God bless the Squire and his relations,And keep us in our proper stations!
God bless the Squire and his relations,And keep us in our proper stations!
God bless the Squire and his relations,And keep us in our proper stations!
No doubt that was as good a way of doing it as any. But such flowers grow rarely in Lady Georgiana's garden, which is indeed something of ahortus siccuswhere names and dates have to stand for more than they will bear. "I remember Mr. Kingslake coming down to Pembroke Lodge sometimes; I don't think he had then begun hisHistory. He was always very agreeable." So much forEothen. "In connection with William Warburton, I remember Mr. Matthew Arnold, for he was a great friend ofmy brother-in-law's, and a comrade in the inspection of schools." And so much for him. Of Dickens we get something more. "In the evening, I remember, he was conspicuous, owing to wearing a pink shirt front embroidered with white." Disraeli, too, expatiated in shirts. "Though he talked incessantly, I remember best his shirt front, which was made of white book-muslin over a very bright rose-coloured foundation, which shone through it." The temptation to stick pins into it must have been severe.
With these grains the reader must be satisfied, and with such powers of evolution as he possesses may extract, no doubt, some more. Here is one of Lady Holland, too good to be passed over. She proposed leaving to Lord John Russell, and did in fact leave him, an estate in Kennington—where the Oval now is. Lord John would only accept it for life, urging the claims of the son and daughter of the house. "I hate my son; I don't like my daughter," said the great lady, and settled it.
Twenty-five years ago Trade Unionism was vaguely apprehended in the polite world as a growing force in industry, useful to the working-class and even legitimate if kept within proper bounds. Wise employers recognised its value and treated with it; the unenlightened fought against it or accepted it with a bad grace. Many even of its friends and allies, the Socialists—and not a few of these were themselves Trade Unionists—rated it very low, as being, in fact, a mere "palliative of the Capitalist system." To-day it is safe to assert that there is no institution in the country which bulks larger in the public eye than the Trade Union movement. In numbers, wealth, solidarity, and power it has developed out of all recognition. Its leaders sit and bargain on equal terms with Ministers of the Crown, take their places on public committees and Royal Commissions as of right, even threaten, amid the angry protests of adversaries who were once their masters, to destroy the foundations of the established social order. The aims and activities of the Trade Unions vie with the "crime wave" for first place in the columns of the newspapers; they are discussed in trains and clubs and drawing-rooms. And, in short, the organisation, which but a few years since was regarded as a more or less private affair of workmen and their employers, now appears as the biggest problem that the State has to face—as something that may even, as many will have it, supersede the State itself.
It is hardly necessary, in these circumstances, to dilate on the importance of a new edition, containing an account of the developments during the last thirty years, of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb'sHistory of Trade Unionism. When the book appeared in 1894 it was welcomed not only by intelligent minds in the working-class, but by all students of social history, abroad as well as in this country, as a remarkable piece of work; it took its place, and has kept its place, as a classic. Yet it had a far smaller public than it deserved; by 1911 under 10,000 copies had been sold. Of this new volume no less than 19,000 copies in a special edition have been bought by Trade Unionists before publication—a notable sign of the times. We have called this edition a new volume—and that it certainly is, for not only have Mr. and Mrs. Webb revised the work throughout and at some points slightly amplified it, but they have added three chapters, covering actually some two hundred and fifty pages.
The increase of Trade Union membership has been, as everyone knows, enormous. In 1892, after more than two centuries of growth, the number of Trade Unionists in the United Kingdom was not much over a million and a half. At the outbreak of the war it was under four millions; at the present moment it is above six millions—perhapsnearer seven than six—and includes "probably as many as 60 per cent. of all the adult manual working wage-earners." But what is of peculiar interest to note is the increase in certain industries and among certain sections of the community. The organisation of "unskilled labour" has in the last few years been prodigious, and so also has that of women of all sorts from the "braincombers in the learned professions" to domestic servants and the chief "hands" in the sweated trades. The female membership of Trade Unions, which in the year before the war was in round figures 361,000, has risen now to over three-quarters of a million, and it is still rising. Very remarkable also is the increasing organisation of the "black-coated proletariat"—civil servants, clerks, managers, supervisors, technicians, and the rest. This, as Mr. and Mrs. Webb rightly insist, is an important indication of the lines on which industry is likely to be shaped in the future. But with this vast growth of numbers, and a corresponding growth of amalgamation and federation, there has been singularly little change in the central machinery of the movement. The weakest point, indeed, is at the top. The Trades Union Congress, as Mr. and Mrs. Webb put it, "remains, as we have described it in its early years, rather a parade of the Trade Union forces than a genuine Parliament of Labour." Its executive body, the Parliamentary Committee, does not provide that "general staff" which the movement badly needs, and Mr. and Mrs. Webb's criticism both of this and of the whole question of what may be called the Trade Unions' "civil service" is very much to the front.
The history of Trade Unionism in this century, however, is by no means exhausted by the records of its membership and organisation. Side by side with this it has won an enhanced status, and not the least interesting of the three new chapters is devoted to an account of this achievement. Mr. and Mrs. Webb give us an elaborate criticism of the famous Taff Vale judgment; they discuss the Osborne case and the Trade Union Act of 1913, the relations of the Unions and the Government during and after the war. And last, but not least, they describe the "revolution in thought," the influence of Syndicalist and of Guild Socialist theories in shaping the demand for "self-government in industry" and in determining the attitude of the workman to strikes and Parliamentary action.
The final chapter deals with the political side—the rise of the Labour Party, from its stormy birth just over twenty years ago, to the new era which opened for it at the election of 1918. Mr. and Mrs. Webb have much friendly criticism to offer on the subject of the present political organisation of the Labour movement. It suffers, they observe, not merely from a lack of "Party loyalty" on the part of Trade Unionists, but also from a confusion of central machinery. It suffers too (some say these are its chief shortcomings) from a failure to develop a staff of trained political officers and from a scarcity of trained Parliamentary representatives. But these weaknesses, we suppose, are on the way to be remedied, if the Party as a whole, as well as its leaders, is alive to them.
The reader is not to look in this history, as its authors remark, for any argued judgment on the validity of Trade Union assumptions or ultimate ideals. Nevertheless, what little they have to say on this hand is of profound interest. "The object and purpose of the workers, organised vocationally in Trade Unions and Professional Associations, and politically in the Labour Party," they warn us, "is no mere increase of wages or reduction of hours. It comprises nothing less than a reconstruction of Society, by the elimination, from the nation's industries and services, of the Capitalist profit-maker, and the consequent shrinking up of the class of functionless persons who live merely by owning." What form in that reconstructed Society is the organisation of industry to take? Mr. and Mrs. Webb expect to see "the supreme authority in each industry or service vested, not in the workers as such, but in thecommunity as a whole.... The management of industry ... will not be the sole sphere of either producers or consumers, but is clearly destined to be distributed between them—the actual direction and decision being shared between the representatives of the Trade Union or Professional Society on the one hand and those of the community in Co-operative Society, Municipality, or National Government on the other." They do not see eye to eye in every detail with the Guild Socialist. But still less do they see eye to eye with that fabulous monster who stalks through the writings and speeches both of Revolutionaries and Conservatives—the bureaucratic Fabian Webb, harbinger of the Servile State! There may be some, we suppose, who will find a less "detached" outlook in this volume than in the original edition. If there is a difference of outlook, it is natural enough, for Mr. and Mrs. Webb are more "inside" the Labour movement now than they were in 1894, and their judgments and criticisms must inevitably show a subtle difference of tone. But this is not to accuse them of undue partiality. No man can write an "impartial" history that is worth reading of his own time and his own friends. And we need not regret that Mr. and Mrs. Webb, in their detailed descriptions, for example, of the great railway strike or the miners' dispute of last year, put the workmen's case confidently and strongly since they see it as their own case also and that of the nation. The appearance of these three new chapters, we do not hesitate to say, constitutes an event in the world of politics and of letters. TheHistory of Trade Unionismwill remain, as it has been, a work which every student of industry and every man of affairs must read and re-read and inwardly digest.
This study of the people and institutions and spirit of France is in a class apart from the volumes of "impressions" of foreign lands with which "week-enders" and passing travellers are prone to favour us. "France," says Mr. Dell, "has been my home for more than twelve years, but it was already my second country long before I went to live there. Indeed I cannot remember a time when France had not a large place in my affections." It is with an intimate knowledge, therefore, as well as with a profound sympathy that he discusses the many phases of French life. But his book is by no means a mere panegyric. He is throughout candid and critical—often bitterly critical. He exposes ruthlessly the undemocratic character of the "Democratic Administration," the impotence of Parliament, the demoralising influence of small property, the evils of thepetit bourgeoisspirit, the avarice and egotism of thegrande bourgeoisie. How far his view of all these things is a just one will be a matter of controversy. Some may say he is violently prejudiced; no one, after reading this book, could deny that many of his judgments are biased. In the final chapters there is really no pretence of impartiality; he argues his case and "maintains his propositions," like Doctor Pancrace in the play,Pugnis et calcibus, unguibus et rostro. Mr. Dell is a Socialist, but not an "Etatiste"; he is a "libertine" and a revolutionary, with an equal dislike of bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie. And his feelings in this matter are so strong that we may venture to doubt his predictions as to how the Revolution will come. For the rest, Mr. Dell is a determined Rationalist. "La France de Voltaire et de Montesquieu," he says with M. Anatole France, "celle-là est la grande, la vraie France." For "religious" France he has no use—neither for "irreligious" orthodoxy, nor political Catholicism, nor Modernism. Bergsonism, too, he holds to be a baneful influence, as reactionary as the Church which eschews it. But the old superstitions and the new philosophies, he believes, are losing their hold; "the spirit of the true France is coming into its own again, and the young intellect of France is returning to the rationalism of Voltaire." In all this, and much else, he may be wrong, but he has given us a book that is at any rate profoundly interesting.
This is a curious and nondescript book. Beginning as a history of Russia from the earliest times, it ends rather as the impressions of a soldier who, attached to the Eastern front during the war, saw something of the Russian revolution. It is a soldier's book, breezy, untrammelled by literary and historical conventions, and distinguished by a direct simplicity which disarms criticism. The General gives an interesting account of what happened subsequently to the revolution; but his account often gives only one out of many views of the facts. Thus his chapter on the Kornilov incident is, as he states, merely a summary of Kerenski's book, and cannot therefore be accepted without considerable reserves. On pages 214-216 he gives ten outstanding facts about the Bolshevikrégime"which can be proved over and over again if proof be required." We should like to see the General's proof of the first sentence in his tenth "fact," namely, that "there are no elections of any kind...." The General has also succeeded in adding a new complication to the already complicated problem of the spelling of Russian names. The gentleman whose name we have seen spelt variously by other writers Cheidze, Chheidze, and Tshcheidze appears in his book as Cheidsi.
It would be unfair to compare Mr. Harris's book with Mr. Keynes's, though it covers something of the same ground. Mr. Keynes is analytic and, in the end, constructive, and his subject is the rebuilding of a ruined Europe. Mr. Harris is historical and reminiscent. Like a good journalist—and it is unnecessary to say how good a journalist he is—he tells us how they made the peace rather than what kind of a peace they made and should have made. It is true that in telling us the story of peace-making at Paris he does tell us also what kind of peace they made. In fact his book has a distinct value as a clear summary of the terms eventually hammered out by the three Great Powers and accepted by Germany. But the angle of Mr. Harris's approach to his subject is that of the journalistic historian. The result is a very readable and interesting book. Putting ourselves into Mr. Harris's skilful hands, we are enabled to see, through the various journalistic spectroscopes, something of what took place behind the shuttered and curtained council chamber of the Big Four, which in effect was a Big Three.
This is a useful book for those who wish to study the long and slow development of the idea of a League of Nations. The author begins with the idea of a League in ancient Greece and traces it through Dante, the "Grand Design," Grotius, Penn, Saint Pierre, Rousseau, Kant, and Bentham to Alexander I. of Russia and the Holy Alliance. The value of the book is considerably enhanced by its careful documentation, and by the fact that it gives us a translation of the text of many of the schemes and "covenants" which are not easily obtainable by the ordinary reader.
This brochure has a double claim to interest all who concern themselves with politics. In the first place it is a remarkable revelation of the advancing spirit of democracy, of the new social conscience and widening outlook of our time. For here we have a Cecil, the type of the grand seigneurial family of high Tory traditions, calmly—orrather enthusiastically—offering us a political programme that a few years ago would have been greeted as wildly Jacobin. In the second place the views of Lord Robert derive a peculiar importance from the position which he occupies to-day in the public estimation. His high personal character, his idealism, and his ability single him out among the members of his Party—if indeed he can be said in the present political confusion to be of a Party. He gives us here half-a-dozen short essays dealing with the League of Nations, the industrial problem, finance, the reform of Parliament, and the Irish question. His practical proposals under each of these heads will not commend themselves to everyone in all their details, but none will fail to admire the generous and constructive spirit which underlies them. Those who are pessimistic about foreign affairs may well wish that we had more men of this stamp to put Europe on its feet again. Those who are exercised about the situation at home will look anxiously for the next step of this aristocrat among the democrats.
Mr. Woolf's object in this work is to answer the question: "What has been the result and what the lessons of the application of the power and machinery of the European State to Africa?" He examines very carefully and critically the history of the organisation of the British, French, and German Colonies in North and East Africa, as well as the Belgian Congo. The results both for Europe and for the natives he finds on the whole to be evil. The future, if we are to continue the old policy of economic imperialism, offers no better prospect. There is hope in the League of Nations, but for the mandatory system, as proposed, Mr. Woolf has no enthusiasm. To make the League effective and beneficent its forms and duties must be restated and clearly defined. The book is one which ought to be read by all who are interested not merely in African affairs but in the Colonial policies of the European Powers.
The publishers' announcement informs us that "Mr. Harold Bayley by his graduated studies in Elizabethan Literature, Symbolism, and the Renaissance has established his position as an original and interesting thinker." Again, on its paper wrapper the present work is styled, "this profound and far-reaching contribution to English Archæology." If a pill were to be puffed in this way the inference might be drawn that the interested party did not belong to the medical profession. By parity of reasoning one conjectured before opening the book that Mr. Bayley was not versed in the gentle tradition of the archæological fraternity. But to read the introduction almost disarms the critic. Mr. Bayley cannot, he confesses, afford to emulate the Oxford tutor, described in a novel of Mr. Stephen McKenna, who set himself to write a history of the Third French Republic, and thirty years later had satisfactorily concluded his introductory chapter on the origin of Kingship. He complains that his literary hobbies have necessarily to be indulged more or less furtively in restaurants and railway-trains. Nevertheless he tries "to keep on as good terms as may be with the exacting Muses of History, Mythology, Archæology, Philosophy, Religion, Romance, Symbolism, Numismatics, Folklore, and Etymology." Thus circumstances have forced him to become a literary "hustler"; and, since self-advertisement is germane to the hustling temper, and moreover in this case is quite undisguised and naïve, it may almost be forgiven.
Not that Mr. Bayley wants to be forgiven. It would seem that the hustling and the hard-hitting tendencies are naturally akin. For the philologists have attacked him on account of another book. Consequently, in this book he pulverises the philologists one and all; there is nothing left of them. Nor do the anthropologists come off any better. Even sex does not protect them. Miss Jane Harrison, for instance, was rash enough to say that gods evolve from choral dances and similar ceremonies, herein but following the common opinion that in the development of religion ritual is prior to dogma. Mr. Bayley will have none of it. "The theory here assumed," he exclaims, "grossly defies the elementary laws of logic, for every act of ritual must essentially have been preceded by a thought: Act is the outcome and offspring of Thought: Idea was never the idiot-child of Act. The assumption that the first idea of God evolved from the personation of the Sun God in a mystery play or harvest dance is not really or fundamentally a mental tracking of that God right home, but rather an inane confession that the idea of God cannot be traced further backward than the ritual of ancient festivals." How can a reviewer proceed to deal with Mr. Bayley's views without trepidation?Fænum habet in cornu.
"To me," says Mr. Bayley, "the divinities of antiquity are not mere dolls to be patted superciliously on the head and then remitted to the dustbin. Our own ideals of to-day are but the idols or dolls of to-morrow, and even a golliwog if it has comforted a child is entitled to sympathetic treatment." It would have certainly been more sympathetic if Miss Harrison had called Apollo or Dionysus a gollywog, and let it go at that. Mr. Bayley goes on to moralise—and the passage illustrates at once his discursive manner and the methods of the symbolistic philology—as follows: "The wordsdoll,idol,ideal, andidyll, which are all one and the same, are probably due to the island of Idea, which was one of the ancient names of Crete. Not only was Crete known as Idæa, but was also entitled Doliche, which may be spelled to-day Idyllic.... We shall also see as we proceed that the mystic philosophy known to history as the Gnosis was in all probability the philosophy taught in prehistoric times at Gnossus, the far-famed capital of Crete. From Gnossus, whence the Greeks drew all their laws and sciences, came probably the Greek wordgnossis, meaningknowledge." Why "probably"?
But to proceed to Mr. Bayley's main contention. He would have us take less pride in any connection we may have had with the Anglo-Saxons—were they not Huns?—and, contrariwise, think more of our far more worthy ancestors the ancient Britons. Theirs was a wisdom ultimately derived from the culture-lands of the East. Are not the identities between Welsh and Hebrew "close and pressing." Is it not the fact that "entire sentences of archaic Hebraisms are similarly to be found in the now obsolete Cornish language." Unfortunately the Phœnicians have left no literature. The Greeks have, however, and we are thus able to connect Achill in Ireland with Achilles, and so on. Similarly philology proves the truth of the tale that Brutus with his Trojans landed at Totnes and thence marched to Troynovant or New Troy, now known as London. Not that the Trojans on their arrival found it any easier than it is now to obtain decent lodgings in London. Fortre(which is obviously Troy) means in Cornish dwelling, and in Frenchtroumeans hole. So the earliest Troys "were maybe caves," though they ultimately became towers ortors; witness the number of the same in the West of England. It is likewise obvious that Troy, Tyre, and Etruria are from the same root. So it follows that "the men of Tarshish, Tyre, Troy, or Etruria, towed, trekked, travelled, tramped, traded, and trafficked far and wide." Indeed, it might almost seem that the language in which these culture-heroes were wont to express themselves consisted entirely in the word Troy and its derivatives. But no. Britain was called Albion, and "Albion suggests Albania." Moreover, "by the present-day Turk the Albanians are termed Arnaouts. Whether this name has any connection withargonautsis immaterial." So it evidently is, seeing that "many shiploads of young argonauts from one or anotherTroy reached the coast of Cornwall." But the proof of this is the fact that so many of the Cornish names begin withtre. So even the Albanians called themselves Troy for short.
There are nearly nine hundred pages composed in this vein, and if the reader wants more he can find it there. Mr. Bayley will not bore him; he wields a facile pen. Again, he has read all manner of books, good bad and indifferent, and may provide useful material for anyone whose critical faculty is sufficiently alert. But Troy and the rest of it—can this punning philology be seriously meant? Mr. Bayley would connect our word pun "with the Hebrewpun, meaningdubious." No doubt pundit comes from the same root; and, if so, Mr. Bayley is welcome to the title.
In spite of the subject of his book, Dr. Crowther's index is free from the names of Wien, Lenard, Elster and Geitel, and Stark, to mention a few omissions which are somewhat surprising. It is true that subsequent reading shows that one of these names is casually mentioned, but the pages on positive rays, for instance, are happily free from all reference to the hated Hun and his works—and, in consequence, are somewhat misleading. In the first flush we attributed these omissions to Dr. Crowther's intense patriotism, but further investigation, and a rough classification of other peculiarities, has convinced us that the misfortune of these men lies not in being German, but in not having worked at Cambridge. If the book before us had as a sub-title, "Being the Work of Cambridge Physicists," a source of misunderstanding would be removed. It consists of an account of the work of the Cavendish school, enriched by free borrowings from Sir J. J. Thomson's famousConduction of Electricity through Gases, with occasional references to the work of "outsiders," not usually acknowledged by name. The chapter on Photo-electricity will illustrate to those familiar with the subject the peculiarities to which we allude. We doubt if many physicists will be disposed to admit the author's claim that the book furnishes "a reasonably complete account of the present state of the subject."
It is a commonplace to talk of the machinery of the body, but it is not widely realised how close are the analogies which can be drawn between every detail of our physical structure and some feature or process of modern mechanical engineering. Professor Keith, realising how very much more most of us know of the working of an engine which comparatively few of us possess, an internal combustion engine, than of the working of the engines which we all possess in our muscles, has written a most informing and entertaining book, in which the mechanism and functions of our bones, muscles, heart, lungs, joints, brain, and other structures are considered in terms of their engineering analogies. It is hard to imagine a clearer or more charming exposition of elementary physiology. The book is based on a course of Christmas Lectures given at the Royal Institution, lectures primarily intended, as every one knows, for children. While there is little in the book which cannot be understood by any intelligent boy—that we do not add "or girl" is due to no reactionary denial of the full equality of the sexes, but to a belief that, at present, girls take less interest in, and so are less conversant with, the working of motor-car engines than boys—few grown-ups, even medical men, will readit without lively interest or without learning much. There is hardly any function or structure in our bodies for which Professor Keith does not find a counterpart in iron or steel—the internal texture of a bone is likened to Fairbairn's crane, a diagram of a force pump compared part by part with the diagram of the left ventricular pump of the heart. The varying length of heel found in different races is considered from the point of view of its mechanical usefulness in different circumstances, the superiority of the ape type of arm to the human type for the tasks which confront an ape is made clear in a few words. A short historical sketch of what Harvey was taught concerning the blood, contrasted with the wonderful new knowledge which he himself discovered, and the road by which he arrived at it, affords an admirable example of scientific method. These are citations at random; the whole book is full of commendable things. The bearings of recent research, such as the work of Haldane on Respiration, Cannon on Adrenalin, Starling on Hormones, are skilfully indicated in simple language. We congratulate Professor Keith on the production of a book of popular science which in clearness, depth of knowledge, and charm of style challenges comparison with the books which his great predecessor, Faraday, founded on his "Christmas Lectures."
We welcome the appearance of this book, which is the essay to which the Adams Prize was adjudged in the year 1917. With the exception of Poincaré's well-knownLeçons sur les Hypothéses Cosmogoniquesthere is, we think, no other book of recent date dealing authoritatively with the attractive subject of cosmogony, and in certain respects Mr. Jeans's book is a considerable advance on Poincaré's. The treatment is more systematic, and the author's own extensive contributions to the subject add to its value.
The introductory chapter gives a survey of the scientific problem of the origin of the universe, and points out the various uniformities which we have to explain. It also includes a brief historical sketch of the various theories of cosmogony put forward, from the famous nebular hypothesis of Kant and Laplace up to modern times. This chapter and the concluding chapter, on the Origin and Evolution of the Solar System, are accessible to the non-mathematical reader, and enable him to put himself in touch with the latest observations and speculations on these fascinating themes. The remainder of the book is highly mathematical, yet the author has presented his analysis so skilfully that a moderate knowledge of the calculus and dynamical principles suffice for the following of all the deductions. The general dynamics and criteria of stability and instability are first developed, and then the classical configurations of equilibrium of a rotating homogeneous mass—Maclaurin's spheroids and Jacobi's ellipsoids—are handled. Further systematic investigation leads up to the study of the oft-attacked, formidable problem of pear-shaped figures of equilibrium, which occupied the attention of Poincaré, G. Darwin, and Liapounoff. So far there has been question of stable configurations of equilibrium: the author now passes to the dynamical problems presented when there is no stable equilibrium, remarking that "a statical problem may or may not admit of solution, but a dynamical problem must always have a solution." Poincaré's "cataclysm" is for him merely a passage from a statical to a dynamical investigation. Soon, after summarising the results for a mass of fluid which is incompressible and homogeneous, he proceeds to consider the case when neither of these conditions pertain. Here we are presented chiefly with the important advances made by Mr. Jeans himself. The evolution of rotating nebulæ and of star clusters, of double and of multiple stars (particular attention being given to the process of fission and the subsequent motion), come up in turn for consideration, and from these gigantic voyages through space we return, at the end of the book, to our relatively minute solar systemand its evolution. The book is illustrated with beautiful reproductions of photographs of nebulæ, taken at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and is in every way worthy of its author and its Press.
The December number of theArchives of Radiology and Electrotherapycontains an interesting article on the work of the British Association of Radiology and Physiotherapy. One of the first fruits of its activities is that, at its instigation, the University of Cambridge has decided to institute a Diploma in Medical Radiology and Electrology. A knowledge of the properties of the various radiations of electrical origin on nature, of direct and alternating currents, and of electrotechnics in general, is of such importance in modern medicine that we heartily welcome the institution of a Diploma which will guarantee that its possessor has a thorough knowledge of the new and special technique required for the various electric treatments of to-day. The syllabus of subjects and the regulations governing the award, which provide, among other things, that the candidate must hold a recognised medical qualification, are published in full in the number of theArchivesunder notice. A study of the syllabus of the course of studies provided at Cambridge emphasises the range of physical phenomena, which have a therapeutic value—radiant heat, X-rays, the rays from radioactive substances, electrolysis, direct and high frequency currents, and static electricity, to name some of the most important. Obviously it is time for adequate provision to be made for instructing the medical man in the theory and manipulation of the machines and devices peculiar to this side of his art, since the average M.D. has not a very deep knowledge of physics. The only suggestion we would offer is that some attempt might be made to simplify or standardise the nomenclature of the subject. A glance at this short notice will show the variety of titles given to the new therapeutics, and of these the word "electrology," for instance, is given in Webster as "obsolete or rare." Surely there are sufficient terms already without reviving it.
By J. H. MASON
"MODERN"type is the name by which the design that came into general use in this country between 1800 and 1808 is designated. (It is the type face still used in Blue Books.) To quote Luckombe in hisPrinter's Grammar, of 1808, "The great improvement which has taken place of late years in the form of printing types has completely superseded the Elzevir shape introduced from Holland by the celebrated Caslon. Everyone must observe, with increasing admiration, the numerous and elegant founts of every size which have with rapid succession been lately presented to the public." And then follow specimens from the Fry Type Foundry, the "Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia, mostra?" so affected by the older founders that it almost became a proverb for "type specimen."
Well, modern opinion has gone strongly back to Luckombe, and with good reason. The only definite quality—not very definite either—which calls forth his admiration is the elegance of the design. I think we may concede this without damaging the case for the old-style types. The letters are well drawn, carefully and finely drawn, and show a good sense of proportion and of colour contrast in the thicks and thins and hair-lines in the size shown, called the Luckombe "French Canon," equivalent to forty-eight point (about two-thirds of an inch). But is elegant drawing the desirable point in type? It is not. It tends to keep the single letters distinct units instead of their coalescing into word, phrase, or even sentence units. For the mind of the reader is partly formed by the mind of the writer, by his own experience in the manipulation of the pen, and feels for the onward flow of the pen in the letter design. And this is found at its best in the Italian writing that developed the Caroline minuscule and formed the model for the early Venetian types. The letter takes its character from the pen in the hands of a master of his instrument, and the ink and paper or vellum play their part—it is not deliberately drawn and passed on, but arrives in the continuous flow that strives to keeppari fluminewith the stream of thought. The serifs or finishing strokes,e.g., of the capital C or T in "modern," are perpendicular palings that shut off relations with their neighbours; in old style they reach towards their neighbours, as though to join hands with them. The onward flow is felt in the curves,e.g., of the small m of old-style type, but in modern it stands almost coldly self-centred, the elegance strikes us as primness. The fine lines too are unsuitable for letterpress printing as they are easily damaged and then the type becomes unsightly. In engraver's lettering on copperplates, of course, this does not happen, as the fine line is printed from a sunken scratch, not a knife-like edge in relief. The engraver as a rule only used small groups of words, not pages of continuous text. (I do not forget Pine—his Horace dates 1733—but of him another time.) I cannot help thinking that modern type is the outcome of a mistaken standard, that of the engraver; as if the finish of delicate gold-smithing were adopted for carving in sandstone. To the engraver the hair-line is perfectly simple, to the typefounder it is atour-de-force. The old-style design continued the manuscript tradition of form, with only such changes as the process of typefounding involved, such as the elimination of ligatures or tied letters. It continued in use till the end of the eighteenth century, when "elegance" displaced it. In forty years (a short time compared with the three-and-a-half centuries of old style) old style was revived in the Chiswick PressJuvenalandLady Willoughby's Diary, and was enthusiastically received. New versions of the old-style design were cut, and it has continued in favour ever since.
Paris, February, 1920.
WHENamong us a reader of literary tastes wishes to obtain a bird's-eye view of the literature of the moment, to see it mapped out with all its currents, he thinks of the reviews. I mean by that not the old-established reviews, which after all are no more than magazines of the first class, but the living, active, combative reviews, which are the organs of groups, of literary and intellectual parties.
While the old reviews, in France as in England or in Germany, continued faithfully during the war to provide their usual articles on contemporary affairs, all the young French reviews found themselves cut off, the greater part of their staffs having been mobilised. Since the war they have reappeared, new reviews have been born, and important additions are announced for the spring. But, taken as a whole, the complexion of the world of the new reviews shows an aspect sufficiently different from what it had before the war and above all from what it had twenty years ago.
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TheNouvelle Revue Françaisehas begun publication again since June 1st. The members of its pre-war staff meet again intact, because for the most part they belonged to a generation which reached, or had just passed, its fortieth year in 1914. The most important among them, the figure round whom the group was first assembled, was André Gide, and, like Gide, most of them had gone through the Symbolist Movement between 1890 and 1900. But they were no longer at the age of enthusiastic and violent prejudices; they cared much for analysis and intelligence and sought above all to see clear. Hence came their taste for psychological detail and for the literature of introspection, of which Jean Schlumberger produced poignant examples and which made theNouvelle Revue Françaisethe natural country of Marcel Proust. Hence also, and above all, the importance of its critical work, and that state of attentive and impartial clairvoyance which it has constantly striven to preserve. This clairvoyance did not exclude ardour or passion; the influence of Péguy, still more that of Claudel, was obvious in the fiery intellect of Jacques Rivière, now the editor of the review.
Unlike other reviews with an æsthetic bent, theNouvelle Revue Françaisedid not confine itself to the defence and the illustration of some definite artistic method. It welcomed, like theMercureand theRevue Blancheof old days, everything which seemed to it interesting, original, and bearing the marks of authentic art. Obviously, for it, the centre of the artistic landscape was filled by the most illustrious of the whilom Symbolists, those who devoted themselves in solitude to build according to those mysterious ideal diagrams, drawn by Mallarmé upon a heroic and legendary sand: Gide, Claudel, Valéry. But the review became the home also of Charles Louis Philippe, that master of sorrowful tenderness and rending pity—of Pierre Hamp, who, in his stories of industrial life, has drawn the world of labour with a power frequently humorous and sometimes as original as Constantin Meunier's; of Jules Romains, the picturesque and powerful creator of "Unanimist" prose and poetry.
TheNouvelle Revue Françaisehas emerged from its five years' concealment with the same characteristics. It still attempts to be a milieu of pure art and disinterestedliterature. But it is almost impossible, in France, for artists to-day to divest themselves of political preoccupations. They are divided, often fiercely, over this problem: "Should French thought to-day preserve or abandon its war attitude? Should it remain defiant towards the foreigner and subordinate everything to the continuance of the intellectual struggle against Germanism?" The editors of theNouvelle Revue Française, who are divided on that question, endeavour in their review itself to elucidate it by discussions amongst themselves.
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TheRevue Critique des Idées et des Livreshas also just reappeared. It was the organ of a younger generation than that of theNouvelle Revue Française, and that is why the majority of its old conductors no longer respond to the call. More than twenty of them, and notably Pierre Gilbert, who was the heart and soul of them, were killed in action. As its name indicates, this review is above all concerned with criticism. You find in it few poems and no novels. The young men who united around it aimed at restoring to French literature a classic discipline, and fighting all the remains of romanticism from democracy to symbolism. That is why the review published special numbers dedicated to Richelieu, to Stendhal, to Mistral, and on the occasion of Rousseau's centenary a special number of another kind, remarkably violent, devoting to execration the Genevese whom they held to be the father of French romanticism and the Æolus of all the storms.
TheRevue Critique des Idées et des Livreswas profoundly influenced by Charles Maurras. It was the literary organ of the ardent, patriotic generation aroused in France by his influence and that of Maurice Barrès. Nevertheless, some months before the war it broke away fromL'Action Française; or rather it was that paper, the organ of M. Maurras, which declared itself unable any longer to commend without reserve the tendencies of theRevue Critique. This cleavage arose out of some articles in theRevue Critiquewhich praised the philosophy of M. Bergson. NowL'Action Françaisehad opened war long before on Bergsonism for reasons which were not philosophic. That is why theRevue Critique, although still benevolently watched by M. Maurras, was considered by him as a lapse from orthodoxy.
In its resurrected form it has kept its classical tendencies, its taste for pure criticism, the intellectual discipline which made it subordinate everything to the national point of view. But on the other hand it shows an inclination to broaden, to become more elastic, to take a less rigid and combative attitude than of old. Although most of its editors are friends of M. Maurras andL'Action Française, it preserves its intellectual autonomy intact and is no longer attached to a political party. Its rôle seems to be to revive the old tradition of French classicism. It maintains especially those discussions on the problems of the day and the eternal problems, those intelligent and passionate debates which have always given so much animation to young French reviews.
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A new review, the work of which will often be in accord with that of theRevue Critique des Idées et des Livres, is announced for the month of March, and that announcement has already aroused much interest. This is theRevue Universelle, the organ of the "Parti de l'Intelligence." This party, which might well have found a less naïve title, is a nationalist group which proposes to keep the intellect of France in the channels of national tradition and civic vigilance. It includes almost all the monarchists of theAction Française, but also a certain number of patriotic writers who are not royalists, including Camille Mauclair, Daniel Halévy, Edmond Jaloux, Henri Ghéon, and Henri Massis. It has been founded in opposition to the "Clarté" group of Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, Georges Duhamel, and Pierre Hamp, which unites intellectuals withsocialist and pacifist leanings. It is, in the world of letters, a resurrection of the old leagues of the "Patrie Française" and the "Droits de l'Homme," which flourished at the time of the Dreyfus affair. But up to the present the majority of French writers have not enrolled themselves in either body.
The title of theRevue Universelleis based on the desire of the "Parti de l'Intelligence" to make it an organ for propagating French intellectual influence abroad, for ensuring the dissemination and establishing the primacy of the classic culture which is bound up with the French genius. TheRevue Universellewill attempt to give to French nationalism, which has hitherto confined its propaganda to France, an influence over the world. It is patently a difficult enterprise and one essentially a little paradoxical. But it will certainly be very interesting and will deserve to be closely watched abroad. TheRevue Universellewill be directed by the clearest and strongest head amongst contemporary French students of foreign politics, M. Jacques Bainville. The names of the chief members of the "Parti de l'Intelligence" assure from the start a staff of the first order. The "Clarté" group has not yet announced its intention of founding a similar organ.
In the spring there will appear a review in French which will fill a place at present empty: theRevue de Genève, whose editor will be M. Robert de Traz. This will be a review essentially European, which will aim at giving an exact picture of intellectual Europe to-day, and will examine objectively æsthetic, political, religious and moral, national and international tendencies. Its founders believe that an authoritative position is assured.