under the general editorship of Henry Bass Hall is "The Indestructible Union" (Little, Brown) by Professor William McDougall. It is well defined in its subtitle as the "Rudiments of Political Science for the American Citizen", and it is quite fitting that these basic ideals should be presented by an imported Englishman (well acclimatized at Harvard), since their roots go back through at least seven centuries of English thinking tradition. There is a fine optimism in that title, justified, on the whole, by the analyses of American development and present tendencies as Dr. McDougall sees them. He devotes three chapters to an examination of the meaning of "nationalism" and "internationalism" in relation to the ideals of American democracy, and then proceeds to an outline of our growth toward true nationhood—not neglecting the disruptive influences, especially those of the recent immigration of alien peoples, and of our apparently insoluble Negro problem. The general conclusion is that the Union has become truly a nation, with genuinely nationalist ideals which boil down, broadly speaking, to a fundamental "likemindedness" but that we are not yet fully grown up, having still to face the "supreme test" of democracy in our national relationship to other nations. The book is done with Dr. McDougall's usual vigor and brilliancy of execution.

Impressions caught from looking out of "Nantucket Windows" (Little Book House, Nantucket) are set down by Edwina Stanton Babcock in a small book of contemplative verse whose local flavor is perhaps its greatest charm. These are verses with a textbook air that now and then slip into unusual and striking phrases describing

the picturesque features of this tight little island. They are, however, rather extravagant and too pedantic at times to give a clear picture, and the author has a fondness for polemics that discourages a free flow of poetic expression. Her tribute "To the Nineties", for example, may be sincerely intentioned, but we have a feeling that this verse is in the mode of an older generation that liked its poetry to be a preachment rather than a spiritual or intellectual recreation. To present day readers, aside from the sentimental celebration of a charming and isolated little island, the book as a whole must seem anachronistic, with its lavish use of threadbare expressions and its undistinguished poetic posturings.

"Meek Americans" by Joseph Warren Beach (Chicago University Press) is a pleasant, if prosaic, series of essays relating a literary tourist's impressions of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Austria. They are distinguished from the mass of such commentaries by a keen faculty of observation, a polished, masterly style, and a rare command of descriptive values. Their weakness lies in a tame monotony - due, we presume, to the author's desire to be truthful which is never once relieved by anything remotely exciting. However, this lack of the adventurous is amply balanced by the variety and quality of the book's gracefully narrated experiences.

The most popular royal personage in the world today is presented with strict fidelity to the facts and significance of that sparkling young man's first thirty years of life, in Genevieve Parkhurst's biography, "A King in the Making" (Putnam). There is here no unrestrained romancing, though the temptations temptations are legion, over the

charms and gifts of the English prince who informally visited America last autumn under the simple title of Baron Renfrew. His career from birth, through childhood, youth at naval training school and Oxford, in the world war and after, as the brilliantly successful traveler among the distant peoples of his father's empire, is set forth with a winning simplicity which makes Edward, Seventeenth Prince of Wales, seem in truth the wonderful human being many of us have imagined him to be.

Sir Philip Gibbs begins "Ten Years After" (Doran) by recalling the profound sense of peace that existed up to the very outbreak of the war, pointing out that the intrigues in the chancelleries of Europe were utterly remote from the minds of the peoples concerned. But, he insists, this was true in Germany as well: the sabre rattling of the Junkers was not only "scorned by millions of theoretical Socialists" but "ignored by the peasants who were busy with their sowing and reaping in quiet fields". Sir Philip, in other words, rejects the notion that a people, and so the German people, should be held responsible for the nature and acts of its government. He is aware, moreover, of the revisionist position that the acts of the German government were not uniquely responsible for the war; but he holds that even if they had been, peace was not to be secured by punishment and vengeance. these grounds he bases a denunciation of the Treaty of Versailles. It was, he says, to have been "a peace which would be generous to the defeated if they overthrew their old gods, and would be based on justice, the rights of peoples and the commonwealth of nations, rather than upon vengeance and hatred". Instead the peace not

On

only did punish the people for the supposed crime of the government it had repudiated, but "reeked with injustice" and so "struck a knock-out blow . . . to all the ideals of people who had looked for something nobler and more righteous by which the peace of the world should be assured". "It was", moreover, "incapable of fulfilment", and the effort to secure fulfilment by the imposition of fresh burdens and penalties, in the face of actual reasonable performance of Germany, brought Europe to the verge of ruin. Sir Philip welcomes the Dawes plan, and places his faith in the League of Nations.

Professor Alfred Edward Taylor (of the University of Edinburgh) remarks in the preface to his study of "Platonism and Its Influence" (Marshall Jones) that his object is "not so much to supply information as to provoke the desire for it". The kindling of such a desire for acquaintance with the classics is perhaps the best service rendered by the admirable series of monographs entitled "Our Debt to Greece and Rome". Other current issues in that series are "Stoicism and Its Influence" by Professor R. M. Wenley of the University of Michigan; "Mythology" by Jane Ellen Harrison; "Architecture" by Professor Alfred Mansfield Brooks of Swarthmore: "Roman Private Life and Its Survivals" by Professor Walton Brooks McDaniel of the University of Pennsylvania, and "Sappho and Her Influence" by Professor David M. Robinson of Johns Hopkins. This last volume is somewhat more ambitiously planned than most of the series, containing twenty four plates reproducing paintings, coins, statues, and Greek vases. Each volume contains a well selected bibliography.

Those who feast subtly upon E. E. Cummings and Wallace Stevens will find Roselle Mercier Montgomery's "Ulysses Returns" (Brentano) very nondescript indeed. But, fortunately for poets like Mrs. Montgomery, this group is very small. The jacket says: "The themes have a unique public appeal, as indicated by the thousands of laudatory letters that have been received by Mrs. Montgomery from persons in all walks of life." Her moods, for the most part, are hackneyed but sincerely felt, cluttered with clichés, done in obvious, easy rhythms, but occasionally there is an original phrase. Her subjects are life and death, love and parting, grief and joy. Her work rises above the class of completely mediocre poets because of her basic sincerity and grace.

After "conscious waiting and longing for it for more than thirty years" Michael Monahan has made his first trip to Europe. "The Road to Paris" (Brown) is the literary peregrination of the author under the Tricolor and down along the Tiber. The author must be taken to task for at least two things. In a discussion of modern French writers he only briefly refers to Jean Cocteau, and utterly ignores Marcel Proust and Paul Morand. Also, exception is taken to his indictment of American journalism and journalists. "The French journalist, usually a man of literary abilities and good education, is content to remain a journalist pure and simple: his American confrère of the highly successful type becomes a Farmer-General of Publicity." A study of French and American journalism would hold interest, but such comparisons are fallible. The one delightful chapter in the book is an excellent translation, by Mr. Monahan, of Guy de Maupassant's "Legend de Mont

St. Michel". It is regrettable that the reader may not enjoy the same thrill on "The Road to Paris" that Mr. Monahan experienced during his sojourn on the Continent.

"Life's Little Day" (Dodd, Mead) is the most recent record of pleasant reminiscences and interesting encounters from the pen of Mrs. A. M. W. Stirling. Stirling. Those who enjoy a glimpse into the intimate daily life of the great and the near great will revel in this volume. So will those who love to peer into the realms of the unknown for Mrs. Stirling has packed her book with the uncanny, as well as the "canny" experiences of herself and her friends and acquaintances. The personality of the author's illustrious brother-in-law, William De Morgan, seems to pervade the narrative, bringing to it little added touches of idealism and artistry. Family love and family pride lend to it a pleasing warmth and sometimes a moving pathos, making of it, in grand total, a soothing tale of not too eventful memories.

In "Poems for Youth" (Dutton), William Rose Benét has accomplished a commendable bit of anthologizing, and has produced a collection which, on the whole, should fulfil its purpose of appealing to young men and women in their late teens and early twenties. The compiler is at his best in his selections from the early American poets, but when he reaches the twentieth century he is treading continually on questionable ground. One wonders, for example, why he has omitted so capable a lyricist as David Morton while devoting space to the doggerel of John V. A. Weaver; and one questions the inclusion of the juvenile although talented Hilda Conkling when mature poets such as Amory Hare, Hazel Hall,

and Genevieve Taggard are unrepresented. Such matters, of course, are largely questions of opinion, but one resents the somewhat dogmatic attitude of the compiler, particularly in his preface and introduction, as when he patronizes William Cullen Bryant somewhat disdainfully for writing "Thanatopsis", and remarks of T. S. Eliot that there is no question that he "is one of the foremost American poets now living".

In introducing his remarkable volume on "Tibet, Past and Present" (Oxford), Sir Charles Bell modestly declares: "I am not versed in the art of writing books . . ." Nevertheless, many writers might well emulate his lucidity of style and scholarly beauty of expression. After nineteen years of experience as British political representative in Tibet, Bhutan, and Sikkim, Sir Charles gives to the world an exhaustive outline of Tibetan history, and a faithfully drawn picture of this little known Asiatic people, with a fine, clear analysis of their customs, religion, and character. To the student of world politics, especially, this work will prove invaluable, setting forth as it does the problems confronting the Western Powers. The historian, the Orientalist, the litterateur, will find rare material, as will the stay-at-home who travels to strange, far away lands of an evening.

In "John Viscount Morley" (Houghton Mifflin) John H. Morgan has written an excellent memoir of a distinguished man for whom we have no prototype in America. Statesmanship and letters, the arena of affairs and the ivory tower, both attracted Morley and in both his achievement was notable. Portions of this book have previously appeared in English journals, the rest

being published for the first time. In Britain Morley has been greatly praised and greatly blamed since his death, chiefly, of course, for his political acts. Morgan, who was an intimate of Lord Morley's, maintains an admirable equipoise in dealing with political topics. Concerning Lord Morley's literary career, however, General Morgan's criticism may well - and does take on the character of eulogy, almost of valedictory, for the influences which formed Lord Morley have spent themselves, or sought new vitality under new guises. Utilitarian, philosophic rationalist, in part a positivist, Morley was the intellectual heir of John Stuart Mill, the friend of Frederic Harrison, the spiritual son of the French Enlightenment. His style was graceful, sinuous, lucid, enchanting, falling short only in the one quality of warmth. "To know him was an intellectual discipline", says Morgan, and it is an intellectual stimulus to meet this almost solitary old Victorian who passed on a year and a half ago, in the vivid pages of his friend's book.

"Beautiful Mexico" by Vernon Quinn (Stokes) is a far better book than its uninviting title suggests. It dispels every prejudice which the ordinary reader maintains against historico-travel books; it is well written; it is colorful; it is absorbing; it is spicily informative. Of particular attractiveness are the portions dealing with the present day life of the Mexican Indians, and with the ancient civilizations in Mexico and Yucatan. In her introduction, Miss Quinn asserts that it is not history or description which she aims to set forth, but a story. That is precisely her achievement; and the story, if on the whole but little known, is nevertheless a good one. The illustrations are as good as the story.