have it, also, that because there is little sentiment and no pathos in plain, honest straightforward success we deny to the Scipios and the Grants their proper place in history. He predicts that Ludendorff will be the future hero of the Great War, and that the glory of Foch will grow dim. Whether or no this be true psychology, our author has more than justified his book. His studies of Scipio's campaigns are lucid and full of lessons in leadership. He shows us Scipio as a master of tactics, and makes good his claim that Africanus is one of the creators of the art of strategy. It is when he goes beyond this that he is challenging. Indeed, the challenge is boldly thrown down in the title. He tells us truly enough that the commander who is to find a place among the great of history must be more than a soldier; he must also be a statesman. And because he makes Scipio Africanus a supreme soldier and a supreme statesman, he places him above both Julius Cæsar and Napoleon.

Captain Liddell Hart tells us little of his opinion of Napoleon's statecraft, while implying that it was in the main destructive; but he gives us a more detailed comparison of the policies of Julius Cæsar and of Scipio:

Cæsar's work paved the way for the decline and fall of Roman power

-an assertion which has the flavor of a post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. Would the oligarchy which Cæsar overthrew have created the glories of Augustan Rome?

At Scipio's death Rome was the unchallenged mistress of the whole Mediterranean world.

A bold statement. It was long after Scipio's death that Roman triremes could venture into the Eastern Mediterranean, save as a fleet ready for battle. We prefer Momsen's estimate of Scipio's achievement, which

established the uncontested hegemony of Rome over the Western region of the Mediterranean and brought about that decided contact between the State systems of the East and West which gave rise to the decisive interference of Rome in the conflicts of the Alexandrine monarchies.

Captain Liddell Hart frankly admits that he has had to rely on deduction, rather than proof, in ascribing to Scipio's policy the vision of Rome's future. Here lies the weakness of his case for setting Scipio above Napoleon. The Emperor's every act and thought has been examined under the microscope by friendly and unfriendly eyes. Captain Hart's list of authorities for the life of Scipio number seven, all of them

friendly. We ought to have learned that we never get the truth about war or about generals from one side only. I have often thought that our views about Marathon would be considerably modified if we were to find a reliable account from the Persian side. Further, there is one strange omission in this book. No mention is made of the vital fact that Rome conferred on Scipio the benefit of the command of the sea. That is why Hannibal crossed the Alps. Napoleon had to struggle with the command of the sea in the hands of others. But a little excess of enthusiasm is more than pardonable in a biographer, and does not mar Captain Liddell Hart's excellent book.

A Hundred Wonderful Years, by Mrs. C. S. Peel. London: John Lane, 1926. 15s.

[Observer]

MRS. PEEL has in 243 pages of reasonable-sized type essayed a survey of the last century of English life. This is the nearest thing to a conjuring trick that any author may hope to achieve; the genii in the pint bottle is as nothing to this feat. The range of subjects touched upon is immense. Take the index at haphazard: 'Windows, Shut, Sleeping with'; 'Young Ladies, Chaperonage of'; 'Writing, Ignorance of.' Where do indexers come from? Of course, a serious work on the period in question would require many volumes for its display; but we must not be ungrateful for what we have received. Here you may read something of transport, of education, of life in palaces, and in the homes of the rich, the middle-class, and the poor; of the downfall of Mrs. Grundy, of how Mrs. Carlyle kept house, of bear baiting and heavy drinking, of Almack's and funeral customs, and of open cesspools.

It is explained how this book came to be written. Mrs. Peel knew a lady born in 1820, who became a centenarian. To her she said one day, 'What a tale you might tell of all you have seen and known; what a book you might write.' But her aged friend replied, 'I shall never write a book . . . old dogs cannot learn new tricks.' A very sensible old lady. So Mrs. Peel pondered on the subject, and saw that it was good. Her desire was 'to make a book dealing with the social and domestic life of the years which divide the Napoleonic War from the World War,' her reason being that although books dealing with the public lives of kings and queens and great people, wars, and politics are numerous, information regarding the everyday lives of the people is not so easy to obtain.'

No doubt Mrs. Peel obtained much first-hand knowledge during her conversations with the old lady; but she has naturally consulted many works throwing light on the period. She has studied the

of course, a vast array of histories, memoirs, and biographies. But why, in this year of grace, quote as an authority that long since discredited hack-writer, Robert Huish?

Mrs. Peel quotes lavishly, but we need not complain, for the extracts are well chosen, and some of them supply a touch of light comedy. I am never tired of hearing how Queen Victoria proposed to her Albert, because, she said, 'he would never have presumed to take such a liberty with the Queen of England.' I also like to read again that the Prince Consort set himself out to reorganize the royal household, and did so well and true. Mrs. Peel tells a very human story: 'Even at Investitures all does not go as it should. The Order bestowed upon a certain lady refused to slip on to its appointed hook. The procession waited. Still, Order and hook refused to unite. The King appeared embarrassed; the lady no less so. At last, "May I fasten it myself, Your Majesty?" murmured the lady. "Thank you very much," whispered the King; and again the procession moved onwards.' Can the lady in the case have been Mrs. Peel herself, who was very properly decorated for her war services?

The River Flows, by F. L. Lucas. London: The Hogarth Press, 1926. 78. 6d.

[Manchester Guardian]

THIS brief novel has many merits, and not the least of them is its peculiar sincerity. David Halliday is presented to us as a young man of highly sophisticated intelligence but of ingenuous, almost sentimental character. In friendship it is his habit to give more than he receives. His canine devotions must have been a little tiresome. Everything is slightly disappointing; and his friends are not kind to him, and he has no relations but an uncle, and he lacks the confidence and the private means necessary for an early marriage. Such a person might well exasperate readers disinclined to sympathize with the stoical pessimism of clever, inexperienced youth. Nevertheless, as one studies David's diary-for the novel is told in diary form one begins to like as well as to pity this polite and melancholy hero. Strange event! Hero becomes villain. Without losing a tittle of his native honesty and benevolence, David by misadventure falls into a situation where his craving to be loved destroys his candor, his dignity, and perhaps his honor.

The skill of the author is shown by his success in persuading us without elaborate apologetics or emotional appeals that David acted consistently and meant well, though to the outside world, acquainted with the bare facts, he must seem a scoundrel whose later conduct so flatly contradicts his earlier reputation as to suggest demoniac possession. This is no small achievement, and great clarity of mind and imagination were needed. The style, too, has a frigid charm. Much may be expected from Mr. Lucas if he does not sacrifice vigor to delicacy of expression.

Winnie-the-Pooh, by A. A. Milne. London: Methuen and Company; New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1926. $2.00.

[Morning Post]

MR. MILNE, as we know from his former books, understands the mentality of small children, and they will all be glad to meet Christopher Robin and his Teddy Bear once more and visit the houses of their friends. Nobody, not even Robin, knows why the Bear is called Winnie-the-Pooh (Pooh for short), but it somehow seems to fit in with what a very young philosopher called the 'thinginess of things.' Robin's other companions

- Piglet, Owl, the old gray donkey Ee-yore, Kanga and Roo, Rabbit, and the smaller fry are pleasant acquaintances, and their country, of which a panorama is given just inside either cover, is such as to provide adventures for the adventurers. Mr. Shepard's little drawings hit off a character in two or three strokes - this Pooh is a most friendly and comical creature, especially when he gets stuck in Robert's hole or finds his head fixed in a honey pot. Pooh's carols are curiously like the inventions of Lewis Carroll, as 'Lines written by a Bear of very little Brain':

On Monday when the sun is hot

I wonder to myself a lot:

'Now is it true or is it not,

That what is which and which is what?'

And so on for other days in the week. The author and Miss Beatrix Potter know how to tell a story in what is called 'real talk' by a six-year-old critic.

Lord Raingo, by Arnold Bennett. London: Cassell's, 1926. 78. 6d.

[Morning Post]

WITH all his elaborate detachment, and with much of his customary skill, Mr. Arnold Bennett has delineated a phase of the Great War, as it affected a man of middle age, wealthy, shrewd,

and ambitious, and for the rest entirely commonplace, There are such persons; indeed, during the war they seemed to abound; and such as they were and are Mr. Bennett depicts, with impartial accuracy, in the portly figure of Lord Raingo. That highly provincial millionaire became head of a Ministry, and incidentally secured a peerage at the same time.

Then Mr. Bennett must needs essay the dangerous enterprise of portraying the politicians of that date, which is specified. It is dangerous for the obvious reason that, as everyone knows who composed His Majesty's Government at that time, Mr. Bennett's readers cannot but endeavor to identify the several members of the Cabinet, with, perhaps, unfortunate results. Mr. Bennett has here willfully created a dilemma. Either he is drawing from life, merely using fictitious names as a matter of convention, or his picture is worthless, except as an exhibition of literary art. But that is Mr. Bennett's affair. But he is incurring another hazard, inasmuch as it is nearly impossible that a novelist should succeed in interesting his readers in either politicians or politics. Probably Disraeli is the only novelist who has achieved success in that endeavor, and Disraeli wrote at a period when the sense of public duty was paramount among the rulers of England and when the demagogue was held in check by the statesman.

There is a further point to be considered. Assuming that Mr. Bennett seriously intends his readers to accept his account of the War Cabinet as essentially true, the reader has still to ask to what extent it really is true. And to that question there can be no certain answer. These people may have been better, or quite possibly even worse, than Mr. Bennett indicates. But time alone will enable the student to judge impartially of that confused and desperate epoch.

In the meantime, Mr. Bennett's work remains as at least an admirable study of chicanery alike in private and in public life in the year 1918, and as a very curious example of what a trained

observer of men and of affairs thought of it. The lesser personages in the story, such as Lord Raingo's son the escaped prisoner, Mr. Eric Trumbull, Mrs. Blacklow, Mr. Swetnam, and the country doctor, are sketched with the brilliant precision which is Mr. Bennett's own.

The Field of Mustard, by A. E. Coppard. London: Jonathan Cape, 1926. 78. 6d.

[T. P.'s and Cassell's Weekly]

THERE is something of de Maupassant in many of Mr. Coppard's new stories, notably in the tale of the relations of lover and mistress called 'Fifty Pounds.' Eulalia Burnes, in spite of the protests of her lover, Repton, has determined to lighten his monetary burdens by seeking work in Glasgow, away from him. Shortly before she goes she comes into a small legacy, and, knowing Repton is too proud to accept money from her, she sends him fifty pounds anonymously, expecting that he will, after such a windfall, not hear of her departure. But - and here is the irony of it he lets her go without breathing a word! Mr. Coppard is too well known as a writer of short stories for this volume to need recommendation.

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Wedlock, by Jacob Wassermann. Translated by Ludwig Lewisohn. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926. $2.50.

GERMAN novels except those of Schnitzler are not so much an acquired as a peculiar taste. The success of Thomas Mann, Werfel, and Wassermann in this country shows that we have a public to which the enormous detail of Teutonic fiction appeals. In his new book Jacob Wassermann shows us the insufficiency of modern marriage through the activities of a great divorce lawyer. The lengthy confessions of the various characters make us wonder whether Freud got his idea from books or whether the writers followed the psychologist's lead. Probably it is a combination of the two, for psychological 'problems' present the same fascination to German authors that bedrooms do to French. We cannot, however, join a person called Lewellyn Jones and hail Wassermann's 'pictures' — whatever they may be as 'sharper than those of Tolstoi, and as deep as those of Dostoevskii.' The similarity between the mad wisdom of the Russians and the painstaking labor of the Germans is far to seek. Each to his own taste, and to devotees of German fiction and to matrimonial skepticsWedlock.

Issues of European Statesmanship, by B. G. De Montgomery. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1926. $3.50.

THIS book falls naturally into two parts. The first and duller chapters discuss political philosophy and attempt to decide what are the justifiable limits of State interference in production and industrial activity. Whatever may hold true in actual practice, the theories for and against Socialism have been so thoroughly thrashed out already that we are as little interested in a gentle statement of the case against a vague form of Socialism which the author never satisfactorily defines as we are in his own idea of how affairs should be managed. The closing chapters are as arbitrary as the opening ones, but here arbitrariness is more to the point. When Mr. De Montgomery announces that the Bolsheviki are pursuing Peter's policy of forcing Europe under the Russian yoke, we are skeptical but interested. When he says that Socialism -a large word, surely necessarily implies the complete abolition of private property, we yawn and turn the

page. The author is most at home on the subject of Locarno and the League, and his chapters on these topics are the most interesting and useful parts of the book. Issues of European Statesmanship can be recommended as soothing reading to all who believe that there is still hope for the world in some form of Wilson idealism.

Power, by Lion Feuchtwanger. Translated by Edwin and Willa Muir. New York: The Viking Press, 1926. $2.50.

LION FEUCHTWANGER has written a book even longer and more impressive than his own name. Power describes the rise and fall of one Josef Süss Oppenheimer, an eighteenth-century Jew who attained virtually complete control over the duchy of Swabia. This man grabbed the coattails of a dashing impoverished nobleman, Karl Alexander, who by a lucky chance skyrocketed up in the world, becoming the constitutional ruler of a province of the Holy Roman Empire. Even before this stroke of fortune Süss had made himself indispensable to his patron, and when responsibilities fell heavily on Karl Alexander's shoulders he was only too glad to pass them over to his Court Jew. Although Süss always remained true to his race, he was overtaken by the fatality that destroys all Jews who cast in their lot with Gentiles. He bled the country white, but pandered so ruthlessly to the Duke's depraved tastes that he suddenly found his own life wrecked. The last third of the book is devoted to the Jew's revenge, and here he becomes a different person-mystical, proud, and, in the end, spiritual.

Power is an epic, not only of an historical period, but of the Jewish people. In the character of Süss we find most of the qualities of that extraordinary race, and in his friends — rabbis, cabalists, and financiers some of these qualities are personified in a heightened form. Nor is the Gentile element ignored. The final catastrophe hinges on the rivalry between the converted Catholic Duke and his Protestant subjects. The book is divided into five sections, each one of which is composed of some twenty pictures or scenes. The result is that the reader's attention is never strained by the interminably boring detail and the even more insufferable psychology that ruin most German fiction for the average nervous American. The admirable translation brings out

all the varieties of the author's style, which is often poetic, usually straightforward, and always readable. Here is a grand book,— no milk for babes, to be sure, and we commend it highly.

Crewe Train, by Rose Macaulay. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926. $2.00.

Crewe Train, by this usually entertaining author, may be said never to arrive at its destination. It simply does n't 'get there,' and this in spite of the fact that the reader finds much entertainment on his journey. The story is a whimsical and incredible one, describing the transplanting, from the wilds of Andorra to the tameness of conventional England, of a semibarbarian orphan girl who had an English parson for a father and a Spanish peasant for a stepmother. The account of the efforts at civilizing the very raw material presented to her English relatives is not without humor, but it is difficult to conceive of the young publisher, Arnold Chapel, falling in love with Denham - the name given to the barbarian out of compliment to her mother's favorite Buckinghamshire village. Her uncouth ways and primitive habits are not represented as being sufficiently alluring to enslave anybody, — certainly not the reader, — although it may be urged in extenuation that the novel, with its preposterous happenings, is a satire and not a transcript of life. All the same, Crewe Train does not arrive.

The best thing in the book is the picture of Aunt Evelyn, a character presented with all Miss Macaulay's humor and insight. Although a subordinate figure, she makes the book worth reading. The dedication to "The Philistines, the Barbarians, and those who do not care to take any trouble,' is fairly inclusive, and yet there are those who, while accepting one of the labels, cannot quite accept the book without an unexpected sense of disappointment.

Civilization or Civilizations, by E. H. Goddard and P. A. Gibbons. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926. $2.50.

In their introductory chapter the authors say, "To elaborate and expound, clearly and shortly, and in our own way, this great idea of Spengler, is the ambition of this book. . . . Greatly as we are indebted to Spengler for the main idea, it is not always possible to accept his interpretations.' It is therefore rather surprising to read in the concluding chapter that 'we have to put away preconceived ideas and let the statement of fact

work its effect without conscious interference on our part.' In these two irreconcilable statements lies the disappointment of this ambitious piece of work. No one could state a theory as vast and as vague as Spengler's without allowing personal prejudice to creep in. Furthermore, what place has the following reflection in the Spenglerian philosophy of history? 'Ideals have not yet disappeared in England, but one has to look far to find them in the France of Poincaré, the Germany of Stinnes, and the Italy of Mussolini.' Provincialisms of this type are to be expected from the British, but the combined efforts of Messrs. Goddard and Gibbons should surely be able to give us better English than, 'There were not to be found far horizons among the Greeks.'

We pick on these rather petty flaws because it is a real shame that authors with so worthy a purpose should not have acquitted themselves better. Wise as they were in not attempting to duplicate the style of the original, they could not shake off their master's fetters quite enough to give the lucid exposition of Spenglerismus that many of us want. There is no doubt, however, that they have done a thorough piece of work, and their essay is based partly on the second volume of the Untergang des Abendlandes, which has not yet appeared in English. The rabid Spenglerite will not care much for Civilization or Civilizations, but the industrious reader with not much time on his hands can here find most of the theories of the original work adequately expounded.

Transition, by Edwin Muir. New York: The Viking Press, 1926. $2.00.

WHAT a relief Mr. Muir's seriousness is after the ignorant flippancy of most essayists and critics, both English and American. Sympathetic and understanding, he always pitches his own key to that of his subject. His critique of Joyce, for instance, is the best thing we have ever read on that much-mooted man; it is appreciative, enthusiastic, level-headed. Aldous Huxley fares less well, but even the warmest admirer of Crome Yellow or Those Barren Leaves cannot fail to enjoy what Mr. Muir has to say. D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Edith Sitwell are acquired tastes, but Mr. Muir has taken the trouble to study these queer fish and to indicate to the reader in decent English what they are up to. Transition is an excellent handbook to some important phases of modern literature, and maintains the highest standards of criticism throughout.