“This fascinating book has scholarship and humor to recommend it.”
“We simply cannot help reading him.”
WEEKS, ARLAND DEYETT.Psychology of citizenship. (National social science ser.)*50c (2c) McClurg 304 17-10222
The author says, “This book is a study of the psychology of our relations to civic affairs and deals with mental traits affecting the quality of citizenship.” The book is made up of brief chapters on: Civic demands upon intelligence; Social inertia; The limits of attention; Forms of distraction; The effect of machinery upon the mind; The spirit of labor; The control of suggestion; Civic publicity and the voter; The legal mind; Views of property; A sense of humanity. In the last chapter the author makes some observations on the psychology of war. He is professor of education in the North Dakota agricultural college, and a series of articles contributed to the American Journal of Sociology has served as a basis for this book.
“The student of practical politics will find much to interest him in the book, particularly in the chapter which deals with ‘Civic publicity and the voter.’”
“There is one excellent and practical chapter on civic publicity. A book which will rouse not only thought but discussion.”
“Words of special emphasis would be reserved to commend this small but unusually able and attractive book. Professor Weeks has succeeded in carrying a message of vital significance, in phrasing it in an effective style, and above all in selecting for emphasis the focal points of interest to the understanding of the mind of the citizen. This is popular psychology directed with skill to problems of daily concern.”
“Prof. Weeks’s views, while not all acceptable, should at least stimulate social thinking.”
WEEKS, RAYMOND.Ode to France.*50c Oxford 811 17-9132
“This ode was written during August and September, 1914. The poet calls upon the world to rescue France, the ‘land whose deeds of old still burn,’ from the hideous shame forced upon her by the Huns.”—R of Rs
“This admirably wrought poem is now being read from the public platform and it has moved thousands to greater affection for France—affection which has taken practical form in contributions to French relief.”
WELD, LOUIS DWIGHT HARVELL.Marketing of farm products.*$1.50 Macmillan 338 16-1411
For descriptive note see Annual for 1916.
“The reviewer regrets saying so much in seeming dispraise of a book he so greatly approves. But the publication of so comprehensive and vigorous a study of this important question should be the occasion for all students of the problem to make frank and searching examination of their ideas upon the subject. Professor Weld has laid some excellent foundations. Later writers will be much in his debt and teachers will find that he has given them an excellent book for class use. If some of us think he is unduly complacent about the existing organization of the trade in farm products we may well remember that a large amount of public sentiment and local prejudice can be depended upon to exert a strong counter-influence.” E. G. Nourse
WELLMAN, MABEL THACHER.Food study. il*$1 Little 641 17-2354
The author, head of the department of home economics in Indiana university, has planned this work as a text book for high schools. She says, “The work is an attempt to present a manual of definite directions which will aid the student in her adventure into the subject, but it is by no means intended to supersede the teacher or to furnish material which can be taught by one untrained in the subject.” In her arrangement of material the author has not followed conventional lines. For instance, she has placed her lessons on canning and preserving first, because fall, the opening of the school year, is the natural time for such work. References for reading and Questions follow each chapter.
“Includes instruction in table manners and on the etiquette of entertaining. A distinctive feature is a diagram of a table laid for a home dinner.”
“The housewife desirous of retrenching her expenses will find aid and instruction.”
“This book seems to have covered the ground pretty thoroughly, and to be a source of reliable information gathered from standard works and authorities. The class experiments are clear and definite, the summary questions and references most comprehensive. But in an attempt to put the material together for ‘certain advantages in presentation, as the early introduction of such subjects as meals and serving,’ a most illogical and confusing plan has been followed.” Catherine Creamer
“A distinct addition to the available secondary-school texts on foods. The most valuable contribution is in the excellent quality of the subject-matter presented. This material is accurate, well selected, and clearly and simply written. It includes explanations of the principals of physics, chemistry, and bacteriology that are encountered in the preparation of foods as well as general information about food materials. This text material is not only well selected, but it is presented in such a sequence that there is a gradual development of the material adapted to the comprehension and progress of the students.” A. R. Hanna
WELLS, CAROLYN.Baubles. il*$1.25 Dodd 817 17-24883
This volume contains most of the poems included in “Idle idyls,” published by Dodd, Mead & Co. in 1900. Nineteen poems printed in “Idle idyls” have been dropped from and twenty-two new poems included in “Baubles.” While the new volume, like the old, is pictured by Oliver Herford, the thirteen full-page illustrations of “Idle idyls” do not appear in the new collection.
“The sparkle, the whimsicality of her nonsense, has dulled and deadened; the satirical lash has become thready, the vigor and snap gone when it comes into contact with the object.”
WELLS, CAROLYN.Faulkner’s folly.*$1.25 (2½c) Doran
Eric Stannard, the wealthy successful portrait painter, was found murdered in his studio. His dying cry was heard by his guest, Mrs Faulkner, as she descended the staircase and at her command the footman entered and turned up the lights in the darkened room. The artist was seen seated, stabbed by an etching needle and at either side of him, fainting with terror and overcome with dread, were his wife and his model. Who committed the crime? Roberts, the detective, tried in vain to solve the mystery but Alan Ford succeeded.
“The latest of Carolyn Wells’s detective stories is especially baffling.”
“Cleverly contrived and worked out with ingenuity and ample resource.”
WELLS, CAROLYN.Mark of Cain.il*$1.35 (1½c) Lippincott 17-7931
This is another Fleming Stone detective story. A millionaire is murdered in Van Cortlandt Park, New York, and circumstances seem to point to his nephew Kane Landon, as the murderer. The fortune of the murdered man is left to his niece Avice Trowbridge on condition that she marry the millionaire’s lawyer and trusted friend, Judge Hoyt. But Avice loves Landon and she only consents to marry Judge Hoyt on condition that he obtains the freedom of Landon whether the latter is innocent or guilty. With the aid of the millionaire’s office boy who had done some private detective work and as a consequence had been kidnapped and imprisoned in the home of the lawyer who is the real murderer, Fleming Stone convicts the lawyer of his guilt, aids thereto being the dirk cane and the shoes worn at the time of the murder which he had left as evidence in his house.
“A crude thriller. It is carelessly written, with no skill in characterization or plot; its ingenuity is not above that inspiring the Sunday ‘featurestory’; its humor is of the same quality as the ‘comic’ sheet and where the author would be exciting she is only lurid. It is shoddy.”
“Although the solution of the mystery is not very plausible, and the reader who chances to be possessed of any degree of astuteness will have identified the murderer long before Fleming Stone appears upon the scene, the story holds one’s attention fairly well, and is not without ingenuity.”
“While the story is conventional of its kind, it is diverting.”
WELLS, CLIFFORD ALMON.From Montreal to Vimy Ridge and beyond; ed. by O. C: S. Wallace. il*$1.35 (2c) Doran 940.91 17-29626
A series of letters written by a young Canadian officer to his mother and other members of his family, between November, 1915 and April, 1917. The mother died shortly after receiving news of her son’s death, so this book, edited by the writer’s stepfather, is a memorial to them both. The editor says, “To have used a heavy hand upon those letters, cutting out personal allusions, and the expression of opinion and criticisms which later might have been modified, would have been to rob them of much of their piquancy and human quality. That is why they are published as they were written.”
“There is as little personal animosity toward the enemy as in any of the accounts from the men who are doing the work. War is accepted, but it is recognized for what it is, a not very pleasant or glorious affair. The book is interesting for its revelation of the interests and the daily life of the soldier in action.”
“It has the quality of letters written to some one beloved, a touching and beautiful quality.”
WELLS, FREDERIC DE WITT.Man in court.*$1.50 (4c) Putnam 347 17-11929
The author is a justice of the municipal court of New York city and in this book he presents a series of sketches showing the actual procedure in a court of law. He explains the origin of many customs, and justifies some of the seeming injustices of court procedure, but, on the other hand, he shows how unsuited many practices are to modern conditions. A complete revision of the system is outlined in the final chapter in the form of a “look backward” from the year 1947.
“The humor is somewhat labored, but the explanations clear.”
“The author unobtrusively reveals intimate experience with human beings, depth of psychological insight, broad sympathy, healthful humor; a desire for, a belief in, and a capability of bringing nearer, better things to come.” W. S. McNeill
“The present author in knowledge of the subject is well fitted for his task. Unfortunately for so sincere and sane a work, the style lacks grace, and the argument drags at times. That the facts are interesting for all that, is no small tribute to the author.”
“If the author’s experience as a lawyer and a judge has induced the belief that our judicial system is a farce, it is easy to understand why he has published this volume. Such a system deserves the fate ascribed to it in the closing chapter. A careful study of this chapter, however, will lead most readers to the conclusion that the book is intended as a mere burlesque. Were the serious and sensible parts of the volume separated from the satirical, their publication would serve a useful purpose.”
“It would be well if more men of experience in responsible positions would write as frankly and good-humoredly concerning what they know best as Judge Wells has written about the courts. A book so tolerant and witty as this should have no little effect in promoting that good understanding between all parties that is most favorable to wise reform.”
“The business man sees great extravagance and waste of time in our courts of justice. Judge Wells admits the force of the criticism. In fact, he makes a better statement of the case than the business man himself could make, because he is in closer touch with the facts. At the same time the practising lawyer’s viewpoint is clearly understood by Judge Wells, and throughout the book he takes pains to present the lawyer’s side intelligently and sympathetically.”
“While the book is intended for the uninitiated, it is mighty useful reading for the average social worker, even those who are familiar with court procedure.” R. N. Baldwin
WELLS, FREDERIC LYMAN.Mental adjustments. il*$2.50 Appleton 130 17-16338
“Believing dynamic psychology, describing the conduct of mind from the standpoint of its adjustment to the world we live in, to be ‘the most truly cultural study,’ Frederic Lyman Wells of McLean hospital, Waverley, Mass., presents a large series of observations from normal psychology, psychopathology and anthropology. ... The preliminary discussion of mental adaptation is followed by chapters on use and waste in thought and conduct, symbolic association, the continuity of emotion, types of dissociation, mechanisms in dissociated ideas, experimental approaches and balancing factors. ... Dr Wells’s book is the fourth in the Conduct of mind series edited by Prof. Joseph Jastrow of the University of Wisconsin, who provides an introduction to the present volume.”—Springf’d Republican
“Any added insight into individual behavior clarifies social phenomena. Economic unrest, the rebellion of women against their ‘place,’ divorce, crime, prostitution, and insanity are all more fully comprehensible by reason of this book. On this basis it is permissible to classify the volume among the significant contributions to social psychology.” L. S. Hollingworth
“Dr Wells’s scheme is simple, though the details are far from clear. ... To speak of human motives in terms of physical forces has doubtless a pragmatic value; it is one of those devices common in supposedly scientific psychology. ... As applied to obsessions of the neurotic and insane it has a certain plausibility. But ... it is surely too much to ask that all of our views of life be based upon the external observation of minds confused and darkened.”
“The discussion of ‘Types of dissociation’ is more clearly systematic than most of the rest of the book and is a valuable survey for the student, although perhaps somewhat heavily loaded with varieties and subvarieties for those readers who have but little concrete experience. ... Wells does, however, make it clear that the normal and the abnormal are made of much the same material, and his book, with its softened rendering of Freudian conceptions, will be a stimulus and a help along sane and useful lines.” Adolf Meyer
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE.God, the invisible king.*$1.25 (3c) Macmillan 201 17-13406
The conception of God outlined in this book is essentially Wellsian. Yet Mr Wells writes in the belief that a new religion has already dawned on the world and that its followers are many,and without doubt there will be numbers of men and women outside the orthodox faiths who will find in his analysis much that corresponds to their own half formulated creeds. This new religion has no prophet or founder. It has no theory of the creation of the universe. It is purely empirical. “Modern religion bases its knowledge of God and its account of God entirely upon experience. It has encountered God. ... To find God is but the beginning of wisdom, because then for all our days we have to learn his purpose with us and to live our lives with him.” Mr Wells’s religion bears no relation to Christianity. It seems to be the negation of Christianity. “We of the new faith repudiate the teaching of non-resistance. We are the militant followers of and participators in a militant God. We can appreciate and admire the greatness of Christ, this gentle being upon whose nobility the theologians trade. But submission is the remotest quality of all from our God, and a moribund figure is the completest inversion of his likeness as we know him.”
“‘God, the invisible king,’ may be poor theology—it is—but it is real religion. Anybody can make fun out of the design of the vase in which this chrism of testimony is conveyed. But it seems to us that there should be joy among the angels of God for this novelist doing reverence to the ultimate reality.”
“Mr Wells rambles on and on, offering us always something to entertain, but scarcely anything to convince us of the certainties of religion. He blunders now and then, as when he speaks of atheism and agnosticism as synonymous, and he leaves us at the end exactly where we were at the beginning.” E. F. E.
“When one has finished reading this vague philosophy, one wonders if this feeble attempt of the perplexed, harassed Wells may prove a stepping-stone to true religion.”
“Not only does Wells fail to content me with this report of the thoughts and things of my generation, but he seems to be ignorant of thoughts that were commonplace a generation ago. Oddly enough, he is not in the forefront of thought but is behind the times.” J: Macy
“So far as Mr Wells confines himself to relating his own religious experience I treat every word he says with the profoundest respect, for I am certain that he is sincere. As a personal confession his book is a religious document of great value. But when the modern religion begins, through its mouthpiece, Mr Wells, to relate things about other religions, we have the right to be on our guard. The modern religion will have to be more correct, as well as more polite, in relating things about other religions, before the world will be willing to give due weight to what it relates about itself. Mr Wells has written a very provocative book about the least provocative of subjects—God. It is a tremendous theme, and the time is ripe for its reception.” L. P. Jacks
“Surely if the faith of Mr Wells is somewhat too narrow, if it includes too few articles of belief, it is exceptionally clear and profound in regard to what he does hold true.”
“There is not a grain of humility in this new apostle. Standing in the midst of ‘Mars’ hill,’ he offers us now a copy of ‘God the invisible king,’ saying in effect: ‘Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.’ ... The fine and sound things in this book we have not much emphasized: exhortations to repentance, consecration, self-sacrifice, labor for the kingdom of God on earth. Mr Wells’s impression that they are new is as ‘curious’ as the modernity of Christ. They may be heard in any orthodox pulpit in the course of a month’s sermons—with due credit given for their origination. It is better for Mr Wells to think of them as of his own confection than for him not to think of them at all; but as a matter of fact the chief contributive element in his testament is his peculiarly sanguine and mellifluous, egotism and insolence. Why can he not occasionally acknowledge that an idea may be true and useful even though it has always been recognized as such?”
“Mr Wells’ God suffers inevitably from the limitations (manifest and obscure) of its creator. The God invented by him is in reality a sublimated and delicately disembodied, a finely spiritualized Mr Wells.” Sam Schmalhausen
“A sane, thoughtful, reasonable expression of a religion of the future, so different from the religions of the past that in many instances, it is difficult to find the points of contact of the new and the old.” Blanche Watson
Reviewed by Sam Schmalhausen
“Written with the sincerity and simplicity of utter conviction. ... In precision of idea and clarity of statement, in keenness of insight and closely argued presentation it shows Mr Wells at his best.”
Reviewed by Lawrence Gilman
“Mr Wells writes too much. He is not always sane in his judgments. He sometimes gives an impression of sensationalism. But he is always frank and, we believe, always sincere. ... The value of his book lies, not in its solution of religious problems, but in its recognition of the reality of religious problems and in its provocation to real and untrammeled religious thinking.”
Reviewed by Lyman Abbott
“With much iconoclastic fury he denounces Christianity and all its doctrines, revelling especially in those bitter asperities which have been the unfortunate accompaniment of religious controversy in all ages, but with an added modern vulgarity that is all his own.”
“He has felt obliged to devote the greater part of his space to an attack upon other explorers in the same region; and here defect of knowledge and defect of sympathy have resulted in much unintentional false-witness and many deplorable lapses into bad taste. This we regret, because what Mr Wells has to say about his own religious experience might reach and profit many persons who are prejudiced against the writings of professional divines; but such people instinctively flee from theological hatred. It is specially to be hoped that before the next book comes out, Mr Wells will make himself acquainted with the view of the Old Testament held to-day in the Christian church.”
“The book delivers its message through the medium of a violent polemic against the Christian creed. The polemic is so inaccurate in historical statement that it helps rather than demolishes the things it attacks. Although the book is hastily and crudely done, it is not without significance. It is the record of experience, whether real or imaginary, an unfolding of how one who ardently disliked Christianity and all its teachings came, through the mind’s shifting to a deeper level to accept most of its tenets under a different name and in different terms.”
“The great interest of his book consists in the reality and intensity of his effort to combine his own religious experience with a consistently biological conception of the universe. The effort fails, we think, but in its reality and intensity it reveals truth.”
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE.Italy, France and Britain at war.*$1.50 (2½c) Macmillan 940.91 17-5137
“One of the minor peculiarities of this unprecedented war is the tour of the front,” says Mr. Wells. His own taste of the experience came in 1916, after repeated refusals. Mr Wells didn’t want to go, but having gone he writes of the experience with characteristic frankness. He had been seeing the war as “something purposeful and epic.” He came back from the front with a revised view. “If I were to be tied down to one word for my impression of this war, I should say that this war is ‘Queer.’ It is not like anything in a really waking world, but like something in a dream. It hasn’t exactly that clearness of light against darkness or good against ill. But it has the quality of wholesome instinct struggling under a nightmare.” The book consists of three parts: The war in Italy (August, 1916): The western war (September, 1916); How people think about the war.
“Sane, philosophic and practical.”
Reviewed by F. F. Kelly
“For the rest, Mr Wells exhibits the old passionateness and the old incapacity to understand anybody who holds opinions different from his present ones. Particularly blind is his discussion of the yielding pacifist and the conscientious objector, and particularly unintelligent his discussion of the ‘religious revival.’”
“We find the first half of his story, dealing with actualities on the Italian and French fronts, in its remarkable exhibition of a gift for observation and vivid portrayal much more convincing than his comments on the psychological reactions of the belligerent nations to the war, or his own generalizations from the specific facts of modern combat.”
“No man, I think, has actually gone to the war, looked it so honestly in the face and brought back so much insight and wide-ranging practical speculation. ... The real genius of this book is that the immensity of what Mr Wells saw on his visit to the front set his mind working instead of striking it dumb. ... There is a phrase in this book which represents a piece of very great perception. Mr Wells speaks of the demilitarization of war. Some of us had already grasped the fact vaguely that there must be industrial back of military preparedness. We visualized it as ‘back of.’ But what the war on the west front seems to show is an irresistible industrialization of army management itself.” W. L.
“Toward the end of the volume Mr Wells discusses the relation of this country to the war with, in some parts of it, keener insight and understanding than one often finds in any utterance from the other side of the Atlantic. But even he only dimly comprehends the purpose and meaning of the American policy.”
“The author gives us such pictures of the mountain warfare waged by the Italians and of the actual conditions of trench fighting in France, as we have had from no other source.”
“We need not agree with all this to be interested by it. We wish we had room to quote the very remarkable analysis of the evolution of methods of attack. ... This analysis comes in the chapter called ‘The grades of war,’ and is the most acute thing we have read on the subject.”
“The most valuable part of the book is probably the third section, ‘How people think about the war.’”
“Stimulating as his views are, they would have carried more weight had there been some more recognizable relation underlying them. ... He carries us with him in many of his generalizations; but we part company with him when he affirms that the military expert is ‘a man trained to think of war as essentially an affair of cavalry, infantry in formation, and field guns,’ the implication being that it is only the civilian who understands modern strategy and its mechanical problems. ... If we understand Mr Wells rightly, the materials we should build with are laymen, democracy, and individual initiative; for his binding material he seems to be looking to mysticism.”
WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE.Soul of a bishop.il*$1.50 (2c) Macmillan 17-24100
We are introduced to the Bishop of Princhester, who has led a happy married life and whose London incumbency has brought nothing to disturb his conventional faith, just as he had settled in the industrial town of Princhester and, for the first time in his life, is “really in doubt about himself, about his way of living, about all his persuasions.” He realizes that the world is “extravagantly out of hand,” and that the church is “a tolerated thing”—a failure. This reacts upon him physically until he develops insomnia. The outbreak of the war steadies him temporarily, but he soon grows worse and goes to Dr Dale, who gives him a drug not in the pharmacopœia, the effect of which is to make him feel braced and uplifted, and to view life differently. Then comes his first vision when he talks with an angel and sees God. A second draught of the tonic brings a second vision, in which the angel shows him “certain signs of the coming of God.” Meantime, after a confirmation service where he speaks of his new faith, which is essentially that developed in “God, the invisible king,” he leaves the church and goes, with his family, into cramped quarters in London. Lady Sunderbund, an impossible American, tries to build him a temple, but he has come to feel that there can be “no specialized ministers of the one true God” and though tempted for a while to take, for the sake of his family, the salary offered by Lady Sunderbund, a third vision shows him that he must put God before his wife and children, and he decides that he cannot be “a professional religious man,” but must “write and talk as he can” of his [to him] new creed: “I believe in God, I believe in the immediate presence of God in every human life, I believe that our lives have to serve the kingdom of God.”
“The lucidity of style characteristic of the creator of ‘Mr Britling’ is displayed to the full in the present story.”
“However ineffectual his bishop may be, however vague and egotistical the Wellsian programme for a reborn world, we cannot doubt the sincere impulse of faith behind it.” H. W. Boynton
“Mr Wells’s new consciousness of a spiritual force working in and for humanity is touchingly sincere; his belief that it is a new force is touchingly ingenuous. What he does not suspect, probably, is that his latest story is only a modification of all his other stories of protest, that his organised religion is only another convention to be done for; that his Bishop Scrope is merely another amiable little Mr Polly, born anew, this time, in the throes of a spiritual instead of a bodily indigestion; and that his new deity is simply an apotheosis of that eager, searching, dogmatic, well-disposed and unpractical personality, Mr H. G. Wells.” H. W. Boynton
“Mr Wells’s descriptions of the bishop’s home and family lure the reader onward over his dreary passages of topsy-turvy Christianity, but he fails entirely when he offers us page after page of conversation in which Lady Sunderbund talks the most arrant nonsense and mangles the English language by omitting the letter r from every word she utters. ... Wedoubt if ‘The soul of a bishop’ will convince anybody, for it will disappoint both those who seek in it a novel and those who are looking for a sensible outlook into modern religion.” E. F. E.
“Mr Wells falls into the special error of his time and his school of thought—he identifies the mental with the spiritual. It is the workings of Scrope’s mind, not his soul, that we follow.”
“Mr Wells has not only delivered a message of high inspiration, but has striven painstakingly to make the value of that message clear to all minds not sealed in with stupidity or intellectual arrogance.”
“So far as its ideas are concerned, one would date it at about 1889, the year following the publication of ‘Robert Elsmere’; Mr Wells, one would say, is beginning to catch up with his ‘Victorians.’ Taken in connection with its two popular predecessors, however, it has still some contemporary reference.”
“‘The soul of a bishop,’ interesting as an exhibit, is of little account as a novel because it has nothing to do with a bishop or a soul. It merely presents the lively spectacle of a Mr Polly, or a Mr Britling, or a Mr Wells (what’s in a name?) waking to find himself attired in apron and gaiters, and making haste to get rid of them.” H. W. Boynton
“The theme is handled by Mr Wells like a virtuoso. ... The bishop is a bleak creature, largely because Mr Wells invented him to fulfil a fictional purpose. Characterized with amazing cleverness, he is still essentially a bobbin on whom the religious thread is wound. The cordiality, the rushing sympathy and kindness and fellowship that religious men in Russian novels express in every relation, have no place in this egoist’s religious escape from neurasthenia.” F. H.
“Wells’ invariable craftsmanship is evident here, which gives life to an otherwise heavy theme. His conclusion can only be regarded by followers of the mental catalysis of this novelist as a further reaction.” Clement Wood
“It is rather a pity that a man who can tell so good a story as Mr Wells should allow himself to be ridden so hard by an idea. ... The marvel is that Mr Wells, with his ingenuity, skill, and sense of reality, should have used a means so theatric and so suggestive of the burlesque as a hashish trance to free the soul and stiffen the conscience of his hero. ... Equally repugnant to the sense of reality is a certain Lady Sunderbund, a gay and glittering, weird and wonderful piece of stage property. Never before has Mr Wells created anything in the human image quite so theatric, absurd, and impossible. Some one refers to her once as an American, and, judging by the marvelous dialect Mr Wells puts into her mouth, he meant such to be her nativity.”
“In ‘God, the invisible king’ he made a rhapsodic tract out of the essential philosophy of ‘Mr Britling sees it through.’ Now he has dramatized the tract, and in ‘The soul of a bishop,’ offers us ‘God, the invisible king’ in the shape of a fable addressed to the capacities of those who may have found the earlier exposition too unremittingly theological for comfortable digestion.” Lawrence Gilman
“The character of the bishop is wrought out with the author’s finest skill.”
“A brief, uncomplicated but very trenchant and stimulating bit of prose fiction—Wells in his newest vein at his best.” F. R.
“We do not propose to discuss Mr Wells’s thesis; a large part of what he says has been for years a commonplace with educated people of all classes; but we may be allowed to remark on the workmanship of the book. Why did Mr Wells take as a subject the religious experiences of a devout member of the Church of England, a Bishop, too, when he obviously is unable to imagine the way in which the outward observances and daily duties and privileges of its communion mould the inner life and transform the experience of the Christian?”
“The book has no psychological interest as a study in religious development. There is much more in it about the Bishop’s nerves than about his soul. Mr Wells gives us a very human picture of the home life at the Palace. There is an amusing caricature of the sentimental neophyte, a wealthy American widow. The reactions of this emotional lady on the Bishop’s family form the most natural element in the book.”
“Mr Wells pretends to analyze the bishop’s soul minutely; but in so doing he does not scruple to resort to the most blatant artificialities. ... His sarcasm is biting; and his indictment of the church’s failure to live up to its opportunities, and, indeed to its fundamental purposes, is in many ways forceful.”
“Right or wrong, profound or shallow, the book is interesting, and in nothing perhaps more interesting than in its showing of the difference that has been made by the war and its implied forecast of the social and religious life that is to follow the war.”
WELLS, WARRE B., and MARLOW, N.History of the Irish rebellion of 1916.*$2.50 Stokes 941.5 17-707
“‘A history of the Irish rebellion of 1916’ is a practical and prosaic book, the work of men who wrote rather because the historical task appealed to them than because they found in the insurrection an attractive theme. It is stated that their purpose has been, in addition to narrating the events of the rebellion and showing their connection with the European war, to portray without criticism the conflicting ideals in present-day Ireland. ... The events leading up to the rising, the formation of the various patriotic societies and volunteer armies, the three-cornered debates about home rule, the long and complicated negotiations with England, the early experiences of the leaders of the rebellion, these things are stated. ... A valuable feature of the book is the appendix, containing the report of the Royal commission on the rebellion in Ireland, the military dispatches sent by Field Marshal French to the secretary of state for war, and from General Maxwell to Field Marshal French and to the secretary of state for war, and Roger Casement’s speech from the dock.”—N Y Times
“Valuable chiefly as a detailed contemporary record of incidents and events.”
“It is apparent that the authors are not in sympathy with the ideals and methods of the Irish revolutionary leaders, and this fact causes them now and then to indulge in editorial comments of a somewhat cynical kind, out of harmony with the general nonpartisan historical attitude they assume.”
“An accurate and comprehensive account.”
WELSH, JAMES C.Songs of a miner.*2s 6d Herbert Jenkins, London 821
“The author of these poems worked for twenty-four years as a miner; his verses were written at odd times during these years.”—N Y Call
“Those pieces treating of his work are the least effective of the book. ... It is not labor speaking in terms of itself; it is laborspeaking in terms of book-poetry. ... The songs are often melodious, but none is of the first rank.” Clement Wood
“‘The crusade of youth,’ which opens the book, is an ambitious poem in heroics, which does indeed show that Mr Welsh has a glow of imagination, a rich vocabulary, and a fine sense of cadence. But it is a literary exercise such as many have attempted before him; and it is sometimes grandiose and tricked out with unnecessary ornament. On the other hand, when he comes closer to earth and touches the realities of his life, as in ‘Labour’ and ‘The miner,’ he is apt to be prosaic and a trifle ‘Hyde-parky.’ ... He is really most successful in such touching little poems as ‘To a dead comrade’ and ‘To my wife,’ or in some of the Scottish dialect pieces.”
WEST, ANDREW FLEMING, ed.[2]Value of the classics.*$1 Princeton univ. press 375 17-28345
“Once in a while, protest is uttered against excessive intellectual modernism. Such a protest is uttered in a collection of addresses and papers entitled ‘Value of the classics.’ It presents the addresses delivered at the Conference on classical studies in liberal education held at Princeton last year, together with an introduction by Andrew F. West, dean of the graduate school of Princeton university, and a series of brief statements upon the subject from lawyers, clergymen, physicians, editors, educators, and men in other walks of life. Among those who delivered the addresses recorded in the volume are President John Grier Hibben of Princeton university, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Dean Roscoe Pound of the Harvard law school, and Professor Lewellys F. Barker of Johns Hopkins.”—Boston Transcript
“The conference and this volume have done a great service for our cause. In these times, when classical teachers are so often called upon to give a reason for their existence, it is a fine thing to have ready at hand these manifold arguments and opinions. It is a book which no one of us can afford to be without.” M. N. W.
“This volume is one not only to read but to ponder. It administers with artistic skill and completeness a body-blow to much of the crude and noisy theorizing about education that has lately been so much to the fore in this country.”
WESTERGAARD, WALDEMAR CHRISTIAN.Danish West Indies under company rule (1671-1754) with a supplementary chapter, 1755-1917; with an introd. by H. Morse Stephens. il*$3 Macmillan 972.9 17-16559
Dr Westergaard is the son of a Danish family which emigrated to North Dakota and he is at present assistant professor of history at Pomona college, California. “Dr Westergaard tells the story of the settlement and administration of the Danish West Indies from 1671 to 1754, and in a supplementary chapter gives briefly their history from the middle of the eighteenth century to 1917, the date of their purchase by the United States. The historical perspective embraces European colonial expansion in the West Indies, covers the great romance of trade in St John, St Croix and St Thomas, dealings with pirates, the growth of agriculture, and the success of the island plantations in the days when ‘sugar was king.’ There is much about the slave trade and its attendant abuses and accounts of the insurrections of the negroes.” (R of Rs) The book has a ten-page bibliography.
“Among the most valuable chapters are those dealing with the economic life of the colony. The experiments with indigo and cotton, the export of valuable woods, the rise of the sugar-cane industry which, especially when war conditions made the prices for the staple rise, gave the islands their boom periods, all furnish interesting contrasts and parallels for students of the history of other West Indian colonies.” C. L. Jones
“Dr Westergaard brings every element of knowledge, scientific training and personal sympathy necessary to the task he has set himself. And furthermore, he evidently possesses literary ability sufficient to remove his book from the class of dry reference works for library shelves, and to put it into a class of books that are not only commended, but really read. He has given us a work of serious and lasting value. The bibliography is of unusual value from the comments attached to each source of reference quoted.” G. I. Colbron
“A valuable addition to Americana.”
“Prof. Westergaard began his work on some letters found in the Bancroft collection of the University of California and then went to Denmark and dug up the original records of the Danish West India and Guinea company, which no previous historian had touched. This fine piece of original investigation is too solidly packed with facts and figures to attract the general reader. But the volume is full of interesting and novel information.”
“A feature of Dr Westergaard’s book, which should be of high value to the student, is a series of twenty-one appendices, wherein are given statistics, lists of governors and shareholders in the various companies, transcripts of the charters, financial statements, and other rare information derived from the Danish archives and now first made accessible to the general public. ... Two additional volumes are promised.”