S

20–11024

Altho covering practically the same ground as Herbert E. Gaston’s “Nonpartisan league” this book goes more fully into the conditions out of which the league movement developed, bringing together much illustrative material and documentary evidence to show the workings of the system under which the farmer was exploited. The author says in beginning, “I have no idea that in the succeeding pages I can remove the fixed belief of the dwellers in cities that the farmer of America is becoming clog-footed with wealth, but it has occurred to me that a plain record of the tragic struggles of a large body of American farmers for bare justice and a chance to live ... might have some interest as a human as well as a social and political document of facts.” The part devoted to the rise and present organization of the league is correspondingly less complete than Mr Gaston’s, but the main facts are sketched. The book has been carefully indexed.

“Rather more interestingly and dramatically written than Gaston.”

“Admirable book.” W. H. C.

“The book should be viewed as a clever piece of journalism, effective but inaccurate. It has the earmarks of being scientific; it cites references: it affects a certain restraint in statement. Yet the critical reader will find its ‘citations’ ex parte, fragmentary, undated for the most part. The book is a good example of skilled juggling with half-truths. In short this book is not what it pretends to be—the facts about the Nonpartisan league.” J. E. Boyle

“While this book is not to be compared with the more intimate and comprehensive work by Mr Gaston, it is none the less a valuable account of a movement that has been much misrepresented in the public press.”

“Mr Russell’s defense of the league’s attitude during the war is the best that can be put forward, and it is put forward by a sincere patriot who risked and suffered much for his loyalty. But the country has made up its mind on that point, and his defense, honest as it is, is unconvincing.”

RUSSELL, MRS FRANCES THERESA (PEET).Satire in the Victorian novel. *$2.50 Macmillan 823

20–2031

“The author of this book is a professor at Leland Stanford junior university, and her interpretation of the satiric contributions to literature, offered by novelists of the Victorian epoch, has literary as well as scholastic value. Written primarily as a thesis, offered at Columbia university for the degree of doctor of philosophy, the author’s style bears necessarily unmistakable and potent signs of academic standards. The volume is divided into Premises, Methods, Objects and Conclusions. After giving to her readers the groundwork of her scheme, making certain that they understand the satiric motive, Professor Russell passes to the categorical stage in her exposition. She analyzes methods of satire, romantic, realistic, ironic. For this purpose she quotes from the writers of the period she is considering, writers such as Samuel Butler, Thomas Love Peacock, Meredith, Disraeli, Thackeray, Trollope and Dickens. She takes pains to show us how much ingenuity these men display in their methods of satiric attack and how their weapons vary, likewise their skill.”—Boston Transcript

“A thoroughly competent and scholarly study.”

“What will interest the un-academic mind particularly in this treatise is the author’s personal contribution. She offers, sometimes with a charming unconsciousness, her philosophy of living; and more than one of her reflections has a satiric thrust which makes us realize that the talent for touching on the weaknesses of humanity with a deftly humorous hand did not die with the Victorians!” D. F. G.

“She has a better talent for the abstract than for the concrete; her analyses are better than her discussions of actual examples. The reader learns much from her pages by gleaning over wide territory, but he drives behind an inexorable chauffeur who whirls him past alluring byways and leafy vistas. Names and ideas spin by like telephone poles. The author has a nice ear for the turn of a sentence, but she cannot train sentences to speak together.”

“It is full of sustaining, gently amusing reading, and—most important—the reader will want to read it all. There is no waste.”

“A certain rehabilitation of the Victorians is the chief service that Prof. Russell seems to have performed, often, seemingly, in spite of herself.” G: B. Dutton

RUSSELL, RUTH.What’s the matter with Ireland? *$1.75 Devin-Adair 914.5

20–13138

“Miss Russell has undertaken her theme objectively, in the best reportorial sense, and by sounding a number of disparate apostles—as widely dissimilar as De Valera, George Russell, Countess Markiewiecz and the Bishop of Killaloe—she manages to throw light upon all phases of the problem. The book opens with a chapter on statistics, which bring the present plight of the country into the foreground of the reader’s imagination, and with this accomplished, the author turns to the narration of incidents, and to the gleaning of opinions, which are set down with impartial emphasis.”—Freeman

“She succeeds in rousing our sympathy for the poor working girls of Dublin, and the other unfortunate people of the city and the bog-field. But when she takes up the political, she seems unable to do justice to her subject. There is no doubt Miss Russell’s intentions are good, but it is doubtful if such books as this will help Ireland’s cause.”

“She wisely refrains from any ex cathedra dogmatism on her own account.” L. B.

RUSSELL, THOMAS.Commercial advertising. (Studies in economics and political science) *$2.50 Putnam 659

20–297

“Mr Russell is the president of the Incorporated society of advertisement consultants, and was sometime advertisement manager of the Times. He writes, therefore, with authority, and he deals fully with such themes as the economic justification of advertising, the functions and policy of advertising, the chief methods of advertising, and with advertising as a career.” (Ath) “The six lectures were delivered in the spring of this year at the London school of economics.” (Springf’d Republican)

“The book should be useful and suggestive to commercial men and others.”

“The six lectures are not only worthy of their academic auspices but might well serve as models of modern academic exposition. They have the breadth and insight that is properly called philosophic, whatever the subject-matter may be, and the concreteness that makes a philosophic treatment glow with interest.”

RUTZEBECK, HJALMAR.Alaska man’s luck. *$2 Boni & Liveright

20–26890

“The book is a unique autobiographical chronicle, told in the form of a diary, of the struggles of its author-hero to make a home for himself in the land of the snows. Hjalmar Rutzebeck, or Svend Norman, as he calls himself in his book, was born and raised in Denmark. He left school at the age of twelve and has had no further formal schooling since then. We first meet our twentieth century viking in Los Angeles, just after he had been honorably discharged from the United States army. With winning naïveté he tells us how he has fallen in love with Marian. When Svend learns that the northland is as dear to Marian as it is to him, he immediately sets out to make a stake there.... As Svend goes on from adventure to adventure he records them in his diary, and it is this diary, mailed to Marian piecemeal as he went along, that is reprinted in ‘Alaska man’s luck.’”—N Y Times

“Interesting specially to men or older boys.”

“It must be confessed that the tale is fascinating, in spite of, or perhaps because of its naïveté.” Margaret Ashmun

“An extraordinary story.”

“There is no self-consciousness in ‘Alaska man’s luck,’ nor is there any suggestion of a sophisticated striving to return to the simple and primitive.” L. M. R.

“For his first novel, Hjalmar Rutzebeck has wisely chosen a hero of his own race and temperament. He attains a consistent realism by letting Svend Norman’s diaries and letters tell their own story.”

“The simplicity and directness with which the author tells his blood-stirring story, even the occasional crudities in his English, serve to enhance rather than mar the epic quality of his narrative.”

RYAN, AGNES.Whisper of fire. *$1.25 Four seas co. 811

19–18255

A series of poems arranged as: Wood, Kindling, Smoldering, Smoke, Blaze, Smoke again, Flame, Coals, Ashes. Altho they are loosely strung together the succession of verses tells the story of a woman’s love life.

“Several of the verses, notably ‘I wonder,’ are compact and vivid in imagery and spiritual message.”

“Each poem is a mere fragment in free verse, a chip off the old block of femininity. This will please readers of poetry of the hour. For the present vogue is fragmentary. Many of these poems are trivial and unimportant, but a few have the eloquence of reality.” Marguerite Wilkinson

RYAN, JOHN AUGUSTINE.Church and socialism; and other essays. (Social justice bks.) *$1.50 University press, Brookland, Washington, D.C. 304

20–221

“A collection of papers that have appeared in various publications during the past ten years. Only the first paper relates intimately to the title of the book. Other topics discussed are: A living wage; The legal minimum wage; Moral aspects of the labor union; The moral aspects of speculation; Birth control; and Woman suffrage.”—Am Econ R

“The essay, ‘False and true conceptions of welfare,’ is to our mind the most practical of the entire series.”

“They reveal a large acquaintance with economic and industrial problems. It would be beside the point to criticize these papers without remembering that they were written for Catholics. While we agree with many of Dr Ryan’s conclusions, we should find it difficult to subscribe to some of his premises and to submit to the intellectual limitations which follow.” R: Roberts

RYAN, JOHN AUGUSTINE.Living wage; with an introd. by R: T. Ely. *$2 Macmillan 331.2

20–1611

“A revised and abridged edition of a work that has had much influence in bringing about the enactment of minimum-wage laws and the acceptance of the principle that the laborer has a moral claim to at least a decent living wage. The author is a priest of the Roman Catholic church and a professor in the Catholic university of America.”—R of Rs

“It is agreeable to say that Dr Ryan argues the living wage question better than almost anybody else.”

“Ethically it is far in advance of the thought of a generation ago, and many even now will find themselves unable to keep pace with it.”

RYAN, WILLIAM PATRICK.Irish labor movement. (Modern Ireland in the making) *$2 Huebsch 331.09

(Eng ed 20–113)

In reviewing the history of Irish labor in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the author points out how the genius of the Irish people was submerged and its spirit broken by the enforced assimilation of a foreign social system, a foreign speech and a foreign character. However cruel and inhuman English dominion has proved itself to be, the struggle for freedom has been mental and spiritual as well as economic. “The breaking of the chains, the unloading of the degrading burdens that we know, will inevitably lead to the resurrection and the flowering of the workers’ deeper natures, now blunted and buried. Then they may be artists and creators.” Contents: Labor and the Gael; Land workers’ ordeals and deeds; William Thompson, Robert Owen and Ralahine; Our early trade unionism; The guilds and the unions; Illusive emancipation; O’Connell and tragi-comedy; Weavers and “lock-ups”; Lalor and lean years; In Davitt’s days; Connolly in the schools of labor; Connolly’s teaching—industrial unionism; Larkin’s youth in the depths; The rise of “Larkinism”; Up from slavery in Ulster; The struggle of 1913; The ultimate sacrifice; Towards the commonwealth; Authorities and sources.

SACKVILLE, MARGARET, lady.Selected poems. *$2.50 Dutton 821

“Lady Margaret Sackville is a feminine version of the late Richard Middleton. Her themes are the themes of Middleton—the gay seasons, love and desire with their antithesis of crepuscular quiet, a selected Greek mythology, and the vaguely idealistic ‘dreams’ of the romantics.” (Ath) “She writes lyrics and short plays: her subjects are largely Greek, and, so far as effects of brightness and directness, of clear air and frank sunshine, are concerned, the atmosphere is Greek.” (Review)

“Out of her materials she makes a bright, easy poetry, which it would be unfair to subject to the test of frequent reading. It is only at rare intervals that something of more permanent quality, as, for example, ‘Invitation au repos,’ rises above the level of pleasant facility.”

“Lady Margaret Sackville is the possessor of charm. Original or powerful she may not be, but charm in itself is fortune.” O. W. Firkins

“Lady Margaret Sackville has suffered by reason of being Lady Margaret. The paths were made too easy for her. She set out with the true throat of the bird at dawn, but somehow somewhere the music went wrong. It is wrong now.”

“Pieces that give the effect of having been written as technical exercises, but which are not without charm.”

SADLER, MICHAEL.Anchor. *$1.75 (2½c) McBride

The interest of the story centers about Laddie Macallister, an over-sensitive, introspective young man whose self-questionings and doubtings make him feel hopelessly adrift and unstable for all his solid foundation of a clean and honest manhood. We meet him first as newspaper correspondent for an English paper in Paris; later as literary secretary for a radical London weekly. The anchor, the “something-firm-to-cling-to” which he craves he finds in Janet Tring, daughter of a country squire and a singularly well-poised, straightforward bit of young womanhood. It is the character-drawing rather than the plot that is significant in the story. Some of the other characters that stand out are Laddie’s father, the country parson, whose mellow wisdom and dependable love for his son are the latter’s safe armor; Dermot Gill, the very odd, very lovable and very radical Irishman, whose friendship Laddie picked up en route; Janet’s cousin, the militant suffragette, proud of her prison record; and the wily newspaper woman whose vindictive designs on Laddie rebound from Janet’s good sense.

“The sentimentality of such fiction lies in its slavish worship of youngness—the mere state and act of being young, of muddling through youth.” H. W. Boynton

“The story is lacking in form and consistency; the latter half, which tells the love story, has the greater driving force. The character of Laddie is, within limits, fairly clear and truthful. Mr Sadler’s method is psychological, but not unduly so, and the story of the partial love affairs which accompany his great love is done with some originality and insight.”

SAFRONI-MIDDLETON, A.South Sea foam. *$2 (2c) Doran 919.6

20–18944

In “the romantic adventures of a modern Don Quixote in the southern seas” (Sub-title) the author has attempted to capture and hold for all times, some of the earliest “poetic babblings” of the children of nature of the South Sea islands before, with the advent of the missionary, “island mythology and heathen legends were sponged off the map of existence.” He has attempted to see the mysteries of nature with the eyes of the primitive man and, in retelling the legends of some old Polynesian chiefs, to remain as faithful to primitive conceptions as is possible to a sophisticated mind. The contents give glimpses of the author’s own adventurous youth in following the call of the “true poetry of life” and some of his island reminiscences in: Fae Fae; The heathen’s garden of Eden; In old Fiji; Kasawayo and the serpent; O Le Langi the pagan poet; An old Marquesan queen; Charity organization of the South Seas.

“Not the least stimulating portions are those devoted to the sailing vessels in which the author has pursued his study of man and nature.” Margaret Ashmun

“The jerky transitions, the Bowdlerized legends, the tantalizing sequels that the author ‘can’t tell,’ the dialect never heard on land or sea, the author’s occasional verse ... contrive to trip the reader up time after time just as the magic joy of life is beckoning him farther into fairyland.”

“Here is a chronicle of vagabonding among the isles of the South seas that sets him who has lived amid the cities of civilization to wondering whether or not he has squandered his life.”

“Much of the same delicate charm of fantasy which belongs to so many of the Hindu stories told us by F. W. Bain distinguishes, also, these tales of the isles in the far seas.”

“It makes one long for Stevenson, who could be frank and downright enough, but never wrote with a leer.” E. L. Pearson

“Mr Safroni-Middleton gives us a glimpse of true natural poetry that should appeal to the lover of life and beauty.”

ST JOHN, LARRY.Practical fly fishing. (Outing handbooks) il *$1.25 Macmillan 799

20–3413

“As the title indicates, it is a treatise about luring the finny inhabitants of pond, lake or other watery area into human hands, through the medium of the ‘fly.’ There are numerous illustrations that will please and enlighten both the amateur and the ‘old-timer.’ There is a brief historical review of this form of fishing, while considerable space is given over to tackle, other chapters are given over to flies, reels, apparel, biological, preparatory and casting. The final chapter is entitled ‘strategy,’ and deals with methods of best making use of the tackle, reels, etc., previously described.”—Springf’d Republican

“The descriptions are written in simple direct form, and are easily understood and applied.”

ST MARS, F.Way of the wild (Eng title, Pinion and paw). il *$2 (2c) Stokes 590.4

20–100

Epics of the wild would truly characterize these tales of thrilling adventures of wild things in their own haunts. They are not natural history but stories of animals befitting their characters as men conceive them. Thus in “Gulo the indomitable” we see the wolverine—most hated of all the animals among themselves, with a character “that came straight from the devil,” and with brains “that only man, and no beast, ought to be trusted with”—and his ghoulish escapades. The weak and the powerful, the four-footed and the winged tribes, even the legless viper, engage our human sympathies for their fears, their passions, their struggles and their wiles. Contents: Gulo the indomitable; Blackie and co.; Under the yellow flag; Nine points of the law; Pharaoh; The cripple; “Set a thief”; The where is it? Lawless little love; The king’s son; The highwayman of the marsh; The furtive feud; The storm pirate; When nights were cold; Fate and the fearful; The eagles of Loch Royal; Ratel, V. C.; The day; Illustrations.

“Real art here, with the scientist’s passion for strict accuracy. It is a book for the whole family, a book to be kept and cherished and handed on to the children as they grow old enough to appreciate it.” Hildegarde Hawthorne

SAINT-SAËNS, CAMILLE.Musical memories; tr. by Edwin Gile Rich. il *$3 Small 780.4

19–15405

“This book is virtually an autobiography, but the story of the author’s life is told briefly, so as to leave room for chapters on Rossini, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Viardot, Louis Gallet, Delsarte, Victor Hugo, which, however, are also more or less autobiographic, for these were among his friends. The English volume omits some of the chapters in the original French edition and changes the order of others.” (Bookm) “Contents: Memories of my childhood; The old conservatoire; Victor Hugo; The history of an opéra-comique; Louis Gallet; History and mythology in opera; Art for art’s sake; Popular science and art; Anarchy in music; The organ; Joseph Haydn and the ‘Seven words’; The Liszt centenary at Heidelberg (1912); Berlioz’s requiem; Pauline Viardot; Orphée; Delsarte; Seghers; Rossini; Jules Massenet; Meyerbeer; Jacques Offenbach; Their majesties; Musical painters.” (Pittsburgh)

“It should be in every library.” H: T. Finck

“Camille Saint-Saens is not only one of France’s greatest living composers but a musician who can write excellent and witty prose, and an erudite scholar who knows how to impart information without being pedantic.” Henrietta Strauss

Reviewed by Lawrence Gilman

SAINTSBURY, GEORGE.Notes on a cellar-book. *$3 Macmillan 663

“Mr Saintsbury, it will be remembered, had proposed to write a history of wine; for sundry reasons he renounced his intention; and what he gives us in this small volume are ‘notes and reminiscences on the subject which may ... add a little to the literature of one of the three great joys of life.’” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) “The body of the work is occupied by a history of Mr Saintsbury’s experiences in keeping a wine cellar; literally, as the title has it, the record of a cellar-book.” (Review)

“Here, then, is a book which few men, and no woman, could have written, full of knowledge that comes of experience, and is therefore, as a rule, useless to others—full of the ripe humour that characterizes all the best things of the world.” R. S.

“A quaint and delightful chronicle it is, and as we have a right to expect from such a pen, interspersed with many an apt literary hint and suggestion.” Michael Monahan

“Mr Saintsbury was prevented from carrying out his original intention of writing a history of wine, but he has done the next best thing in giving us this book.”

“No man could be less of a pedant. His erudition does not obtrude itself; it merely supplies suitably evocative expressions; the bubbles wink, and so does he. There is the very spirit of wine in the genial ferocity with which he denounces those who would deprive him of that good gift.”

SAMPSON, EMMA SPEED.Mammy’s white folks. il *$1.50 (2c) Reilly & Lee

20–4267

Dr Andy Wallace is a shy young doctor with no use for women folks when a baby girl is left on his doorstep. His negro Mammy persuades him to keep the child and he brings her up as his own daughter. The story tells of the happiness she brings to him, and of the happiness that comes to her when she grows to womanhood. Mammy has a large part in the story and the widow Richards and her daughter Lucile, who try to steal Esther’s privileges, are also factors, as is Dr Jim Dudley, the doctor’s assistant.

“A good wholesome story dominated by the motherly old negro’s philosophy.”

SAMPTER, JESSIE ETHEL, ed. Guide to Zionism. il $1.50 Zionist organization of Am. 296

20–8649

The book has grown out of an earlier publication, ‘A course in Zionism,’ now out of print. The present volume is more than twice the size of the first and presents as many more problems and facts concerning the Zionist movement. Its purpose is to serve not only for individual perusal but as a text-book for groups of students. Of its thirty-three chapters the first ten deal with Zionist theory, history and organization, the next ten with more specialized phases of the movement, and the last thirteen with Palestine. Each chapter is followed by a short bibliography and there are important appendices, a general bibliography, an index and illustrations.

SANBORN, MARY FARLEY (MRS FRED C. SANBORN).First valley. *$1.75 (2½c) Four seas co.

20–8860

A story of life after death. Tina, a pleasure-loving girl, killed in an automobile accident, is speeded to the other world in the swift car of Death, not knowing what is happening to her. She finds herself in the first valley of the life to come and valiantly sets herself to learn its ways. She makes friends with the Spade Man, who teaches her to cultivate her garden, and with Odo, the childlike poet, and she lends a helping hand to those who follow her to this new world, to St Leon, the university professor who bemoans his lost career, and to Helene, the beautiful woman whose worldly ideals have not been abandoned. The story ends with her passage to the second valley.

“A curiously interesting book.”

“It is a little book conceived in a spirit of singular purity and reverence, and almost faultlessly executed; without cant or sentimentalism or any forcing of the risky note.” H. W. Boynton

SANCHEZ, MRS NELLIE (VAN DE GRIFT).Life of Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson. il *$2.25 (2½c) Scribner

20–3787

“Whoever reads this book from cover to cover will surely agree that no woman ever had a life of more varied experiences nor went through them all with a stauncher courage.” So writes Mrs Sanchez in the preface to this biography of her sister Fanny, wife of Robert Louis Stevenson. There are thirteen chapters: Ancestors; Early days in Indiana; On the Pacific slope; France, and the meeting at Grez; In California with Robert Louis Stevenson; Europe and the British Isles; Away to sunnier lands; The happy years in Samoa; The lonely days of widowhood; Back to California; Travels in Mexico and Europe; The last days at Santa Barbara. There are a number of portraits and other illustrations. Letters from Henry James and others are quoted and the book closes with an account of the services at Vailima in 1915 when the ashes of Mrs Stevenson were carried to her husband’s resting place on the summit of Mount Vaea.

“Well worth while, not only as an addition to Stevensoniana, but also as a picture of a very interesting woman.”

“To the Stevensonian, this book is a mine of delight. It sets down what has never before been sufficiently made clear, that Mrs Stevenson was, in her own way, as remarkable and as gifted as her husband.” Christopher Morley

“So interesting that one could wish it more extended. We are inclined to think the book better worth while than anything that has been printed about Stevenson since the Letters.’”

“This concise and vivid narrative reveals Mrs Stevenson clearly as the splendid woman she was, but it also reveals her, first and last, as the reason why the literary world today possesses some of the most highly valued of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson.”

“One might venture to say she has written a manly book. She has drawn the character of a frank and courageous woman with a straightforwardness that would surely have pleased its possessor.”

SANDBURG, CARL.Chicago race riots, July, 1919. pa 60c Harcourt 326

19–19136

“Reprinted from articles contributed at the time to a Chicago newspaper, Mr Sandburg’s description tallies with other authentic accounts of the origin and progress of the race riots. Though he acted merely as a reporter, the author evidently formed strong opinions of his own as to the most promising line of action to prevent the recurrence of this outrageous happening. Better housing, more and better industrial opportunities, and—immediately—a thorough federal investigation of the unsatisfactory race relationships that lead to race conflicts seem part of such a program.”—Survey

“A serious and intelligent investigation into conditions which made the race riots possible. A contribution to the solving of the negro problem in any section of the country.”

“The pamphlet is naturally less constructed, less pondered than Mr Seligmann’s careful thesis. But it has the advantage of its journalistic method, for by personal narrative and comment it makes vivid its statistics and analysis, and brings the general problem down to more specific terms.” M. E. Bailey

“Everyone in this country who is interested in our sharpest national disgrace—our treatment of negro citizens ought to read this collection of articles. Especially every Chicagoan ought to read it.” E. F. Wyatt

SANDBURG, CARL.Smoke and steel. *$2 Harcourt 811

20–17899

The sections of this new book of poems are called Smoke nights, People who must, Broken-face gargoyles, Playthings of the wind, Mist forms, Accomplished facts, Passports, Circles of doors, Haze, Panels. Some of the poems are reprinted from Poetry, the New Republic, Liberator, and other periodicals.

“‘Smoke and steel’ is both an epic of modern industrialism and a mighty pæan to modern beauty.” L: Untermeyer

“Mr Sandburg has no sense of the past, no vision of the future, and so his reality is a little huddled bunch of dried-up aspects out of which have escaped the aspects of life about which he is so passionately concerned. This is a great pity, because I believe there is no poet in the country who has by nature the qualities of spirit which, if fused and blended in the proper alembic, would not make some of the loveliest and most convincing poems of our day.” W: S. Braithwaite

* + -|Boston Transcriptp7 O 16 ’20 2050w

“Sandburg has lost (at least temporarily) the one and only thing which makes him great—the ability to determine when he has written something good. He now apparently believes that everything he writes is a poem. He imitates Gary, and turns his product out on a quantity basis.” Arthur Wilson

“‘Smoke and steel’ is longer than either of the earlier volumes, and not so uniformly good. Over many pages, it must be admitted, Mr Sandburg has rather obviously repeated himself, has put himself through motions that were more profitable once than they are now. But the book as a whole has great fascination and pull. Technically, Mr Sandburg is as interesting as any poet alive.”

“This new collection establishes what ‘Chicago poems’ only promised and ‘Cornhuskers’ plainly intimated. It proves that these states can now claim two living major poets: Sandburg and Frost.” L: Untermeyer

“He is misty, rather than descriptive or truly evocative; he is the whole antithesis of the imagist demand for a sharply evoked image, if this is their demand; and, sometimes at least, it should be. We see the smoke, and miss the steel.” Clement Wood

Reviewed by Babette Deutsch

“Reading these poems gives me more of a patriotic emotion than ever ‘The star-spangled banner’ has been able to do. This is America, and Mr Sandburg loves her so much that suddenly we realize how much we love her, too. Either this is a very remarkable poet or he is nothing, for with the minors he clearly has no place. He has greatly dared, and I personally believe that posterity with its pruning hand will mount him high on the ladder of poetic achievement.” Amy Lowell

“Mr Sandburg has introduced themes which have seldom, perhaps never, been treated before. There is an impressive display of energy in ‘Smoke and steel.’ His poems are true to a certain kind of life, they are undoubtedly American. They do succeed, then, in doing what they set out to do, but whether this in itself constitutes a high and right art is another question.”

SANDERS, LLOYD CHARLES.Patron and place-hunter; a study of George Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe. il *$5 Lane

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