Chapter 120

20–20447

An anthology of modern British verse. Harold Monro, who writes the introduction, supplies the key to the collection when he says, “The best poetry is always about the earth itself and all the strange and lovely things that compose and inhabit it.” The first object, he says later, is to give pleasure. “Moreover, it is adapted to the tastes of almost any age, from ten to ninety, and may be read aloud by grandchild to grandparent as suitably as by grandparent to grandchild. It is an anthology of poems, not of names.” Among the poems and their authors are April, by William Watson; The lake isle of Innisfree, by W. B. Yeats; The donkey, by G. K. Chesterton; The south country, by Hilaire Belloc; The west wind, by John Masefield; Full moon, by Walter de la Mare; A dead harvest, by Alice Meynell; The great lover, by Rupert Brooke; Star-talk, by Robert Graves; Stupidity street, by Ralph Hodgson; The oxen, by Thomas Hardy.

“It is a good coat-pocket anthology.”

“This collection includes some charming things by living hands of real distinction, and some others which make us regret young poets lost in the war. The anthologist has given us real pleasures, and we forego the reviewer’s privilege of grumbling about the inclusion of this or the exclusion of that.”

“The poems are few but well chosen from the standpoint of the seeker after clear language and well-defined images. There is little of that strained impressionism and hazy, finespun introspection which are the bane of modern verse.”

WALTON, GEORGE LINCOLN.Oscar Montague—paranoiac. il *$1.50 (3c) Lippincott

19–15667

In this novel Dr Walton embodies the ideas prevalent in his non-fiction books, “Why worry,” “Those nerves,” and others. Ruth Fulton, chronic fusser, in a fit of pique, jilts her steady serious-minded fiancé and marries the town rake, who thinks most men are against him. Oscar, their son, grows up spoiled, idle, badly educated, boon companion of ruffians and loafers. He has the obsession that everyone is in a conspiracy against him, and secretly cherishes the illusion that one Nicky Bennett is trying to harm him. Accidentally meeting Nicky when in an evil mood he pulls out a revolver and shoots him; pleads insanity to escape the electric chair, but once inside the asylum finds that the law refuses to let him out. The daughter of Ruth and Gerrold is normal and lovable, and happily marries the son of her mother’s old sweetheart, after having by a bit of clever detective work “on her own,” saved the lad from being falsely convicted for the murder of her father.

“The characters are clearly drawn, and are thoroughly lifelike people, whose lives, without anything brilliant or startling, are full of quiet interest, humorous or pathetic.”

“Amateurish is the only adjective to describe adequately this novel, with its wooden puppets in place of characters and its obviously mechanical situations. The book’s two redeeming features, are the occasional flashes of whimsical humor the author displays, and the disarmingly naïve manner in which he pokes fun at his own inexperience as a novelist.”

“The only person of any interest in the book is the daughter, Helen, and the only episode of any interest is Helen’s discovery of the real culprit who had run over and killed her father. This has not much to do with Oscar Montague—paranoiac, who is quite a secondary character in a poor novel.”

WARD, HARRY FREDERICK.New social order. *$2.50 Macmillan 304

19–19067

“Prof. Harry F. Ward of Union theological seminary, in his new book, ‘The new social order,’ writes on social and industrial change both from economic and from ethical standpoints. His book considers in part 1 the underlying principles of the new order, in part 2, various programs, such as those proposed by the British labor party, the Russian soviets, the league of nations, various movements in the United States, and the churches.”—Springf’d Republican

“Dr Ward has been developing a very unusual fluency of speech, mental power, and moral insight that appear strikingly in this book. Although some of the chapters on the principles might well have been a little shorter and crisper, the style is always interesting, at times rising to natural and impressive eloquence; and the thought is throughout clear and weighty. This is one of the most important books for the citizen of this generation to read thoughtfully, and read at an early date.” C. J. Bushnell

Reviewed by C. G. Fenwick

“Dr Ward has rendered a real service in bringing together in compact form so many expressions of the new spirit. He knows that they are signs rather than realities, but it is a poor skipper who cares not which way the veering flaw blows. Christians and pagans will do well to ponder them.” C: A. Beard

“In this latest of his several volumes Professor Ward makes his most notable contribution to the religious interpretation of the changing social order. Professor Ward’s discussion of the controverted points dealt with is frank and fearless, notwithstanding, perhaps the more because of, the criticism he has all along met from certain ecclesiastical and special interest groups.” Graham Taylor

“The chapter on the Russian soviet constitution is far and away the ablest and clearest statement yet given to us upon that very important subject. Mr Ward is to be envied for his twofold gift of grasping details and of strong speculative thinking; and this combination makes his book a singularly valuable and safe guide for the student.” R. R.

WARD, JOHN.With the “Die-hards” in Siberia. *$2.50 (3c) Doran 957

20–7944

The author commanded a detachment of British troops sent to Siberia to support Kolchak. He blames his own government for its halfhearted support of the enterprise it had undertaken, and is especially bitter against the Americans and the Japanese. The book was written, he says, “for the private use of my sons in case I did not return.” Among the chapters are: From Hong Kong to Siberia; Bolshevik successes; Japanese methods and Allied Far-eastern policy; Administration; Omsk; Along the Urals; Russian labour; In European Russia; American policy and its results; Japanese policy and its results; General conclusions. There is an index.

“Colonel Ward is too innocent for a propagandist. We knew Colonel Ward had been no nearer to Moscow than had we in London, but we have received an impression that in far-away Siberia he fought desperately against the Red armies. Why did the coalition permit their friend to write a book and give the show away so completely? We find that Colonel Ward never met the disciplined armies of Trotsky, and, except for one engagement, the whole campaign was a series of affairs with Bolshevik bands.”

“Colonel Ward’s book is bound to furnish material for controversy. His narrative is couched in a style that is the acme of plain speaking; he wastes no time in euphemisms or diplomatic circumlocution, but fearlessly handles facts as they come to him. From all internal evidence his book has the air of a straightforward, truthful narrative.”

“Colonel Ward’s narrative makes a vivid and fascinating picture of stirring events and gives throughout the impression of keen observation and sincerity.”

“There is nothing small about this book. The countries he traversed, the observations he made, and the cause he worked for, all convey a sense of space and sanity, which no niggling pen could have produced. There is no delicate tracery of outlines here, no precious selection of words to convey an atmosphere and the genial author does not deal in suggestions and impressions, but relies almost entirely on forthright facts.”

“Colonel Ward’s account is very welcome because it is obviously honest and sincere.”

WARD, MARY AUGUSTA (ARNOLD) (MRS HUMPHRY WARD).Harvest. il *$2 (2½c) Dodd

20–6288

When Rachel Henderson took the Great End farm near Ipscombe to lead an independent life as a woman farmer, she had had a past in Canada. She had been married to a worthless man, had lost her child, had been divorced and—more than that—when fleeing from her husband’s cruelty, had succumbed to the sympathy and protection of Dick Tanner, a neighboring farmer, and had stayed with him for three days and nights. When, in the course of events at Great End farm, she becomes engaged to a young American captain, from a near-by camp, still guarding her secret, she faces a spiritual struggle. After all the confessions are made and the lover also has achieved a victory over his time honored prejudices, a bullet from the former, now hate-crazed husband, kills her in her lover’s arms.

“Mrs Ward cannot be judged by ‘Harvest,’ It is a plain mystery novel; it bears the impress of her desire to emerge from the library and to walk in the cornfields—in the new land which is war-time England. But she is unhappy in such surroundings and her serenity is gone.” K. M.

“It would be an injustice to Mrs Ward to say that ‘Harvest’ is in any degree worthy of a novelist of her reputation, or indeed of many a novelist of lesser reputation. ‘Harvest,’ in common with its immediate predecessor, ‘Helena,’ and many of her later stories, might have been written by any one of a hundred English fiction writers of the hour. It is utterly conventional in form, and commonplace in plot and characterization.” E. F. E.

“Written in that smoothly flowing style to which Mrs Ward’s readers have so long been accustomed, the book, while not indeed equal to her best, shows no falling off from the standard set by her recent work, but on the contrary rises somewhat above it. The novel contains some lovely pictures of the English country.” L. M. Field

“It is with peculiar pleasure that one recognizes in the late Mrs Humphry Ward’s posthumous novel, ‘Harvest,’ the qualities that have marked the very best of her fiction writing. This tale of rural England in war time is notable for the balance and unity of theme and development. It is almost astonishingly superior, for instance, to ‘Helena.’”

“I for one should be unhappy if it were necessary for me to remember Mrs Ward by this book.” H. W. Boynton

“Mrs Ward does not make these women seem very real. She idealizes their ‘trim’ appearance in pseudo-masculine attire and at no time visualizes their lives and pursuits from their own standpoint. Sympathy, and an earnest effort at understanding, however, are always apparent.”

WARNE, FRANK JULIAN.Workers at war. (Century New world ser.) *$3 Century 331

20–17812

From a dispassionate, conservative point of view the author reviews the present industrial situation with its resultant high cost of living. He accords high praise to the statesmanship of President Wilson in controlling the situation during the war and to the activities of the National war labor board. That the government now fails to realize the three essentials of industrial justice: a fair profit, a fair wage and a fair price is due to the present autocratic system of corporate organization of production. The remedy lies in the democratization of the corporation and in an American federation of consumers. A partial list of the contents is: The workers and the world war; The government as the employer; The Wilson administration’s labor policy; The National war labor board; The government, wages, and the cost of living; The vicious cycle and the labor union; Democracy in industry; The three parties to production; Industrial autocracy and the corporation.

Reviewed by G: Soule

“The book is valuable as a summary of governmental labor policies during the war, as a record of the achievements of labor and the effect of autocratic control on the wage earner and the consumer.” J. D. Hackett

WARREN, ARTHUR.London days. *$2.50 (3c) Little

20–17401

This book of reminiscences begins in 1878, when the author, fresh from Boston, arrived in London at the age of eighteen. He made the choice because “history already made and rounded and woven into legend, the scenes among which men have lived and wrought through centuries, shaping the rich past on which we build the present” fascinated him more than the prospect of pioneering in the West. The period covers nineteen years of Journalism, nine of them as correspondent for the Boston Herald, and combines with memories and impressions of London those of celebrated personages. Contents: First glimpses of London; London in the late seventies; A Norman interlude; I take the plunge; Browning and Moscheles; Patti; John Stuart Blackie; Lord Kelvin; Tennyson; Gladstone; Whistler; Henry Drummond; Sir Henry Irving; Henry M. Stanley; George Meredith; Parnell; “Le brav’ général” (Boulanger); Index.

Reviewed by Margaret Ashmun

“As journalism the writing is good; it does not assume to be more. Gossipy, wholesome, harmless, never profound, but lighted up here and there by almost poetic touches of admiration and of reverence, these reminiscences should well suit those who desire an easy introduction to the charm of biography.”

“Despite the fact that in many cases he insists on writing an old story as if it were still of vital interest, he has preserved some anecdotes that merited survival and he has drawn the portraits of several famous Britons with commendable skill.”

“His estimate not only of men, but of the social and literary forces of modern London, are trenchantly expressed.”

“It is a book to evoke enthusiasm for his literary style as well as for the human interest that attaches to the people whose names are chapter headings here.”

WARREN, HOWARD CROSBY.Human psychology. il *$5 Houghton 150

19–16728

The author distinguishes between genetic and descriptive psychology: the one dealing with mental growth and mental progress from species to species; the other with mental life as it actually exists. The interest of the book centers mainly on the latter, the static view of psychology. At the end of each chapter is a list of collateral reading and some practical exercises intended to train the student in precise critical observation of mental phenomena. The contents are: The science of psychology; The organism; The neuro-terminal mechanism; Physiology of the neuron; Stimulation, adjustment, and response; Behavior; Conscious experience; The senses; The components of mental states; Primary mental states; Secondary mental states; Succession of mental states; Attitudes; Character and personality; Organized mental life. The appendix deals with some debatable problems for the benefit of the advanced students and contains: The mind-body relation; Mechanism and purpose; Neural activity; The visual process. There are also illustrations and tables; directions for performing the exercises and an index.

“Comprehensiveness, thoroughness, clear definitions, elaborate classifications and an open-minded, progressive outlook are what characterize this work. And it is not only comprehensive, in that it covers the entire field of descriptive psychology, but it is comprehensive in its grasp of the subject.” F. W. C.

“Professor Warren’s book is interesting not only in itself, but also in the indication which it gives of the phases of psychology which may be expected to survive after this period of devotion of the science to its practical applications.”

“In sum, this is a most scholarly work, which in the beginning, and generally in outward semblance, gives promise of breaking fairly away from the traditions that produced the behavioristic schism, but which is found to be still heavily burdened with the inheritance of formalism, only partially offset by its clearness, criticism, humor, and tolerance.” F. L. Wells

Reviewed by Joseph Jastrow

“Professor Warren’s work as a whole would be an excellent introduction for beginners in psychology, though it is, of course, a work of interest for advanced students also.”

WASHBURN, CLAUDE CARLOS.Order. *$2 (1½c) Duffield

20–4014

Marville, the beautiful residential suburb of a big city was law and order incarnate—order with all its ugly sordid features pruned away, beautified and civilized. Into it blows its antithesis, the spirit of romance in the person of Peter Gresham, Englishman, packed off to America by his aristocratic relatives. He literally explodes into Marville in a train wreck, becomes its hero, and later upsets the tranquillity of everybody with whom he comes in contact. The reactions of this spirit of romance on law and order form the substance of the story. By one man and one woman it is understood. Peter himself does not understand but is it, and when it brings him in contact with Annette Cornish, beautiful young wife of an elderly man, there is fire. Others are simply stimulated, bewildered, shaken out of their repose for the nonce. Annette and pretty Elsie Cook succumb completely to its spell. Annette, disciplined and broken-in by order from childhood, fears it and is broken by it. Elsie, the half-savage, gives herself to it unstintingly, but comes out with flying colors by dint of a saving remnant of hard practical sense. Peter turns his back on it all and is killed at Neuve Chapelle.

“Exceptionally interesting story. Here we have a book of ideas which is never didactic, but presents both sides of a case with striking fairness, a tale whose plot springs from the natural interplay of character upon character, and whose lights and shadows are managed with notable artistry.”

Reviewed by H. W. Boynton

WASHBURNE, CARLETON W.Common science. il *$1.60 World bk. 502

20–15542

The book belongs to the New-world science series edited by John W. Ritchie. It is based on a collection of 2000 questions asked by school children in the upper elementary grades over a period of a year and a half. These questions are sorted and classified according to the scientific principles involved in answering them. The object of the method is to lead the child from an interest and curiosity in a specific phenomena to a general principle and to arouse his imagination by making it clear to him what part it plays in his own life. The contents are grouped under the headings: Gravitation; Molecular attraction; Conservation of energy; Heat; Radiant heat and light; Sound; Magnetism and electricity; Electricity; Mingling of molecules; Chemical change and energy; Solution and chemical action; Analysis. There are appendices, an index and illustrations.

“The book should be of value in conserving and developing the science interests of children of junior high-school age.”

WASSERMANN, JACOB.World’s illusion; auth. tr. by Ludwig Lewisohn. (European library) 2v *$4 (1½c) Harcourt

20–22159

This is the first book by this author, a Viennese novelist, to appear in English. It was written, he says, during the last years of the war: “Only in this way could I keep contact with and faith in humanity.” It has nothing to do with the war, but is a picture of pre-war society in central Europe, a brilliant, feverish picture of a society in the first hectic stages of decay, resting on insecure foundations of poverty, misery and crime. The first volume is devoted to the life of the upper classes, represented by Crammon, the Austrian aristocrat, Christian Wahnschaffe, son of a German captain of industry, Eva Sorel, the dancer, and almost countless others. The scenes flit from capital to capital with the haste and inconsistency of a screen drama. In the second volume we have in contrast the dregs of society, for Christian, in search of truth, has descended to the lowest depths. He gives up his fortune, studies medicine to fit himself for a field of usefulness and in the end cuts himself off entirely from his family and disappears, to continue his search elsewhere.

“Despite the penny-dreadful stuff there is a breath of serenity that reveals the artist in complete mastery of his material and despite the frank consideration of sex, there is an indubitable chastity hovering over all these pages. In fact, were one to select a single word with which to describe the mood of the work as a whole, he would most probably say, austerity.” I. G.

Reviewed by Paul Rosenfeld

“It would hold the interest through all its 787 pages if there were nothing in it save its arresting procession of grotesque incidents, but there is something more, and that something is an ironical quality that suggests the manner of the great Russians. All his characters, high and low, are pathological cases. Thus the chronicle, to an American, cannot carry much conviction despite its fine passion and its vivid detail.” H. L. Mencken

“Wassermann has created a work of strange and sombre power. The translation is unusually good.” E. A. Boyd

“The book’s chief values lie in its interpretation of modern industrial society as Wassermann sees it. But surely not all European society is degenerate. Humanity as a whole is not portrayed in ‘The world’s illusion.’”

WATKIN, EDWARD INGRAM.Philosophy of mysticism. *$5 Harcourt 149.3

The author differentiates between the mystic and his mystical experiences, and the metaphysics of mysticism. The mystic, he says, can not adequately state his experiences in terms of discursive reason, nevertheless the philosophy of mysticism is “the body of truth about the nature of ultimate reality and of our relationship to it to be derived from the content of mystical experience.” (Preface) He regards the Catholic church as the best vehicle of expression for this body of truth. The contents are: The divine immanence; Unity of God; The transcendence of God; The relation between the soul and God; Views of the mystic way; The negative way; The active night; Mystical experience previous to the night of spirit; The passive night of spirit; Purgatory and the passive night of spirit; The transforming union: or mystical marriage; On the mystical interpretation of Scripture; The witness of nature mysticism to the teaching of Catholic mysticism studied in the mysticism of Richard Jefferies; St John the poet; Epilogue; Notes.

Reviewed by G. E. Partridge

“Mr Watkin’s book is written exclusively for his co-religionists, and others will not find it worth while to study it.”

WATSON, E. L. GRANT.Deliverance. *$2 (2½c) Knopf

20–3264

The author tells us that in this his third novel he has tried to portray the spiritual emancipation of a woman whose “love for the increasing light of her own spirit ... becomes more precious than even the unique love of woman for man.” (Preface) The scene is laid in contemporary England. The principal characters are Susan Zalesky, who is brought up in the country by her aunt, Mrs Dorothy Tyler; Paul Zalesky, Susan’s father, a philanderer, who carries on a secret love affair with Dorothy; Tom Northover, the “primitive male,” who marries Susan but makes “no claims upon her soul”; Noel Sarret, a young painter with whom Tom, who believes that the only test of morality is “the sincerity of the emotion,” goes to live shortly before the birth of Susan’s child; and Martin Hyde, a gentle young painter who loves Susan.

“However one takes it, it is a novel exposition; there is much reality in these persons, not least in the figure of Susan’s irresponsible and almost incorrigible father.” H. W. Boynton

“If he had nothing else, he would be sure to win recognition for the sheer beauty of his workmanship. Indeed it is easier to quarrel with some of the natural results of his process of spiritual emancipation than with his illustrations of it in characters, or with his manner of setting it forth.” H. I. Gilchrist

“His story is not quite as persuasive as his philosophy. His women are suspiciously fine in fibre and amazingly articulate. Attractive as they are, they remain a little dim. And the dimmest of all is Susan, whom Mr Watson adores and through whose words and actions he chiefly projects his sense of the new moral world that is being created by all sorts of people in many places today.”

“Just what Susan Zalesky emancipates into is a little difficult to conceive, and sounds, on the whole, much less interesting than the rather fascinating story of her procedure. Judged more freely, however, ‘Deliverance’ is interesting and delightful for other qualities than its processes. It comes in many ways as near the art of the Russian novelists as any English novel.” R. V. A. S.

“Each reader will determine for himself whether or no Mr Watson’s message is worth this unpleasant ragout.”

WATSON, JOHN BROADUS.Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. il *$2.50 Lippincott 150

20–447

“A treatise on the new American methods in psychology known as behaviourism. The essential feature of this school is that it regards man purely as a ‘reacting mass,’ and endeavours to determine his reactions without importing into the observation preconceived ideas, affecting interpretation. The present author, indeed, does not find it necessary to use such terms as ‘sensation,’ ‘perception,’ ‘attention,’ ‘will,’ ‘image,’ and the like. He states that he does not know what they mean, and he suggests that no one succeeds in using them consistently.”—Ath

“By consistently disregarding all the essential steps in ‘thinking’ in which most psychologists (and the world at large) are interested, and by cavalierly treating the problems in which the behaviorist happens not to be interested, he produces a ‘psychology’ which is as true as the railway maps of any one company showing only the towns on its line, with its own route straight and prominent, and rival systems indicated if at all by lightly drawn and circuitous detours.” Joseph Jastrow

“The present writer as he reads the book finds himself in continual expectation that now he is coming to the end of the physiology and the beginning of the psychology, but is continually disappointed. This book may inspire, and will direct, the student to practical researches of the highest interest to the advance of science. To this extent every psychologist will welcome it. It is difficult to find anything in its principle to disagree with, save only its limitation and negation.” H. W. Carr

WATSON, ROBERT.[2]Stronger than his sea. *$1.90 (2c) Doran

20–18387

Much of the charm of the story lies in the quaint Scotch dialect of its characters and much of Sandy Porter’s winsomeness in his Scotch sturdiness. Five when his father died, he began to help his mother support the family when he was six. He carried milk to the customers of a dairy night and morning throughout his school years and still found time for boyish mischief. How he led his schoolmates in a strike against a superannuated tyrannical master, and other escapades is amusingly told. In old Doctor Telford he had a wise friend who kept an eye on him and made things possible without making them too easy for him. So it was that the penniless boy reached his goal and became a veterinary surgeon. He also won the old doctor’s daughter, Doreen, altho there was a rival and Sandy blundered in his impulsiveness. But his poetry helped.

“The story of the young man Sandy is fully as attractive, if not so adventurous as that of the child, and both are delightfully told.”

“‘Stronger than his sea’ illustrates perfectly the difference between the novel that is literature and the story that is simon-pure entertainment. It is good of its kind—‘light fiction’ that scarcely aspires to the artistic dignity of holding the mirror up to life.”

WATTS, MRS MARY STANBERY.[2]Noon mark. *$2.50 Macmillan

20–18922

“It is emphatically an American story, full of the flavor of American life—American life, that is to say, as it is lived in such a small middle-western city as that one in which the scene of ‘The noon mark’ is laid. As this story progresses, the dominant figure is discovered to be that of Nettie Stieffel, whose father was in the accounting department of the Travelers and Traders’ bank. Clean-minded and clean-hearted, generous, brave, efficient, unimaginative and consequently a little hard, without an ounce of romance in her composition, honest and loyal to the core, and incidentally very good looking, she develops into an easily recognized type of American business woman, capable, hard-working, intelligent and dependable. When we leave her she is a married woman who has, as she herself says, ‘everything anybody could want,’ including a motor car—and happiness.”—N Y Times

“It is a story to be placed, by those who respond to this story-teller’s genial-ironic kind of thing, beside ‘The Boardman family’ and ‘The rise of Jennie Cushing,’—not a great novel but a real and solid one.” H. W. Boynton

“It is, indeed, a small fragment of American life that Mrs Watts has described in ‘The noon mark,’ but it is a very real fragment and an extremely realistic portrayal of it.” E. F. Edgett

“Mrs Watts’s new novel is more rewarding in transit than in termination. The conclusion is indefinite in its effect, ending on an interrogation which does not flow naturally out of the materials with which the author started.” L. B.

“In the loose-jointed aggregation which is our United States, there can be, we must conclude, no ‘American’ novel. There can be only sectional novels, the portraiture of a sort, of a class. Of these Mrs Watts is a valuable chronicler. She is selective. It is not the light of imagination that lives in her books, but the steady rays of the impartial sun.” Alice Brown

“The author’s comments on it all are cleverly phrased, with occasional touches of irony which lend spice to the story. She is a realist, unspoiled by pessimism.”

“In construction and the centralizing of interest in one large situation the novel is less successful than some of its predecessors.”

“Her localism, as always, is faultless. But it is in characterization, the ultimate test, that she achieves most. Her Nettie Stieffel is as actual and unescapable a person as Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt—or her own Jennie Cushing.” H. W. Boynton

+ |Review3:623 D 22 ’20 440w

“The story is not so organic as Mrs Watts’s best, but will arouse a considerable degree of interest among readers.”

WAUGH, ALEC.Loom of youth; with a preface by Thomas Seccombe. *$1.90 (1½c) Doran

20–8276

This novel of English school life was written some three years ago when the author was barely past seventeen. It is a boy’s criticism of the English public school, its emphasis on sports at the expense of scholarship, its lack of mental discipline, its low standard of morals, and the dull formalism of its teaching, written while these matters were fresh in mind. Midway in his school course Gordon Caruthers accidentally discovers the delights of English poetry and Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti influence his development. The story is carried into the first years of the war and the author shows how school life was affected by outward events. For one thing, the glamor was stripped from athleticism and school sports.

“He has not ranted. He has not preached. But he has spoken the truth as it appeared to him, swiftly, unalterably. It must remain, I think, for a long time, as one of the few remarkable records of school life which this generation or any generation has furnished.” D. L. M.

“‘The loom of youth’ is apt to bore American readers because the viewpoint is annoying, and the action and dialogue not sufficient to stimulate reading.”

“There are very definite signs of youth in the minuteness of detail in all matters and in the exhaustive descriptions of cricket and football matches, but the writing on the whole is astonishingly mature.”

“What is fresh in the book is its clear insight into the morality of the boys, especially in their relations with the masters and its objective projection of its complex and busy scene.”

“A very evident sincerity and an infinite patience in the transcription of details give a value to this book altogether greater than that of most of the innumerable books about Harrow, Eton, and other similar institutions.” S. C. C.

“The breath of a dogged sincerity, a determination to set down nothing but the truth, emanates from every page. As a narrative of sustained power and interest the book holds up well. Mr Waugh’s characters are broadly drawn but they do give forth an intimate sense of reality. It is the meticulous eye of Mr Waugh that plays a large part in the book’s success.”

“The book is one which will probably be of far greater interest to an English than to an American audience. It would seem to be, take it all in all, a book of no little promise.”

“Everything in this really spirited book is sane, equable, intellectually mature. It may be read either as a narrative of a boy’s school days or as a treatise on education. Remarkable to relate, it is about equally instructive and diverting from either point of view.

WEALE, BERTRAM LENOX PUTNAM, pseud. (BERTRAM LENOX SIMPSON).Wang the ninth. *$1.75 (3c) Dodd

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