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straightened out nicely, and there is not going to be any more trouble.

Paul Popenoe strikes a much deeper note strikes a note indeed that is arresting, as far as I am concerned. Perhaps there are other little handbooks upon marriage as excellently simple and earnest as this one; I have never seen one. Mr. Popenoe ignores the spiritual aspects of marriage, and the economic factors, and deals faithfully and plainly with the everyday human interest: selection, courtship, marriage itself. What qualities girls

to plain terms, our "incompatibilities" and "mental cruelties" brought down to the level of circus tummyache and measles.

How to Stay Married. By George Gibbs.
D. Appleton and Co.
Modern Marriage. By Paul Popenoe.
Macmillan Company.

AN IRISH-AMERICAN DUET

By Arthur Bartlett Maurice

F course we have had the substance

want in their husbands, what qualities most of George Bernard Shaw's

men look for in their wives, he has tabulated and worked out by the law of averages, and the result is extremely interesting and enlightening reading. With dignity, with deep conviction, and with an unmistakable interest in the general happiness of the race, he has handled physiological problems carefully and sympathetically; "Modern Marriage" is a book numbers of persons would be the better for reading. It is delightful to find these things treated normally, with no references to complexes, suppressed desires, neurotic emotionalism, and psychoanalytical values; infidelity, satiety and coldness in marriage, called by these old fashioned names, seem somehow more manageable!

One can easily imagine the stupefaction with which the young persons of 1970, say, will learn that their grandmothers used to get married without reading anything about it. "But then what on earth did you know about anything?" these youngsters will demand. "About yourselves, and life, and what to do, and what not to do?"

And we shall answer meekly, “We didn't know." Such a book as "Modern Marriage" will be a textbook taken for granted then. It is good for us occasionally to find our heroics reduced

share of this book before in the introductions to the various plays, and in the periodic polemical outbursts that have usually stimulated thought, and have always started controversy and added to the gaiety of mankind. But this book, save for the suggestion of its title, is not a solo but a duet. Adelphi Terrace is the battleground where the voice of North Carolina vies with the voice of Dublin. There are two protagonists; one, the clever, industrious American who never shies from the limelight, who has always held in praiseworthy reverence the Biblical injunction about "hiding one's light under a bushel", and who has never been parsimonious in the disbursement of words. Here Mr. Henderson has the first word. The surprise of the book comes when the reader discovers that Shaw has the last word.

Yet for all that it is a delightful and valuable little volume; Shaw in a nutshell; a repository of Shavian epigram and a short cut to the high spots of the Shavian philosophy. Directed adroitly by Mr. Henderson, the table talk veers, not with Shaw's mood of the moment, but toward the illumination of those questions in which American readers are most likely to be interested. In

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understands the other; but an American insult to the English or an English insult to the Americans might lead to a war." It is for that reason that Anglo-American relations have been so frequently strained.

The films, and above all the American domination of the films, come in for Shaw's particular vituperation. He offers the suggestion that the United States government put a limit of $25,000 to the expenditure on any single non-educational film. In his opinion such a law would probably result in an enormous improvement because it would force directors to rely on dramatic imagination. The present colossal proportions of the film make mediocrity compulsory: "They aim at the average of an American millionaire and a Chinese coolie, a cathedral-town governess and a mining-village barmaid, because the film has to go everywhere and please everybody." Shaw finds the preliminary titling exasperating. "We shall soon have to sit for ten minutes at the beginning of every reel to be told who developed it, who fixed it, who dried it, who provided the celluloid, who sold the chemicals, and who cut the author's hair."

There are peeps of the Shaw who seems to be "spoofing" the world for his own amusement in the occasional profession of utter ignorance. For example, Henderson is quizzing his host at No. 10 Adelphi Terrace about some of the American authors of the hour. "Surely you know Edith Wharton?" "I seem to have heard the name, but cannot connect anything with it." "Willa Cather?" "Never heard of her or him." "James Branch Cabell?" "Not Cable no, of course not. he a Senator? No; that's Cabot, isn't it? I am afraid I am out of it." "Sinclair Lewis?" "Nice chap. I met

Is

him with Mary Austin after 'Main Street'; and he gave me 'Babbitt"."

Table-Talk of G. B. S., Conversations on Things in General between George Bernard Shaw and His Biographer. By Archibald Henderson. Harper and Bros.

HENRY JAMES DISSECTED
By Joseph Collins

AN WYCK BROOKS is a sensi

VAN

tive, scholarly, sympathetic student of literature. In his new book he attempts to explain why Henry James made a failure of life. If it be urged that the word "failure" is too strong, then why, during the last years of his life, did Henry James express frequently to his friends a dissatisfaction with his accomplishments, and allow the world, which was interested in him, to discern that it had not brought him the beer and skittles that he had anticipated-yes, let us say it boldly that he deserved?

Mr. Brooks would have us believe that Henry James had a delusion which conditioned his conduct: that somewhere in the world he could find a cordial, inviting culture; a people who would have urbanity, understanding, and charm; an arena from which vulgarity of speech and conduct were not only rigorously excluded but would die. of inanition did they succeed in getting in; where there would be no jostling, elbowing, or hurrying; where no one was better than his neighbor; where boasting was barred and boosting prohibited; a land where every prospect pleased and not even man was vile; the ideal land for which no one searches. Then Mr. Brooks thrusts an illusion on him as well, an optical illusion: he sees England as such a land.

We are asked to believe that after

nursing this delusion for more than a quarter of a century, and after having lived intimately with the illusion for a similar period, the cloud began to lift from James's mind, the scales to drop from his eyes. The delusion gradually left him and the illusion faded and vanished. Then his mind became the prey of a question: whether he might not have developed more harmoniously and survived more effectively had he remained in America. The question obsessed him and, strangely enough, since obsessions do not usually condition deliberate conduct, it compelled him to formulate a plan to "go back to America, to retrace the past, to see for himself, to recover on the spot some echo of ghostly footsteps, the sound as of taps on the window-pane heard in the glimmering dawn". He had been in cotton wool too long, he must experience some of the perils of exposure, otherwise he would succumb to the first draft; moreover, he was hungry for material, for an "all-round renovation of his too monotonized grab-bag"; he needed shocks.

Had I not such a high regard for Mr. Brooks as author and interpreter, I should reply to him as M'liss did to the school examiner who sought to humble her beloved school teacher by posing the question: "Has the sun ever stood still in the heavens?" But since I have such esteem of him, of his sincerity and artistry, I content myself with saying, "It is not true." To bring Mr. Hueffer (I assume he means Ford Madox Ford) forward to give corroborative testimony does not bolster up the case. Mr. Ford is a discredited witness; his reputation for veracity has had a tremendous dent put in it recently by Mrs. Conrad. I am in as favorable position to give testimony as even Mr. Gosse. When Henry James made this "comeback" attempt which Mr. Brooks

elaborates in the chapter entitled “The Altar of the Dead", the arterial disease to which he finally succumbed had already so progressed as to give great anxiety and concern to his intimates. He put himself under my professional care and I saw him at close range nearly every day for two months; I talked with him or listened to him on countless subjects. I believe that it would not have been possible for him to harbor and essay the plan that Mr. Brooks credits him with having, or to ruminate on it as Mr. Brooks says he did, without my having become aware of its existence in his mind.

Henry James did not dislike America, but the people he met here with few exceptions did not interest him, and most of them annoyed him, sometimes to the point of explosion. He had had many pleasant experiences in Italy and in France, and he treasured them as a prima donna treasures programs and testimonials. He often took them from the strongboxes of his memory and reinvoked the pleasurable sensations that he had had in acquiring them. Above everything in the world he valued good form, and all that it implies: good taste, good manners, good breeding, good conduct. He had convinced himself from taking thought and from experience that it was to be had in England, even without the asking. He took his tree of life there and planted it and only one root developed, the social root. The political, the scholastic, the religious, the Marathon roots, did not develop. In other words, the roots that make the tree of life so admiration-compelling in England did not grow from the tree that Henry James planted there. The tree that did grow was, however, sturdy and majestic. It has given shade and protection to many travelers since its full growth. The man who planted it assured so far

as he could its permanency by making a few months before his death the supreme genuflection to the country of his adoption. He forfeited citizenship in the country of his birth and obtained citizenship in the country that had sheltered him during the years of his fruition. How could any such thesis as that of Mr. Brooks be maintained in view of this last great gesture of Henry James, and why is it not mentioned in a book that aims to describe his pilgrimage?

To uphold as a major thesis that, by forsaking the land of his birth, he had not given an adequate earnest of his talent, that he had failed to saturate himself with life, that in his old age he found himself astray in the gloomy wood, and that "it had been too much for him over there", must appear contrary to common sense or sound judgment to anyone who knew Henry James, who admired him as an artist and loved him as a man.

Is it not natural that a sensitive man, supremely susceptible to the seductiveness of society, should, when the pulse of life begins to intermit, dwell upon the terrors of loneliness, become apprehensive of a future that would find him bereft of the sympathy that is the balm of life, of that understanding which is the support of the inelastic artery? Henry James knew that such society, sympathy, and staff were in Cambridge, that they were composited in the family of his brother William, that he might have to go to them, as we all have to go to the spring if there is no one to bring us the water.

Any pilgrim who sets out on a journey may properly anticipate the necessities of life even though he does not take them with him, but it would be fatuous for him to hope for the comforts, and beyond belief that he should expect the luxuries. Henry James in

his pilgrimage found the necessities, the comforts, and the luxuries, and we can never be sufficiently grateful to the country of his adoption for having given them to him without the asking.

The Pilgrimage of Henry James. By Van Wyck Brooks. E. P. Dutton and Co.

THE WORLD'S DIARY
By James Melvin Lee

ITERATURE

LITE

dealing with the world's diary · as the newspaper may quite correctly be described — was most scant and jejune until journalism was added to the curriculum of many of the universities. This fertile field, which has so long lain fallow, is now being tilled.

William S. Maulsby of the University of Iowa turns over one furrow in "Getting the News". Some of his chapters do not go very deep, but those dealing with the eye for news and the selection of a background turn up practical material for the members of the working press. Other chapters outlining the way a modern newspaper gets its entries for the world's diary will interest lay readers. The chapter The chapter "How to Handle a Beat" reaches subsoil. A blue pencil would have helped the text materially.

Another furrow was turned over by M. Lyle Spencer of the University of Washington. His furrow, editorial rather than reportorial, is called "Editorial Writing". In addition to discussing editorial composition he outlines somewhat in detail different types, such as the interpretative editorial, the human interest editorial, the controversial editorial, and the editorial paragraph. ("Salt and pepper" is the term used in a newspaper office to describe the type last mentioned.) The edi

torial page is considered, not only from the viewpoint of policy, but also from that of mechanical makeup. A bibliography of collections of editorials is given in the appendix. Mr. Spencer has plowed a straight furrow.

Nelson A. Crawford, of Kansas State Agricultural College, calls his furrow "The Ethics of Journalism". As its title implies, it aims to set professional standards to regulate the material given in the world's diary. The volume is stimulating, and is a distinct contribution to the literature of the subject, even though it does take too seriously without confirmation the charges brought by Upton Sinclair in "The Brass Check".

Henry W. Sackett of the Pulitzer School of Journalism endorses rather highly the work of Samuel Arthur Dawson, a young student to whom was assigned the task of plowing the furrow "The Freedom of the Press". Occasionally Mr. Dawson lifts his plow and carries it over a piece of hardpan. But he had a long furrow to trace: the story of "qualified privilege", not only in this country, but also in England. At the end of the furrow he found that freedom of the press is a requisite of democracy.

Casper S. Yost, the editor of the St. Louis "Globe-Democrat" and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, has gone over the field with a harrow in "The Principles of Journalism". He devotes several chapters to the getting and handling of news, gives two chapters to the editorial page and the responsibility of the editor, and sets aside a chapter for the freedom of the press with another one for ethics of journalism. Without belittling his work elsewhere I may state that he is at his best when dealing with editorial policy and editorial construction.

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