Chapter 121

20–16797

Shrewdness, courage, loyalty, honesty and resourcefulness are this remarkable Chinese boy’s equipment. Of the poorest peasantry, he is early an orphan, and in shifting for himself he comes to be a groom in the household of one of the “foreign devils.” During the Boxer rebellion he remains with his master, partly from ignorance of what it is all about, partly from self-interest and an instinct of loyalty. He is sent on a dangerous mission to the allied army, bearing the message rolled up in his ear. Reaching the army after a perilous journey he is given a return message. This is too bulky for his ear, so in a moment of panic of discovery, he swallows it. Of this he calmly informs his master, when at last, spent and exhausted, he returns to him, adding, “and by your blessing I shall now die a natural death.”

“The book is throughout written, at least theoretically, from the native point of view, and has, in consequence, an unusual and fascinating quality.”

“There are many dramatic adventures and a rich background of Chinese life.”

“A good picture of peasant childhood in China as well as a first-rate adventure story for boys.”

+ |Clevelandp107 D ’20 40w

“A highly interesting book, worth while both for its story element and for the faithful picture of the humble inner life of the great sleeping empire off in the yellow West.”

“The tale is one of adventure and courage, and the character of the Chinese boy is unusual and decidedly interesting.”

WEAVER, GERTRUDE (RENTON) (MRS HAROLD BAILLIE WEAVER) (G. COLMORE, pseud.).Thunderbolt. *$1.90 Seltzer

20–7061

“Mrs Bonham takes her engaged daughter for a trip on the continent. In Germany Dorrie injures a foot and is sent with her French maid to Professor Reisen, a famous clinician with whom Mrs Bonham has become acquainted. Instead of taking the girl to the doctor’s private office, the blundering maid takes her to a clinic conducted by Dr Reisen for experimental purposes. Shortly after this a suspicious sore appears on Dorrie’s arm, followed by a similar one on her lip. Alarmed by the sores, Mrs Bonham takes her daughter to a specialist in Paris, and is filled with horror when she learns the name of the disease with which Dorrie was inoculated in Dr Reisen’s clinic. Back in England Mrs Bonham tells Dorrie’s fiancé what has happened. The young man promptly ends the engagement. Dorrie does not learn of her lover’s defection and is kept ignorant of her disease. The old nurse, who has been sent for, realizes the truth of Dorrie’s statement that it would kill her if her fiancé stopped loving her. She determines that Dorrie must never learn the truth, and, by a noble and tragic sacrifice, keeps it from her.”—N Y Times

“This sorry fable is quite devoid of the melodramatic ‘punch,’ the thrill of spurious horror which was, obviously, its one attainable merit. Honestly written, it would have been a rattling shilling shocker. Aping the sober garb and earnest manners of a modern novel, it has succeeded in being hailed—for various reasons—as a masterpiece.”

“‘The thunderbolt’ has all the exquisite artistry of Swinnerton at his best, and a realism as ultimate and magic as Leonard Merrick’s. It is hard to overpraise this book, and you are unfair to yourself if you do not acquaint yourself with it.” Clement Wood

“The two parts of the book might have been written by different authors in different ages. Absolutely nothing prepares the reader for the shock he receives when the author launches her thunderbolt. An ugly story with an undeniable dramatic dénouement.”

“Having once read the book, no competent judge of good craftsmanship would dare refuse to acknowledge the unfaltering purpose, the patient insistent building up, the cumulative power of this grim book.” Calvin Winter

“It might have been, within its limits, a little masterpiece. But in the groping for tragedy the author fails and the conclusion is merely shocking. The most captivating human figure is the nurse, Hannah.”

WEBB, CLEMENT CHARLES JULIAN.Divine personality and human life. (Library of philosophy) *$4 (*10s 6d) Macmillan 231

20–12837

“This volume contains the second part of the Gifford lectures, delivered in the University of Aberdeen in 1918–1919.” (Nation) “In the first series of these lectures, ‘God and personality,’ it was argued that by a ‘personal God’ is meant a God with whom a personal relationship is possible for his worshippers; that such a relationship is associated with the higher forms of religious experience; that in Christianity certain difficulties which attach to the conception of the personality of God are avoided by the assertion that God is not a single person; and it was claimed, not indeed that this position was free from difficulties, but that it was attended by fewer and less serious difficulties than its rivals. In the present course personality in man is examined in the light of these conclusions; the various activities in which this human personality expresses itself—economic, scientific, aesthetic, moral, political, and religious—being viewed in relation to the supreme spiritual reality revealed to us in the experience given in religion. The three concluding lectures consider the rank to be assigned in the kingdom of reality to the finite individual person.” (Spec)

“A careful reader will very seldom even suspect him of confusion in ideas; there is hardly a word and—once the sentences have been construed—hardly an argument to baffle an intelligent schoolboy. Yet, with all these pitfalls avoided, we are defrauded of a good philosophical style, the worthy yet popular expression of a valuable thought, by the elementary failure to construct an unambiguous and balanced sentence.”

“It belongs to the front ranks of its class. Altogether the reading of the book is a rich experience, and its comparative freedom from the jargon of the philosophical schools makes it available for a much wider circle of readers than is usually the case with this kind of literature.” R. R.

“In Mr Webb, terminology is reduced to a minimum. His argument can be followed by any fairly well read man without difficulty, and this is no small praise.”

“Mr Webb could not, we think, publish a book that did not contain acute and illuminating pages, but he certainly does not show here anything like the constructive force, or the lucidity of exposition, which marked his earlier volume.”

WEBB, CLEMENT CHARLES JULIAN.God and personality; being the Gifford lectures delivered in the University of Aberdeen in the years 1918–1919. (Library of philosophy) *$3 Macmillan 231

19–14097

“All students of the philosophy of religion know that Mr C. C. J. Webb, fellow of Magdalen college, Oxford, has, within the last few years, won for himself a position in the front rank among philosophical critics and defenders of religion. Mr Webb’s argument [in this book] amounts to a philosophical defense of the Christian conception of and belief in God. Mr Webb’s emphasis falls wholly on the value of ‘religious experience’ as affording the profoundest clues to the nature of the world we live in. He holds that religious experience testifies to the reality of God and of the worshipper’s personal intercourse with God. More than this, he holds that the doctrine of the trinity, with its distinction of three persons within the Godhead, renders in language admittedly metaphorical, a differentiation within the all-enfolding divine life which is required for an adequate interpretation of religious experience in its highest, i.e., Christian form.”—New Repub

“A fine and characteristic specimen of the best type of modern Oxford philosophy. Unlike so many modern English philosophers, Mr Webb has an admirably pure and simple vocabulary. It is the more to be regretted that his syntax is often obscure and even inaccurate.”

“Mr Clement C. J. Webb has written a book on ‘God and personality’ which is a remarkable achievement in more ways than one. He has managed to discuss a difficult and abstract problem in delightfully clear and often beautiful language. And in doing so he has shown that he possesses in considerable degree the quality of which real philosophers are made. Mr Webb’s answers are interesting, and in the main we may agree with them, but they are certainly not incontestable.” Lincoln MacVeagh

“From Aristotle to Bergson, from the fathers of the church to Benedetto Croce, from Dante to H. G. Wells, he moves with equal mastery, and when he measures swords with Bradley or Bosanquet, the honors are not all on their side.” R. F. A. H.

WEBB, SIDNEY, and WEBB, BEATRICE (POTTER) (MRS SIDNEY WEBB).[2]Constitution for the socialist commonwealth of Great Britain. *$4.25 (*13s 6d) Longmans 335

20–18152

“The volume falls into three parts. The first is a survey of the existing signs and agencies of collectivism: the democracies of consumers (cooperative societies, friendly societies, municipalities, and national services); the democracies of producers (trade unions, copartnership concerns, and professional associations); and finally the political democracy of king, lords, and commons. The second part of the volume deals with the national structure that is to be set up in the socialist commonwealth. The lords are to be swept away and there are to be two parliaments—one political and the other social. Both are to be elected by universal suffrage but the idea of a vocational or economic soviet is utterly rejected. In the third part the authors propose to administer nationalized interests through special committees of the social parliament—one committee for each.”—Nation

“The idea that foreign affairs, the maintenance of order, the administration of justice, colonies, and defense can be separated from cities, municipalities, and national services; economics seems utterly chimerical. The third part of the volume is real, stimulating, suggestive. It is here that the Webbs have laid all students of government under a great debt. They do not speculate, but with clear eyes face the terrible tangle of realities that must make up any order new or old.” C: A. Beard

“There is no field of social organization they do not enter; and there is no field where their analysis is not at once amazingly suggestive and incomparably well-informed. Not indeed, that there is not ample room for criticism and even criticism of fundamentals. What Mr and Mrs Webb have done is to cast a light upon the mechanism of government such as it has not had since Mr Graham Wallas’s ‘Human nature in politics’ in one field, and Bagehot’s ‘English constitution’ in another.” H. J. L.

“It deserves the careful study of every person who desires to see a better system, and who is anxious that that system be inaugurated with the maximum of intelligence, the minimum of pain.”

“Lenin would contemptuously sweep the whole thing aside as lackeyism in the interests of the bourgeoisie. We are not prepared to do that, but we cannot help arriving at a like degree of condemnation for entirely different reasons.”

“What the authors fail to appreciate is that to forbid the social parliament to interfere with conduct by making it criminal will be of no effect; the body in control of the price system can enforce conformity to prescribed economic conduct by methods which, though subtler, are no less effective than the criminal law—methods by which the present capitalists exercise their dictatorship. This criticism is not intended to detract from the merits of an extraordinarily able work.” R. L. Hale

WEBB, SIDNEY, and WEBB, BEATRICE (POTTER) (MRS SIDNEY WEBB).History of trade unionism. rev ed *$7.50 (*21s) Longmans 331.87

20–10724

“‘The history of trade unionism,’ is issued in a revised edition. The original work, published in 1894, broke off in 1890. The present edition carries the story on to the beginning of 1920. There is little alteration in the main part of the book, which describes the origin and progress of trade unionism in the United Kingdom.”—Springf’d Republican

Reviewed by J: R. Commons

“They are quite clear in their own minds as to the relative importance of facts and ideas.”

“Americans particularly will find this study of value, because the British labor movement is more like our own than that of any other country, and its differences from ours are consequently more significant.” G: Soule

“The new part of the work would be very valuable if it stood alone, but it gains immensely from coming after the story of the building-up of the movement.”

“In solidity of knowledge, in massiveness of generalization, in the firm grasp of complex details, Mr and Mrs Webb have certainly no superiors and possibly no equals. If they lack any single quality, it is an inability to make the institution reflect the men who build it.” H. J. L.

“The authors unite a thorough knowledge of their subject with a sympathetic understanding of the struggle of the masses, making a combination that is rare in historians. A number of appendices and a good index, together with good binding and paper, make this work heartily welcome.” James Oneal

“Mr Webb, like most Fabian Socialists, is cultured, persuasive, smooth-spoken. In the gentlest words possible he has pronounced the failure of trade unionism. We can be grateful to him for his exposure of its vices.”

“‘The history of trade unionism’ might easily have been a very great work; even as it stands it possesses high merit; but its partisanship divests it of authority, and the reader must be continually on his guard lest he accept its statements without independent evidence of their truth.”

“I cannot feel that even the Webbs have been able to achieve the same objectivity in dealing with the almost contemporary records as they did with earlier data and still it is of more value to have their original great work brought up to-date than it would be to obtain a separate narrative covering only recent industrial history.”

“It remains unchallenged, after a generation not by any means barren in books on industrial affairs, as the standard work on the rise and development of trade unions. It is a pity that the greater part of the section given to the railway trade unions in the new edition should be too biased to be historical.”

“A vital change is to be noted in his viewpoint. A quarter of a century ago he wrote primarily as a scholar, though from a frankly avowed moderate socialist standpoint. Now he writes, equally frankly, as an avowed political partisan, as a statesman of the Labor party. Despite all this Mr Webb’s analysis of the present labor and political conditions in Great Britain is invaluable. It is not difficult, after his bias is once known, to allow for his prejudices.” W: E. Walling

WEBLING, PEGGY.Saints and their stories. il *$5 (9c) Stokes 922

The stories of saints related in this edition de luxe are: St Christopher; St Denis; St Helena; St Alban; St George; St Nicholas; St Ambrose; St Martin; St Augustine of Hippo; St Bride; St Gregory the Great; St Augustine of Canterbury; St Etheldreda; St Swithin; St Dunstan; St Hugh of Lincoln; St Zita; St Francis of Assisi; St Catherine of Siena; St Joan of Arc. There are eight full page illustrations in color by Cayley Robinson.

“Written particularly for Catholic children, but with much in it to interest all young lovers of beautiful stories.” Hildegarde Hawthorne

“The volume’s chief value lies in the narrative of those saints not well known. The illustrations are beautiful.”

WEBSTER, HENRY KITCHELL.Mary Wollaston. *$2 (1½c) Bobbs

20–18250

Two emotional situations complicate this novel. One is the triangular relationship involving Mary, her father, and Paula, her beautiful stepmother. The other grows out of the fact that Mary, while engaged in war work in New York, has had a casual love affair with a young soldier bound for overseas. Once she tries to tell her brother, but he will not listen. Again she tries to tell her father, but he refuses to believe, thinking that Mary in her innocence doesn’t know what she is talking about. Finally she flings the truth in the face of young Graham Stannard, who in asking her to marry him, persists in treating her as a whited saint. The situation is saved by Anthony March, who listens to Mary’s story, understands it and loves her none the less for it. Anthony also resolves the difficulty in the other situation. Anthony is a composer of genius and Paula is an opera singer, and there is much musical talk in the story.

“This will be pronounced immoral by some readers. The analysis of women’s thoughts and emotions is illuminating; a book that women rather than men will read.”

“Mary Wollaston and her Anthony March have discovered that ‘sentimentality is the most cruel thing in the world’; but it would be difficult to find another word for the atmosphere with which this story invests its realism of fact. That is why I for one find little health in it.” H. W. Boynton

“This novel has both the faults and the merits of its subject-matter, which is a representative cross-section of American metropolitan life in the immediate wake of the great war. It has neither faults nor merits of its own. To apply to it the canons of literary criticism would be an empty futility, for it has nothing to do with literature. It is, in three words, a competent realistic novel.” Wilson Follett

“The most interesting thing about ‘Mary Wollaston’ and the chief reason for reading it is that it is so accurately contemporary. The young generation seem to be frightening their elders in these days, and perhaps this novel will explain the fear without allaying it.” W: L. Phelps

“It is most cleverly compact and as neat as a good play in its action. But the climax lacks something of convincing the reader. ‘Mary Wollaston’ is well worth reading. And if read, it demands to be thought about. If you like stimulating novels, you cannot find a more satisfying one than Mr Webster’s latest.” E. P. Wyckoff

“One finds that the title is inappropriate. Indeed, not a few will conclude that Mary never quite attains a position of first importance.”

WEBSTER, NESTA H.French revolution; a study in democracy. *$8 Dutton 944.04

“‘The siege of the Bastille—the march on Versailles—the two invasions of the Tuileries—the massacres of September—and finally the reign of terror—these form the history of the French people throughout the revolution. The object of this book is, therefore, to relate as accurately as conflicting evidence permits, the true facts about each great crisis, to explain the motives that inspired the crowds, the means employed to rouse their passions; and thereby to throw a truer light on the role of the people, and ultimately on the revolution as the great experiment in democracy.’”—The Times [London] Lit Sup Jl 24

“The method of the book is as unscientific as the conception of the problem. It was a pure waste of time to write such a book, and it is unfortunate that it was ever published, for it is attractively written, has all the earmarks of a scientific work, and may do much harm, if it finds its way into public libraries and into the hands of readers incapable of forming a correct estimate of its value.” F. M. Fling

“That there is a kernel of truth in each of these factors which fomented trouble and disorder in France, as there is at the bottom of every caricature, none will deny; but to magnify them a hundred-fold as the great cause of the revolution is to caricature, not correct, history. Mrs Webster’s volume is exceedingly interesting: it may lead historians to pay more attention to these new factors which she emphasizes.” S. B. Fay

“The book is interesting reading. A good deal of the evidence accepted by Mrs Webster is very shaky, since it consists of accounts given after the ending of the terror by men who wished to exculpate themselves at the expense of their colleagues.” B. R.

“It overstates its case in an endeavor to emphasize the dangers and the downright wickedness of revolutions and revolutionaries. It is, perhaps, too long. Certainly it is prejudiced. But it is a good piece of work, and good reading, for all that, and any account of the French revolution must reckon with it and the material on which it is based.” W. C. Abbott

“The style is fascinating, the temper sincere, and the argument (granting the hypotheses) convincing. But there are faults of method, prejudices of standpoint, and manipulations of material, which make the book not only a most biased interpretation of the French revolution but one of the most mischievous and malicious attacks on democracy that have come to our notice. The book is called ‘a study in democracy’; it is a studied insult to democracy from cover to cover.” D. S. Muzzey

“Allowing for Mrs Webster’s tenderness for that old régime, to which in other respects she is only just, she deserves our devout thanks for having shown that the French revolution was not at all a democratic movement. To a large circle of younger readers who are more and more getting their knowledge of historical events from text books and novels, this volume will prove a real delight.” M. F. Egan

“She has written an interesting and ingenious survey from her own special angle, but one can not help feeling that the angle is a somewhat narrow one.”

“Is there anything left to be said on the subject? Frankly, we thought not, and the first glance at Mrs Webster’s book seemed to confirm this opinion. Yet Mrs Webster makes good. The style of the book has no particular individuality: it is plain, straightforward and devoid of ornament. But the author is scrupulous in affording ample data for every statement made.”

“Mrs Webster, by drawing largely on Royalist and Moderate sources, supplies a much-needed corrective to the many books which glorify even the wild and wicked excesses of the revolution. Yet she goes too far in suggesting that the revolution was unnecessary and disastrous.”

“Mrs Webster’s book is full of vivacious interest, and the lines of her argument are followed through the mass of detail with an artistic skill. Her ardour communicates to the reader a desire to get close to facts. But the facts may not be the same as Mrs Webster’s, for though she has read extensively and marshalled her authorities, her use, and often her choice, of them shows how strongly she is bent on proving a case. So she does not convince us that her book is the one true history of the revolution.”

Reviewed by W. C. Abbott

WEIGALL, ARTHUR EDWARD PEARSE BROME.Madeline of the desert. *$2 (1½c) Dodd

20–20189

Madeline had been born beyond the pale of respectable society at Port Said in Egypt; had grown up in ignorance of conventional morality and lived in open defiance of it until she was twenty-three. But there had been growing pains and a crisis came when she must either die or be reborn. Father Gregory—retired from ecclesiastical honors in England to a hermitage in the desert—and his nephew, Robin Beechcroft, the young explorer, help her to a rebirth. The former points her to her supreme need, Christ, the latter loves and makes her his wife. The story traces Madeline’s unfoldment as a woman, a thinker and a seer. She and Robin pass through trials, even tragedies, but it is Madeline’s fineness and clear-sightedness that at last saves the day for them both.

“Under its appearance of superficiality there is a quite unusual and remarkable understanding of the character of Madeline.” K. M.

“Mr Weigall’s novel grows weaker with the turning of pages, and there is no marvelous rising above climax after climax. Madeline, vivid at first, becomes more and more pallid as the tale progresses.”

“It is impossible to withhold from Mr Weigall a tribute of admiration for the amazing fluency and fertility of imagination which enable him to make a long story out of very scant material. Whether the story was worth making is another question.”

“The author’s vivid pictures of Egyptian life are explained by the fact that he has lived in Egypt a great deal, and has the faculty of presenting pleasingly and convincingly that which he sees. On the whole, he has presented to the world a very readable, as well as clever, book.”

WEIGLE, LUTHER ALLAN.Talks to Sunday-school teachers. *$1.25 Doran 268

20–6997

“While much of the subject matter is in essence that contained in ‘The pupil and the teacher,’ it is given here in the form of delightful chatty chapters, supplementing the previous work. The book brings the same pleasure and information that often comes from the question period following a lecture. The first chapters deal with the pupil and seem to be repetition of much that has already appeared for the use of the teacher of religious education, though special mention should be made of chapter 12, ‘How religion grows.’ The last chapters are most suggestive, especially ‘Learning by doing’ and the ‘Dramatic method of teaching.’”—Springf’d Republican

“Professor Weigle is a trained pedagogue who has lost neither his enthusiasm, his love of youth, nor his sound common sense, and is excellently fitted to be the teacher of teachers that he proves himself to be by the test of his last book.”

“Written popularly and made effective for more intensive work by chapter questions and carefully chosen bibliographies.”

“The lists for further reading at the end of each chapter are excellent and quite up to date.”

WELLES, WINIFRED.Hesitant heart. *$1 Huebsch 811

20–6983

Poems reprinted from the North American Review, the Century, the Liberator, Contemporary Verse and other periodicals. Among the titles are: The hesitant heart; From a Chinese vase; The unfaithful April; Driftwood; Threnody; Love song from New England; Moonflower; Surf; Setting for a fairy story.

“Miss Welles’s is an art at times as ingenuous as Emily Dickinson’s though always classical in its impeccable taste.” R. M. Weaver

“The mood of the book is April’s mood. The process by which the poems arrive at bloom is exactly the process by which April arrives at fulfilment. You can only feel the pulse of it, the subtle and mysterious thrill in it, and by that realization know without defining the loveliness of a miracle.” W. S. B.

“Like a handful of golden pollen scattered on the wind is the little book of Winifred Welles’ poems, ‘The hesitant heart.’ Simple, fresh, luminous, of the early morning, they are as whimsical as charm itself, and as reticent in their cool distinction.”

“Hers is a limited gamut, an obviously restricted range. Yet, within that range, her voice is pure, the art is skilful and the melodies exquisite. None of the younger singers has communicated with more charm her accents of soft delight mingled with a perturbed wistfulness. Even her more intense affirmations have a timid tenderness.” L: Untermeyer

“‘The hesitant heart’ is a lovely collection of fragile lyrics. Miss Welles has a deft and magical touch all her own, a slight and restrained magic, but an authentic one.”

“Miss Welles is no purveyor of novelties. She cannot be called original, or even inventive. Yet she has a magic of lyrical speech that gives the reader a sense of new delight and of a new personality in the world of lyric artists.”

“Her technique is much like that of Miss Millay, although she is not so mature as an artist. But this is not to say that Miss Welles has imitated Miss Millay. She is very much herself.”

WELLS, CAROLYN (MRS HADWIN HOUGHTON), comp. Book of humorous verse. *$7.50 Doran 827

20–20663

This volume is intended for everyone of the human race who possesses the power of laughter. The compiler calls attention to the book as a compilation, not a collection, as no cover of one book could contain the latter. The poems are classified under the headings: Banter; The eternal feminine; Love and courtship; Satire; Cynicism; Epigrams; Burlesque; Bathos; Parody; Narrative; Tribute; Whimsey; Nonsense; Natural history; Juniors; Immortal stanzas. The book is indexed for authors, titles and first lines.

“As a whole. Miss Wells has done a most excellent piece of work that should be an addition to the library of every lover and maker of verse.”

“Here at last is a collection of humorous lyrics, chosen and set in order by an expert anthologist, who is also an expert humorist.” Brander Matthews

“‘The book of humorous verse’ has done in its province what Burton Stevenson’s ‘Home book of verse’ has done for all poetry.” E. L. Pearson

WELLS, CAROLYN (MRS HADWIN HOUGHTON).Raspberry jam. il *$1.60 (2½c) Lippincott

20–7522

Sanford Embury is found one morning dead in bed. He was an exceptionally healthy man, and absolutely no reason can at first be discovered for his death. His proud, hot tempered wife is at once suspected, for the two had many tiffs about money matters, for although Embury was rich, it pleased his pride to give his wife no ready spending money. Detectives are called in, investigations made. No headway is gained until Fleming Stone and his irresponsible “kid” helper, Fibsy McGuire, appear on the scene. Then the mystery slowly clears, through the aid of a “spook,” a trumped up medium, a pot of raspberry jam and certain information in regard to a “human fly.” Mrs Embury is acquitted, the real murderer at once arrested, and a long delayed love comes at last into its own.

Reviewed by M. A. Hopkins

“The story stirs a lively interest in the reader.”

“As is common in detective stories of this type, Miss Wells makes considerable demands on her readers’ credulity or ignorance.”

WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE.Outline of history. 2v il *$10.50 Macmillan 909

20–19599

Mr Wells’ “plain history of life and mankind” (Sub-title) is in two volumes, composed of nine books, as follows: The making of our world; The making of man; The dawn of history; Judea, Greece and India; Rise and collapse of the Roman Empire; Christianity and Islam; The great Mongol empire of the land ways and the new empires of the sea ways; The age of the great powers; The next stage in history. The work has been written with the advice and editorial help of Mr Ernest Barker, Sir H. H. Johnston, Sir E. Ray Lankester, and Professor Gilbert Murray. It is illustrated with maps, time diagrams and drawings by J. F. Horrabin.

“A history of this kind is just what is wanted at the present day. There are now sufficient scientific and historical data to make the attempt possible; it is time we had a glimpse of the wood: we have had innumerable examinations of the separate trees.”

“In praising so large a work, one must presumably begin with its arrangement. Arrangement is a negative quality, but a great one: it is the faculty of not muddling the reader, and Wells possesses it in a high degree. Selection is of course a more controversial topic, and here the critics can get going if they think it worth while. A third merit is the style. The surface of Wells’ English is poor, and he does not improve its effect when he tints it purple. But it does do its job. Arrangement, selection, style; so these make up the case for his ‘Outline,’ and it is an overwhelming case.” E. M. F.

“Now for the defects, and the first of them is a serious one. Wells’ lucidity, so satisfying when applied to peoples and periods, is somehow inadequate when individuals are thrown on to the screen. The outlines are as clear as ever, but they are not the outlines of living men. He seldom has created a character who lives and a similar failure attends his historical evocations.... Such are the defects of the book; but, as the previous article indicated, they are entirely outweighed by its great merits.” E. M. F.

“It has been a great book, finely planned, well arranged, full of vivid historical sketches and of telling raps upon the knuckles and noses of the great, but as soon as it starts for the stars its charm decreases.” E. M. F.

“The great thing which Wells has done—and it is, unqualifiedly, a very great thing—is to state the evolutionary concept of history as a continuing, growing entity, in terms readily understandable of the common man. It is not too much to call it the most potentially formative book of our day.” H. L. Pangborn

“In his entire career Mr Wells has never written a more important book than this. It is a superlatively fascinating piece of writing, in all its details and as a whole, and it proves that the best historian is the man with imagination who has created, or who is capable of creating, real literature.” E. F. Edgett

“This is the true and lasting value of the work of Wells—that he has given our world a greatest common historical denominator.” H. W. van Loon

“History as seen through the temperament of Mr Wells is novel, piquant, and entertaining. Mr Wells has no sense of time, for he discusses events in the remote past as if they were still happening. This gives vividness to his story and truthfulness, too.... With the chapter on Buddhism the ‘Outline’ reaches its high water mark. From thence on, a startling change is noticeable. And the change is for the worse. J. S. Schapiro

“There is one criticism that I should like to make. Mr Wells has written political history and overlooked economic facts.... One cannot help wishing that Mr Wells had restrained his enthusiasm a little by omitting Book 1, and thus clipping off several hundred million years from the period which he was seeking to cover. He might also have eliminated Book 2 on ‘The making of man.’ I am glad that there was someone in the English-speaking world brave enough and earnest enough and with enough leisure time to write it.” Scott Nearing

“It is eminently readable. Mr Wells could not write dull if he tried to. The first impression made by his volumes is deepened by their study. It is that Mr Wells has undertaken a task too great for his powers and equipment. Mr Wells has, of course, read widely and industriously. Yet his sources are plainly meagre. They are almost exclusively English.”

“Certain sections—the early chapters upon the origin of the earth and of man upon the earth, the part dealing with the rise and spread of Buddhism, for examples—are excellent when read by themselves.” E. L. Pearson

“Most of us think of history only in terms of the records of particular nations, races or periods. Mr Wells ventures on a far bolder conception—viewing all human history as one whole. If the work did nothing more than to fix definitely this new viewpoint it would be worth while.”

“High-school history teachers and students will read the work with profit. They certainly come more nearly being world-history than any previous work in the field.”

“It is good to take a broad view of history, and Mr Wells has done a real service to his generation by writing this entertaining ‘Outline.’ He has found a talented illustrator in Mr Horrabin, whose numerous maps and diagrams and reconstructions of extinct mammals are very attractive and helpful. There are also many photographs, well chosen and well reproduced.”

“There is room for Mr Wells’s ‘Outline of history,’ for the hand of the specialist has lain heavy on this branch of scholarship, and the books which give a bird’s-eye view of world history are few and not very accessible.”

“The ‘History’ is a remarkable one: there should be more books as readable and provocative and daring.” P. B. McDonald

“Magnificent as is the panorama which Mr Wells unfolds, the details of it are sometimes questionable.”

“Mr Wells’s work should find its way into all but the most bigoted sectarian colleges and even into the schools, as supplementary reading for both teacher and pupil.” J. H. Robinson

WELSH, JAMES C.Underworld. *$1.75 (1½c) Stokes

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