what are perhaps the best qualities in these young Americans the will to the will to abide by one's resolutions, and the belief in an absolute purity of purpose which is the heritage of their Puritan ancestors, and which seems to us skeptics a somewhat metaphysical phantom. And, strangely enough, the hero whom this young fighter takes as a model is a European - his old professor, the Jew Max Gottlieb. This old man, with the rigid simplicity of an orthodox believer in his devotion to science, a mere child in practical affairs compared with the American business man, but inexorable as a patriarch in his judgment of everything that leads aside from the straight path of investigation, is one of the most grandiose figures in the literature of our epoch. Just as God the Father in the old Mysteries works invisibly behind the scenes, so this book seems to celebrate, not Arrowsmith, not a new America, but, in the figure of Gottlieb, the almost impersonal existence of pure spirit in and above and in spite of! - this material world. With a note of distrust in science, a strangely skeptical and wistful "happy end," the book comes to a close one of the few great artistic treatments of our century we have yet had.'

SHAKESPEARE AND GOETHE IN WARSAW

THE present theatrical season in Warsaw, writes a correspondent to the Neue Freie Presse, has been marked by a notable return to the classical repertory after several years during which contemporary writers have been in the ascendant. At almost the same time, Shakespeare and Goethe were brought back to the Polish stage, Othello being produced at the Polish Theatre and Faust at the People's Theatre. Shakespeare has been a traditional author at the former playhouse, but the war

period marked an interregnum in the production of his plays. The effect of several years' abandonment showed itself in the acting of the chief rôles: 'even so extraordinary an actor as Junosza-Stempowski, who played the title rôle, failed to achieve an unexceptionable interpretation of the Shakespearean Moor.'

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Even greater excitement attended the production of Faust, which had not been seen in Warsaw for almost fifty years. Unluckily, the management of the People's Theatre decided not to use the traditional — and, it seems, excellent cellent Polish version of Goethe's drama, and a translation expressly made for the revival was substituted for it. There ensued what this writer calls a 'Faust War' in the Warsaw press, a controversy rendered particularly lively by the fact that most of the dramatic critics of the Polish capital are writers of Austrian extraction who know German literature at first hand and with the familiarity of schoolday training.

In spite of this little unpleasantness, - which indeed probably only added to the réclame of the revival, the People's Theatre performance was accepted as, in itself, an achievement of the first order. Here too, however, the unfamiliarity of the Polish actor with the demands of the classic repertory revealed itself in certain inadequacies of interpretation. "The title rôle was played by Herr Wengrzyn, a highly popular "star" who formerly played Don Juan in the Spanish drama with conspicuous success. An excellent master of declamation, he nevertheless fell short of fulfilling all the demands of the rôle on the intellectual side. In the work of Herr Leszczynski, who played Mephistopheles, it was easy to see how little value, as a preparation for Goethean rôles, there is in an ever so perfect devil of the Molnar type.'

THE SUPPRESSION OF SWEARING

SOME romantics have lamented that the amenities of modern life have made swearing an archaic art, and that the few expressions of a blasphemous or indecent sort that survive are tame and lifeless ones. These people will be pleased and displeased to hear that swearing still flourishes with sufficient vitality in Spain to warrant the organization there of a society for its suppression. 'In many towns of Spain,' says a writer in the Manchester Guardian, 'one may see notices that persons using blasphemous language are liable to fines of a few pesetas; but the payment of these fines is never forced. . . . On Sunday last, before a large assembly of distinguished members of Madrid society, a well-known writer lectured on the subject of blasphemy the attempts made by Spain in the course of her history to repress it, the serious effects it has on the minds of the people, and the desirability that strong measures should be taken to stamp it out.'

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GOR'KII'S NEWEST ROMANCE 'MAKSIM GOR'KII, in a villa set amid palms and almond blossoms, overlooking the blue sweep of Naples Bay,' says a correspondent of the Morning Post, 'is working at an ambitious romance of contemporary scenes and manners. The book, in fact, will provide a chronicle of events from 1890 to the present day. In it will be traced the life story of a man, the Explorer,- "Izsledovatel," as the book will be entitled, so as to show the counterplay of his mentality in the two worlds of pre-war and wartime years, with the further repercussions on his mind caused by the outbreak and development of the Russian Revolution. But the effect of these

crises will not only be interpreted through their influence on the book's leading character; they will also find interpretation in a general human sense. The plot will also have some of its development in Italy, and Italians are looking forward with special eagerness to the sketches of southern life that will be included in the works. This new romance will be published by Gosisdat, the publishing house of the Soviet Republic.

'Gor'kii, like so many Russians, has a special love for Naples and the Campania felix. At the Villa Gallotti he has surrounded himself with a small group of fellow countrymen, and to all others save a few intimate friends he keeps the gates of the villa courteously but resolutely closed. In any case, his whole energies just now are concentrated on the completion of his new romance, and in the intervals of his work he prefers to wander without the interruption of admirers or the curious, mind free, by the shores of Posilipo.'

A MOZART DISCOVERY

A SYMPHONY in G major by Mozart which, though mentioned in the catalogue of his works by Koechels, has long been believed to be lost, was recently discovered at the Benedictine Abbey at Lambach in Upper Austria by the librarian in overhauling the Abbey's musical archives. The cover of the original manuscript bears the inscription, 'Dono Authoris 4 Jan. 1769,' and the symphony is supposed by musical critics to have been composed by the young Mozart in the autumn of 1769 — that is, at the age of eleven! It consists of three movements, allegro maestoso, andante, and presto, and has the simple instrumentation of the period - a number of violins, two oboes, and two horns.

The International Anarchy, 1904-1914, by G. Lowes Dickinson. London: Allen and Unwin; New York: The Century Company. $3.50.

[C. E. M. Joad in the Daily Herald]

IN reviewing C. E. Montague's novel, Rough Justice, 'Phi' remarked on the curious coincidence that the only two books about the war which will live -one a novel and the other a book of memoirs (those of Colonel House) had appeared within the same week. Had he read The International Anarchy he might have made his coincidence still more striking by adding a third, for, as a survey of the causes which led to the late war, Lowes Dickinson's book is likely to become a classic. Setting out to accomplish two different objects, it succeeds triumphantly in both. In the first place it gives us a survey of the foreign policies of the Great Powers in the thirty years that preceded the Great War. The method here is purely historical. Picking his way through a maze of treaties, dispatches, conferences, private letters, and public pronouncements, the writer presents us with a coherent plan of the innumerable strands that were woven into the complex fabric of European diplomacy.

As the narrative reaches the three weeks before war came, the interest grows, although, in the writer's view, their importance has been overstressed. Mr. Lowes Dickinson even apologizes for continuing the narrative up to the outbreak of war: 'For years the States of Europe have been drifting down the rapids of their own purposes and passions. They have now reached Niagara, and at this point we might arrest our study without any loss to the truth we are driving home.'

For it is not to be supposed that Mr. Lowes Dickinson has undertaken this onerous task from sheer disinterested pleasure in historical research. He wishes to point a moral and to teach a lesson, and the lesson is this: The war was not due to the peculiar wickedness of any man, men, country, or group of countries, but to the existence of a system. This system, which the author calls the international anarchy, is that of independent, armed States whose foreign policy is inspired by the single motive of as much self-aggrandizement as is compatible with self-security. It is the fact that each State plays for its own hand every time and all the time, the one restraining consideration being fear of other States, which

convicts all aspirations for peace and disarmament of fundamental insincerity, makes the object of a European conference the concerting of a crime that every member has an equal interest in committing, and that of armaments the rendering your enemy more afraid of you than you are of your enemy.

Mr. Lowes Dickinson shows the hypocrisy of the plea that armaments are required for defense by pointing out that if no State maintained armaments there could be no need of armaments on the part of other States to protect themselves against armaments that do not exist. State A urges that its armaments are for defense; but no other State believes it. State B does not believe it; therefore State B establishes armaments to protect itself against State A. State A must then increase its armaments to protect itself against the new menace from B. State B then – and so on ad infinitum.

I hope that young men now growing to maturity will read this book. I do not see how it is possible to deny its conclusions, or how, accepting them, to continue to support the system of international lunacy that is again already under

way.

The Sacred Tree, by Lady Murasaki. Being the Second Part of The Tale of Genji. Translated from the Japanese by Arthur Waley. London: Allen and Unwin; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $3.50.

[Times Literary Supplement)

THE second of the six volumes in which Mr. Waley has promised to give us the whole of The Tale of Genji does not fail to confirm the impression made by the first. The Lady Murasaki's work, written at the commencement of the eleventh century, is clearly one of the great pieces of fiction. The skill and grace of Mr. Waley's translation are evident enough; the prose of this second volume is a constant delight. At the request of some of his readers Mr. Waley has added an introduction, which is both illuminating and witty, dealing with fiction in Japan before Murasaki and with her methods as a novelist.

The first volume left off at Genji's second marriage with the niece of Fujitsubo. The second opens with his final parting from Rokujo, his former mistress; and the first few pages immedi

ately give us a taste of Murasaki's quality as a novelist. It is not merely their vitality and their outward freedom of expression rarities in the whole of Japanese literature that hold the reader; it is the combination of that un-Japanese freedom with a sensibility as delicate and as surprising as can easily be found in Japanese lyric poetry. Genji's sentiments are stirred and his passion is revived by the parting; from embarrassment and indifference the lovers pass to a last tender enchantment, which is followed in turn by regrets and tears. The whole scene bears a truthfulness, lifted to poetry by the exchange of simple but almost sacramental verses, that lays bare the humanity and the living romance beneath the formal texture of the narrative. Not mere literary convention, but the depth and refinement of Murasaki's art, produce a symmetry of mood and incident in which each imaginative detail appears as an intricate pattern. The moon, the starlit sky, dawn, autumn flowers, a trail of wisteria blossom, the incense of cloves and sandalwood, the evening mist, snow on the trees, 'the mournful fluting of the wind in the pines' these serve not merely to reveal the novelist's delight in nature, but to heighten the beauty and dignify the adventure she evokes in the very human and rather frustrated lives of her characters.

Odtaa, by John Masefield. London: Heinemann; New York: The Macmillan Company. $2.50.

[Morning Post]

MR. JOHN MASEFIELD has certainly hit upon new ideas for fiction in Odtaa, the scene of which is laid in a Latin-American republic called Santa Barbara, the political and economic geography thereof being described in the first chapter. It is a State still in the stage of revolutionary politics, where bullets are ballots, and the spoils go to the victors, and a Government, if it feels itself strong enough, may try to wipe out the Opposition. Reds versus Whites in Santa Barbara has resulted in favor of the former, the Clerical and Conservative Party lacking a strong man to lead it either in peace or war, and the Dictator, López Zubiaga, who is the head of the Radical and anti-Clerical Party, is preparing the annihilation of his opponents. He goes mad, and becomes more than a second Caligula, demanding to be worshiped as God Almighty'thy God López' - in the churches and cathedrals. A tremendous personality, evil through and through, who will remind the student of South American history of a real López, Dictator in Paraguay, whose maniacal wars brought about the almost complete destruction of the male population in his oppressed country!

[E. O. Hoppé in the Bookman]

He undertakes a difficult and dangerous journey, through a country where the 'Inglays with cattripes' is detested, to take news of the imprisonment of a wonderful girl, Carlotta, to her lover, Manuel, the last descendant of the Conquistador, who afterward becomes the benign ruler of Santa Barbara. His adventures as a knighterrant form the substance of an exciting narrative, which justifies the title of the story ("One Damned Thing after Another,' from the American humorist's definition of life). He fails, and the divine Carlotta is done to death, like many other notable men and women of the White Party. Carlotta is an impressive creation, and we should like to have seen more of her. That is the weak point of a story which challenges comparison with Conrad's Nostromo. López and Carlotta and Manuel, the personages in whom we are most deeply interested, are thrust into the background as soon as we have met them. Yet the novel - it is called so in a quite unnecessary subtitle - insists on being read at a sitting, and contains many powerful and poetic passages which only Mr. Masefield could have written.

BOOKS MENTIONED

The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh. Edited by Lady Raleigh. New York: The Macmillan Company. 2 vols. $7.00.

Sixty-Four, Ninety-Four! The Crime at Vanderlynden's, by R. H. Mottram. New York: The Dial Press. 1925-26. $2.50 each.

ONE must begin by recalling the first of Mr. Mottram's war trilogy, The Spanish Farm, supplying as it does in form and substance the key to what follows. In the earlier book Madeleine Vanderlynden, a French peasant, wrests from the fortunes of war the preservation of herself and her home. Strong of purpose, cool and acquisitive, she toils, behind the lines, in Paris and in Amiens, and eventually on the very brink of the trenches, compromising when necessary, but never relinquishing her primary love of her man and her land. Such an existence, superficially observed by many, has been seldom understood with such comprehension as Mr. Mottram's. Of the book Mr. Galsworthy has found 'chronicle' to be the best single description. A chronicle, then, of the French peasant in war, subject as needs be to the occasional whim of fiction.

The form and some of this substance is reproduced in the second book, Sixty-Four, NinetyFour! Here is the saga of the civilian soldiery. As the shadow of Lieutenant Geoffrey Skene, formerly an architect, we meet those sturdy Englishmen recruited from 'varsity, professions, and business who fused their strength in Kitchener's mob; we share the experiences of an officer in and out of the line, at Divisional Headquarters and on leave, each character, each episode, veritable and so 'composite' that a veteran may read into them his own identifications and recognize reality.

The fact that the Spanish Farm lay in a sector occupied by the English links this chronicle with its predecessor, affords an opportunity for a vicarious and rather doubtful friendship between Madeleine and Skene, and enables us to see with the Lieutenant's eyes further evidence of her and France's - tenacious integrity. Add to this Skene's philosophy, honest and typical, and we have in the two volumes a personal and picturesque record of these peoples at war. The raison d'être of the third volume, The Crime at Vanderlynden's, is far to seek. It is partially apparent when the author unravels the confused incident with which the chronicle begins and

brings into sharp, deliberate contrast the conflicting temperaments of the French and English allies.

A trivial act of sacrilege- its description a masterly passage is committed at the Spanish Farm, and the Vanderlyndens' prompt complaint, passing through innumerable bureaus, gathers sufficient red tape to involve one officer for the duration and eventually to force itself upon both G. H. Q.'s and the French Chamber. For this second purpose, this thrust at officialdom, Lieutenant Dormer is made the protagonist. Formerly a bank clerk, he proves a gray, automatic fellow whose introspection is oddly out of place. Chiefly he is valuable for his presence in certain distinctive pictures, delicious for their irony. But his shortcomings strain the narrative and bring to light flaws hitherto concealed; the record becomes monotonous, the course of war incoherent, the criticism of High Command supercilious.

Carping aside, veterans will read all the books and be thankful, but generally what remains in mind is the admirable, living fact of Madeleine in the midst of her English defenders.

My Apprenticeship, by Beatrice Webb. New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1926. $5.00.

BORN into the family of a great Victorian industrialist and freethinker, brought up to take her place in the London society of the seventies and eighties, Beatrice Potter turned the tables on her manifest destiny by becoming a sociological investigator, a statistician, and the wife of one of the foremost English Socialists. In this 'spiritual autobiography' she records her experiences down to the time when, in her early thirties, she met and married Sidney Webb. It is a story of resolute struggle to understand a bewildering environment and to find a personal rôle to play in it. Engaging as it is on its purely private side, and animated as it is with portraits of some of her eminent contemporaries, whom Herbert Spencer was the chief, both in worldly fame and in personal influence, Apprenticeship is primarily interesting as the story of an important intellectual era seen through the eyes of one of its leading actors.

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