He has created a world, and this achievement places him at once among important imaginative writers. The implications of that useful critical phrase are that the writer's imagination has left so vivid an impress on all he describes that his reader finds it easy to adopt temporarily the same way of feeling and judging, and is aware of an inner emotional consistency, not necessarily logical, in the author's whole response to experience. It may be a bubble world, but it holds together. There is an indefinable congruity between the author's moral values, his sense of beauty, his sense of humor. The reader feels that it is inevitable that the man who sees human nature in that particular way should also see nature and inanimate objects as he does, should grieve or rage over a particular event, or sing a Nunc dimittis on such and such occasions. This is the difference between a creatively imaginative work and a work which is the product of intelligence. Intelligence is a modest selective faculty – it borrows and envies 'this man's skill and that man's scope.' It can achieve wonders, but it cannot do one thing: it cannot create that unity of apprehension which is the life breath of a work of art.

It was not the exploitation of tropic forests or tropic seas which made Conrad a remarkable novelist, but this power of thus creating a world dyed through and through with his own imagination; his Soho was as much part of it as the Amazon. Of his contemporaries only Meredith, Henry James, and Hardy have done the same; they too have blown great comprehensive, iridescent bubbles, in which the human beings they describe, though they have, of course, a recognizable resemblance to reality, only attain full significance in the world peculiar to them.

The Dean of Canterbury, preaching in the Cathedral on the Sunday after

Conrad died, declared that Conrad just before his death was the greatest writer of English prose.

THE EPICENE EPHEBE

THE British Isles are not gladdened day after day by newspaper colyumists like F. P. A., Don Marquis, or the lamented B. L. T. Manchester, however, is blessed with a perfectly satisfactory substitute in 'Lucio,' who contributes to the Guardian gay satirical verses with perfect good-nature and almost the regularity of one of our own 'colyum-conductors.' He entitles his latest effusion "The Fallen Highbrow' - himself, if you please – and explains his lines as being 'written in reply to a most unfortunate request - there being no dictionary available - for a translation of the following passage from a notice of Romeo and Juliet in one of the weekly reviews: "Still he (Romeo) was a great improvement on the epicene ephebe who is usually served up to us.'

Critics will write that way sometimes. No one can stop them and still fewer can understand them. Small blame to 'Lucio' if he too fails. Consider the alarming array of the baffled journalist's intellectual attain

In fact, I'll talk on anything—the totem rites of savages,

The incidence of measles, or statistics of inebriation's horrid pitfalls and its dreadful urban

ravages

But, oh! You've got me guessing with an epicene ephebe!

ANCIENT TOMBS IN OUTER MONGOLIA

SOVIET newspapers carry an account of the archæological discoveries made in Outer Mongolia, in the Kentei district to the northeast of Urga. In March an expedition led by the archæologist, Colonel Koltzoff, discovered three groups of ancient burial mounds. Here they unearthed the remains of Chinese princes or perhaps of emperors.

The mounds were placed in rectangles marked off by a round earth rampart and large boulders. The I tombs beneath were strong wooden structures with double or even triple ceilings. The sarcophagi were arranged in a north to south line, and subterranean passages with twisted columns draped in silk branched from the central chambers. The walls were adorned with embroideries of men and animals, and among the treasures in the mounds were beautiful carpets in whose designs were woven mammoths, stags, lynxes, and mythological animals. There were many embroideries, bronze statuettes, long plaits of black hair sheafed in silken cases, semiprecious stones and wooden figures. The silks are embroidered with ancient Chinese characters, many of which have so far proved undecipherable.

THE SAD FATE OF THE 'ALMANACH
DE GOTHA'

WHEN the Almanach de Gotha was founded 161 years ago, the profession of royalty was flourishing and popular. People outside the trade admired its

But things are no longer what they were it is probably the most popular of all truisms since the war. The simultaneous dethroning of the kings and princes and dukes that reigned in Germany almost threw the famous Almanach out of business. But the publishing house of Perthes have since made up their minds to keep royalty going as long as is humanly possible. They have partly made up for Europe's shortcomings by turning to Asia and Africa, and are still able to show a fair sprinkling of crowns about the globe.

Royalty which has abdicated is still included, but the sad word Abdiqué appears after the title, or perhaps an heir changes this simple formula to the more elaborate Exclu par son père de la succession au trône. The Japanese Royal House was properly recognized for the first time in the 1922 Almanach after a feud of nearly half a century because the snobbish publishers insisted on relegating the ruler of the greatest Asiatic Power to the second section of their Almanach, which is devoted not to royalty but to high officials and statistics. The bitterness felt by the Japanese—justly proud of their national history and achievements and invariably sensitive on the question of race - is not hard to understand. Other rulers who were similarly treated in the old days were the former Emperors of Korea and China, the late King Theebaw of Burma, the former Queen of Madagascar, the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the King of Siam. For some reason best known to publishers of the Almanach, the Turkish Sultan has long had a place among the European royal houses. The Mikado's family thus has the distinction of having won a victory

over a publishing house which did not hesitate to stand up to Napoleon. After the conqueror had wiped out of existence most of the petty sovereigns in the Holy Roman Empire, the editors of the Almanach calmly ignored his handiwork and retained the names of the deposed rulers as if they were still secure upon their thrones. Napoleon, in a fury, had the entire issue confiscated by the police and a new edition brought out; but the publishers, the moment it was safe to do so, repudiated all responsibility for the new edition.

It is discouraging to note that the present addresses of some of the exroyalties are in very second-rate suburban neighborhoods- very likely the best they can afford. Divorces sprinkle the pages with brutal frequency, royal couples whom crowns or the prospect thereof once held together having apparently decided that if there is to be no crown there is no particular use in staying married. Where the change in rank has not led to divorce, it has very often led to the convent or the monastery.

KARL MARX, THE UNCO' GUID Ir is a scandalous fact which all those yearning and earnest souls who style themselves 'advanced' do their best to hush up that the patron saint of Bolshevism, Karl Marx, adored his wife through twenty years of married life. Like most blots on the 'scutcheon, this flaw in the Communist hero's life keeps popping out at embarrassing moments and three years ago in Moscow was the means of covering the redoubtable Madame Kollontai with dire confusion. It is

not ordinarily easy to cover Madame Kollontai with confusion — nor was it safe either, in the days when Dzerzhinskii's Cheka cohorts were in active and undisguised operation.

The incident, which occurred at a very 'advanced' meeting in Moscow, is narrated by E. K. Kuskova, writing in the Russian refugee organ Dni, published in Berlin - whose readers, being unable to poke bayonets through the Bolsheviki, as they would like to, have to content themselves with poking fun at them. Kollontai was expounding her theories of Communist morals.

'Comrades,' she began, 'the hypocritical bourgeoisie often talk about what they call eternal or at least very protracted-love. For instance, they tell how John Stuart Mill loved a certain woman twenty years until he finally married her. . . . These are bourgeois tales. . . .

'And how about Marx, then, who loved his wife all the twenty years he lived with her?' somebody interrupted in the plaintive tone of one who feels himself deeply aggrieved.

Kollontai showed great irritation and replied sharply: 'Comrades, you must not interrupt. What were you shouting, comrade?'

'Well, I was shouting! How do you account for the fact that Marx loved his wife all his life long?'

Kuskova looked at his neighbor, who was shaking with laughter and whispering: 'Fine! He got her fine!' Others also laughed and whispered. The satellites of Kollontai rose threateningly from their seats upon the platform. The chairman of the meeting requested silence. The deplorable affection existing between Marx and his wife remained without official explanation.

Across the Sahara by Motor Car: From Touggourt to Timbuctoo. By G. M. Haardt and Louis Audouin-Dubreuil. With an Introduction by André Citroën and Illustrations by Bernard Boutet de Monvel. Translated from the French by E. E. Fournier d'Albe. London: Fisher Unwin, 1924. 12s. 6d.

[Times Literary Supplement]

THE authors of this book were the leaders of the expedition that crossed the Sahara from Tugurt to Timbuktu and back again in the winter of 1922–23. The point of their achievement lies in its having been accomplished by caterpillar car and in such a way as to make the traverse of the desert henceforward no more than a matter of organization. They took five light cars of ten horsepower - each built to carry three personssome 2000 miles in twenty days, and brought them all to Timbuktu in such condition that they were able to make a return journey that was not included in the original programme- -a a journey that was completed with the same mastery over the conditions as the first. They have sent the camel to join the Long Serpent; and the change they have brought about is more momentous, for the ship of the desert was more limited in scope than the ship with sails.

The war spurred the French to attempt what they have now achieved, and it was the development of mechanical traction during the war that made the feat possible. The war had brought home to them how much they depended on the resources of Equatorial Africa- not only in men, but in supplies of all sorts, from the oil of Senegal to the rubber of Guinea and the Congo. It had proved, too, that their colonial wealth could not be realized in time of need without the establishment of rapid, safe, and permanent communications between their various possessions in Africa. M. Citroën, the 'originator' of the car, contributes an introduction in which he describes its features and the elaborate and detailed preparations that he made to eliminate the risk of the expedition failing. The cars were equipped with 'an endless rubber band, a sort of moving rail, supple and resistant, which unrolls under the vehicle.' It is significant of sound workmanship that we hear no more of the rubber band except this further description:

'While the pneumatic tire, even when doubled, digs into the sand without gripping it, and necessitates not only the employment of the shovel and the lever, but even mules and camels in difficult places, the caterpillar begins by heaping it up and planing it. And while it rolls

over it easily without jerk or effort, it pushes it behind in progressing over the surface. One may almost say that it makes its own road by passing over it. Thanks to its suppleness, the caterpillar behaves somewhat as does the wide soft foot of the dromedary, the most beautiful instrument adapted by nature herself to the friable and powdery soil of the dumes.'

The car was required to deal with other surfaces; we read of a car while on a steep slope being hurled on to a block of stones. The impact broke a driving pulley, but this and one similar accident - which kept the mechanics at repairs for several hours were the only approach to a breakdown on the double journey. How smoothly and in what regular order the cars contrive to proceed may be gathered from the 'consternation' with which the pilot one night noticed 'an anomaly in the convoy.' The last car was exposing not its headlights but its red rear light and that was diminishing! What could be the explanation? It was simple enough: the tired driver had gone to sleep at the wheel and the caterpillar had made for the north.

M. Citroën has every justification for describing the traverse as a 'triumph of French industry,' and he might have added that there was a triumph of French method in the clear-headed preliminary thinking which removed as far as possible all obstacles from the path of the maIchines. The two authors seem to have shared equally the duties and responsibilities of command. M. Haardt, the general manager of the Citroën factories, may be regarded as the engineer, and M. Audouin-Dubreuil as the navigator he was a cavalry officer who, besides having experience of aviation, had made previous expeditions into the desert by motorcar. Just as the triumph was typically French, so is the ceremonial courtliness with which it is described. Where in a corresponding English book there would be references to past administrative muddles, in this there is nothing but praise for the work of France and her officials. The precautions taken were so effective that the party was never in imminent danger, but the authors describe with imagination the risks to which as desert travelers they exposed themselves. The most awe-inspiring is thirst:

'It is a great shock to see the corpse of a person dead from thirst. It is a dried mummy. The skin has the color and consistency of leather, and is frequently covered with ulcers as if the body, burned by an inner fire, had in its agony opened new mouths to tell of its sufferings and ask for drink.'

The party had to rely on the water taken with it for the 800 miles of 'the Tanesrouft or Land of Thirst'; on either side of this forbidding district there were supporting columns based on wells. Then there are marauders who slip silently through the night on their tireless camels. To cross camel tracks was to redouble vigilance. Another danger was from the sandstorm. A danger peculiar to the enterprise rather than to the desert was being misled by local guides. The guides knew the country and were absolutely loyal, but they calculated by camel-time, not by distance, and the pace of the cars threw them out. But all difficulties were foreseen and overcome with so much to spare that at all halting-places of consequence the explorers were able yet further to consider the prestige of France by stepping from the car clean-shaven and pointdevice.

The Government of France, by Joseph Barthélemy. Authorized translation by J. Bayard Morris (Scholar of Queen's College, Oxford). London: Allen & Unwin, 1924. 68.

[New Statesman]

THERE are worse books, and there are also better books, than this on the French political system. M. Barthélemy gives us a pretty concise and clear account of the main branches of his subject. But he colors it a good deal with his own opinions, which are decidedly conservative. He believes that 'it may be said without irony of the French system of government that it is the envy of Europe.' He admits, indeed, that there are defects to be remedied; but a great many of his readers will demur to the reforms that he advocates or rejects. He has some doubts about the advisability of making the Senate a court of criminal jurisdiction, but he is satisfied with it as a political body, reactionary and obstructive though it is. He thinks, like M. Millerand, that the President of the Republic could render still greater service to the country than he now does if he had greater authority. He defends the centralizing tendencies of French administration, for he is all of a tremble lest local autonomy should degenerate into anarchy. He also defends secret diplomacy, and deprecates 'wild talk' about the necessity of the will of the people prevailing in international politics. The socalled people whose will is in question,' he observes, 'has become nothing more than the fiercest and rowdiest part of the nation.' Is not that also 'wild talk'?

The book, it should be said, was originally published in Paris in 1919, but M. Barthélemy has supplied the translator with new matter in

order to bring it up to date. There are, however, still one or two passages which had better have been excised as this, for example: 'We are still far from knowing all the clauses in the treaties by which the Bolsheviki . . . have delivered Russia into the hands of Germany. Against the network of secret treaties which threatens to envelop her, France must be able to defend herself if necessary by other secret treaties.'

Is It Good English? by John o' London. London: Newnes, 1924. 28.

as a

[Observer]

'JOHN O' LONDON' is a most kindly, as well most entertaining, counselor upon the niceties of language, and his new book reasons out, patiently and luminously, a number of the In his commonest riddles of correct usage. general outlook the author is against what he calls the 'grammaniac,' and holds that the standards of clearness and effect will always triumph over that of mechanical rule. He shows why the adherents of the latter are wrong in their objection to "The tumult and the shouting dies, because of the superior magnetism and emphasis of the singular verb,' and his exposition of several other divagations is equally commendable, He is a little too tender, perhaps, to the split infinitive, holding that this construction may be adınitted when the alternative is ambiguity on artificiality. But is this ever the case? John o London' sanctions on this ground the sentence 'With us outside the Treaty, we must expect the Commission to at least neglect our interests. But is it not better to say: "We cannot expect the Commission to bear our interests fully in mind' 'Alright' is stigmatized as 'the most fusty invalidish, picture-postcard misconcoction tha has aspired to a place in the language.' In his warfare against such perversions and against 'phenomenal' one may wish all power to 'John o' London's' elbow.