universities, as well as the development of clubs, forums, extension courses, and other facilities for the increasing of political information and the stimulation of political thinking on the part of the people at large...
...Were they the universal middle-class problems, and, if so, what was their solution...
...In the third place, it has been considered desirable to include in the book some treatment of political parties and of the institutions of local administration...
...He insinuated a hope that, in spite of all that had passed the poor man might have escaped the extreme penalty...
...Hence there aw included descriptions of the government of the minor as well as of the major nations of western and central Europe...
...THOUGH HE IS himself, in private life, a clergyman, George Birmingham, the Irish novelist, loves a good story on the clergy, and one of the most amusing sections in his new book, The Lighter Side of Irish Life (Stokes) deals with the...
...In the second place, it is believed that the intelligent study of present-day government must involve at all stages the taking into careful account of the historical origins and growth of these governments...
...In the first place, it has been deemed desirable to afford a wide opportunity for the comparative study of political institutions, especially by reason of the familiar fact that the governmental system of a minor country may, and frequently does, exhibit elements of novelty and of importance not inferior to those to be observed in the political organization of a greater state...
...The clothes we wore and did not make, the food we ate from Florida and Minneapolis and Chicago and California, the books we read from presses we had never seen— all turned to problems in our hands...
...There was no way of finding out except by consulting the experiences of those who, like bur suburban neighbor, were wrestling with them...
...Merely to pay the bills with money I haven't earned...
...Continuing, the authors say: "One day our next door neighbor came running across the lawn and flounced— there is no other name for it—flounced down upon our veranda...
...I'm nothing but a family clearing house?' she cried distractedly...
...Well,' he said 'It's a comfort to flunk that the devil's got that fellow at last.' "The clergyman, being a clergyman, felt bound to protest against this uncharitable view of the dead man's condition...
...It is hardly more than a weather vane to show how the wind blows...
...They were not things that could be collected under compulsion or by gum-shoe work...
...One of his tales may be quoted: "A north of Ireland gentleman heard from the lips of a clergyman of the death of an inveterate enemy of his who had harassed him for many years...
...It is not a tablet of laws nor an economic treatise...
...and the original purpose to attempt some treatment of the governments of the eastern nations has been abandoned, somewhat reluctantly, only because of the demands of space, and because it was felt that this portion of the projected work would perhaps meet no very serious need in the usual college courses...
...I buy what the stores have to sell at the priee they choose to set, I pay rent for a house somebody else has chosen to build, I send the children to the sort of school the town has happened to establish, I dress, and come, and go, and read, and see, as other people have arranged for me...
...It is made up of the real experiences of real mid-dle-dass people...
...I don't control a single thing that goes into my housekeeping and yet I know that unless I see to it that we have what it is best for us to have, I am not running my home efficiently.'" This extract sets the problem for the volume...
...It does not pretend to finality...
...Hence a considerable amount of space has been devoted to sketches of constitutional history, which, however, are in all instances so arranged that they may readily be omitted if their omission is deemed desirable...
...It is the object of this book to promote the intelligent study of government by supplying working descriptions of the governmental systems of the various countries of western and central Europe as they have taken form and as they operate at the present day...
...The content of the book has been determined in the main, by three considerations...
...What have I to do with it all...
...In the case of countries whose political system underwent a general reconstitution during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic era it has been thought not feasible to allude, even briefly, to historical developments prior to the later eighteenth century...
...From the day our neighbor flounced down upon our porch," the Brueres go on, "the problems of middle-class home making began to peep like goblins from everything we heard or saw...
...Literary Notes "WE KEPT HOUSE one summer in an attractive, middle-class suburb under the ordinary conditions that make for comfort and compel circumspection among middle-class people," write Martha Bensley Bruere and Robert W. Bruere in the first chapter of their new book, Increasing Homs Efficiency...
...Training the Consumer, The Cost of Children, Launching the Child, Savings and Efficiency and One Answer to Many Questions...
...The following topics tile authors have taken up in a delightfully intimate way: How the Wind Blows, What is the Home For?, The Basis of Efficiency, Chance versus the Budget-Maker, Home Administration, The Home and the Market, A Housekeeper's Defense of the Trusts, How Shall We Learn to Keep House...
...foibles and misadventures of Irish pastors...
...you cant investigate the middle-class, as you can toe poor, without its free consent Through the columns of magazines, through lectures, through innumerable personal letters and long journeys we have put questions to middle-class people in all corners of the country until answers have flowed in to us like oil from a shot well...
...This book is a record of these answers...
...So we set out into the middle-class country to gather these experiences...
...they made eyes at us from the shelves of the groceryman, they shot like steam from the factory whistle, they trailed the locomotives across the country, they buzzed in our ears through the telephone wire...
...I run up the family bills one month and pay them the next...
Vol. 5 • March 1913 • No. 9
