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MR. BERTRAND RUSSELL approaches this subject, not as a politician, but rather in the capacity of a parent who is watching with pleasure and concern the growth of his own two young children. In discussing the possibilities of the human mind he rises above the sphere where controversies are inevitable, for, as it happens in all great matters, where we touch the elemental principles of life our prejudices and our dogmas only color, they do not alter, the nature of the conditions. As the author rightly remarks, the pacifist will not wish his children to be brought up in an atmosphere that the militarist has inherited, nor will the individualist desire the same teaching as the Communist, but those who have developed systems of education which subordinate the interest of the child to the dominant needs of a church or a State have, like the Jesuits, in the end come to grief. The real cleavage is between those who desire a particular definite belief taught rather than a training in the ability to reflect and form independent judgments. The author has opened an interesting discussion on the difference between aristocratic and democratic ideals in education, and believes himself that those methods which can be successfully applied in teaching the mass are the ones that will be found to stand all tests. He brings the illustrations for this argument from the practice of East and West, as well as from the educational classics. He draws our attention to the pernicious effects upon the child of the subjection of women in the past, for women have the children beside them in the most formative years of life.

Mr. Russell is optimistic, indeed, as to the value of modern methods. He feels that we have now available enough knowledge to bring about a revolution in the world's affairs were we able to classify it and make use of it. We have to arm for the spiritual warfare against the inheritance of

ancient fears, as we have armed in the past against our neighbors. 'Health, freedom, happiness, kindness, intelligence' - these Mr. Russell expects to be the outcome of our discoveries in the science of teaching. There is the possibility, on the other hand, that with the improvement in the technique we may have the greater power to injure our pupils, if we should forget that we do not live by bread alone, or if, having freedom, as Mazzini so wisely said, we know not to what ends to use it.

This book is full of good things, as we should expect from so eminent an author and courageous a thinker.

Authors Dead and Living, by F. L. Lucas. London: Chatto and Windus. 78. 6d.

[Daily Telegraph]

THE pessimist would have us believe that most of the literature of our own day is vastly inferior to the literature of our father's; but there can at any rate be no reasonable question that the journeyman work of criticism was never better done than it is at the present time. Some of the daily papers and most of the weeklies make a feature of critical articles of an individuality and vigor that can hold their own with the periodical output of any era; and the variety of the judgments offered is as striking as their force. The present volume is a case in point. Mr. F. L. Lucas's critical essays here collected were originally contributed to a weekly paper, and have received but little revision since their first appearance. They are in the nature of fugitive reviews, written for the service of the hour; yet it is not too much to say that there is not one of them that does not contain some lively judgment or some illuminating phrase that lifts the essay to the level of literature. The range of subjects is wide, from Ovid to Mr. John Masefield, from Donne to Flecker, and from Henry Vaughan to Mr. Humbert Wolfe. Mr. Lucas, while his standards are founded upon a solid basis of taste and scholarship, displays a searching curiosity into the newest experiments, and never leaves an innovation untested because of any critical repulsion to the elements of novelty or revolt. It might conceivably be objected that some of the estimates are rather brief; but brevity is often the soul of effect, and certainly not one of the articles is so short as to fail to register a definite and individual judgment. If the reader wants to see Mr. Lucas's talent extended he will find in the essay called 'The Progress of Poetry' a searching study of modern tendencies, set in their proper relation to permanent standards, that will abundantly confirm the writer's position among the finest critical intellects of the day.

OUR OWN BOOKSHELF

Dostoevsky, by André Gide. Translated from the French, with an Introduction by Arnold Bennett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926. $2.50.

THE reader should be forewarned of one external drawback that may interfere with an harmonious impression from the book as a whole: the volume consists chiefly of addresses delivered by M. Gide at different times, and in which he frequently repeats quotations and arguments already used. But this does not detract from the real value of the book. M. Gide goes to such depths in plumbing the great writer that repetition may even be useful. He credits his reader with a genuine desire to understand the deepesthidden and most elemental foundations of Dostoevsky's work. To such a reader the book will be of great help, but not to those readers who wish to gain an indirect general acquaintance with Dostoevsky's works and stop there. A fascinating comparative study of the man and the writer in Dostoevsky is made the kind of study so essential in discussing a writer who, although he produced absorbing novels and not sermons, is no more closely akin to authors of 'interesting fiction' than was St. John Chrysostom. But as a general description this work seems to fail in some respects. M. Gide is more austere and sombre than Dostoevsky himself; and he has not paid just tribute to the great lucidity and sweetness of some characters that make the ordeal of reading Dostoevsky a somewhat more joyous revelation than M. Gide permits us to understand.

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Poetry and Criticism, by Edith Sitwell. New York: Henry Holt and Company. $1.50.

THE thesis of this small volume is that many critics and reviewers have historically come to grief in their efforts to evaluate their poetical contemporaries, and that therefore Miss Sitwell and her brothers do not intend to take too much to heart the harsh language of Messrs. Squire, Lynd, and Shanks. It is easy to rejoice in Miss Sitwell's thrusts at these somewhat secondary gentlemen - easier than to feel that she has made out the best possible case for her stiff and 'conceited' poetry by harking back to Keats, Wordsworth, and Tennyson. A reader of that poetry, however, cannot fail to be interested in her exegesis of one of her own lyrics, or relieved

to find that as to one of its couplets she can say that it is obviously a joke, and a joke may be permitted even to a poet.' Poetry and Criticism is perhaps not a joke of the first water, but it is better than many.

Contemporary Russian Literature, by Prince D. S. Mirsky. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $4.00.

AN account of modern Russian literature written by a former officer in Denikin's White Army is of course bound to be colored by the author's political sympathies, and the subject is one in which political sympathies are less irrelevant than they frequently are in literary histories. With this reservation, which each reader can make for himself: caveat emptor! - Prince Mirsky's volume is of extraordinary value and interest. His knowledge of Russian literature is that of a scholar, and he handles his material the more nimbly for having a remarkable general knowledge of all European literatures. Beginning with the period of Tolstoi's activity after 1880, Prince Mirsky traces the movement of Russian literature to the present moment with adequate emphasis on the historical facts - 'tendencies,' 'influences,' 'schools,' and so on- but without falling into the common vice of sacrificing individual writers to these secondary considerations. Such a section as that on Chekhov is an admirable example of the kind of criticism that shows a figure in all the lights that can fall upon him. Too much Western criticism of Russian writers has to be two-dimensional.

A History of England, by Hilaire Belloc. Volume I. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1925. $3.75.

It is not the function of these columns to find fault gratuitously, but when a man of Belloc's reputation puts out a book like this one we find it hard to applaud. The style is beguilingly simple, when one considers the 'presence of general theses' which lead the author to deny, for instance, that there ever was an Anglo-Saxon Conquest. There were pirate raids, comparable to the later Danish attacks, that imposed on parts of the coast a popular Germanic speech, now called Anglo-Saxon, which was really in large part debased Latin. It is curious that expert philologists have passed over this fact so lightly.

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$500.00

Prize Debate

T takes both sides to tell the truth"; that is a FORUM axiom. Debates clear away fog and help to reveal the truth which lurks behind clouded issues of the day. Each month THE FORUM publishes a debate; a pair of articles written by outstanding authorities on the question. Because of the broad scope of this particular subject, however, the Editor is opening the debate pages for one month to the reading public. $250.00 is offered for the best paper supporting the thesis, and $250.00 for a running mate on the opposite side. Here is the subject:

Is It Right to Break Unjust Laws?

PERHAPS you like to play checkers on Sunday afternoons,

and live in the State of Massachusetts. Or buy cigarettes, and live in Kansas. Or drive through sleepy villages on holidays faster than six miles an hour. Or drink "light wines and beer" or champagne and Scotch — and live in the United States. What happens to the law, or to your conscience? Write your views in not less than one thousand nor more than fifteen hundred words. Concentrate on constructive argument - we've had enough idle moralizing.

Only typewritten manuscripts will be considered. Write your
name and address plainly, although NO manuscripts will
be returned, even if postage be included. Papers will be
judged on originality, conciseness, and constructive merit.

Papers must reach THE FORUM office before July 15, 1926

Address: THE DEBATE EDITOR

FORUM

A Magazine of Controversy

Edited by Henry Goddard Leach

Published at 247 Park Avenue, New York

THE LIVING AGE. Published weekly. Publication office, RUMFORD BUILDING, CONCORD, N. H. Editorial and General Offices, 8 Arlington Street, Boston 17, Mass. 15e a copy, $5.00 a year; foreign postage $1.50. Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at Concord, N. H., under the Act of Congress, March 3, 1879.

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THE LIVING ACE

VOL. 329 MAY 15, 1926-NO. 4271

THE LIVING AGE.

BRINGS THE WORLD TO AMERICA

A WEEK OF THE WORLD

BRITAIN'S LABOR CRISIS

As we write these lines Great Britain is in the first stages of a great industrial conflict. Its issues will inevitably be misunderstood and distorted even in that country; it is far more difficult to appraise them intelligently on this side of the Atlantic. Our readers will recall that British coal-mining has been depressed ever since the war. There are many causes for this: the competition of cheap Continental coal, of electricity, of fuel oil, especially on ships; the depression of coal-consuming industries in Great Britain itself; inherited inefficiencies in the operation and the organization of the mines; and probably others. Two Royal Commissions have reported on the industry since the war. A strike was averted last year only by the Government's paying a subsidy, so large that it unbalanced the British Budget, to enable the operators to maintain the existing rate of wages.

The vital point in the present dispute is wages and hours of work; for the whole industry is unionized, and many things for which the miners have struck in America have already been

obtained by labor in Great Britain. Behind this key issue, however, lie certain general conditions which determine it. The first of these is the complex question of organization and ownership. A powerful body of opinion, not only among the workers but also among certain middle-class and upper-class elements, favors the nationalization of the industry. Socialists naturally demand this, as a stepping-stone to further experiments in the same line. But many who are not Socialists in the ordinary sense likewise consider coal-mining a case demanding special treatment, where evils have arisen that cannot be cured except by the direct intervention of the Government. We need only bear in mind that Lloyd George and his wing of the Libearl Party, while opposing Socialism, take a similar attitude with regard to the ownership of land in Great Britain.

As a rule, British coal mines are operated on a royalty basis by companies that do not own the soil or the mineral wealth beneath it. The title to the coal in situ is encumbered with a dense overgrowth of British realty and inheritance law-trusteeships, primogeniture rights, and other encum

Copyright 1926, by the Living Age Co.

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