Evening Star Newspaper, July 24, 1937, Page 16

T POETESS TURNS PHILOSOPHER Edna St. Vincent Millay Produces Social Conscience in Latest Book of Poems—Trotsky Publishes a Book on Stalin, Calling Him Liar, Murderer, Thief and Failure. By Jllary Carter Roberts. | International) is going to get him yet. | vorce, of the perennial paradox of CONVERSATION AT MIDNIGHT. By Edna St. Vincent Millay. New | by his q York: Harper & Bros. HIS new book of Miss Millay's, “Conversation at Midnight, the complete sequence is | temptuous of | zenith. poems, part of which was pub- | minded that an hour may come when | when there is no awareness of time lished under the same title in Har- | per’s magazine some months ago reviewer in her magazine The | columns | ume, commented on the work at the time, | saying something to the effect that America's lov poet had seemed turn philosopher, and, un that the change was a loss ecessarily, o Stalin and And, in-|s deed, the magazine selection was very | fication having been to cover their |sires are often pitifully foolish ones, And of a the pres the salutations visited upon 1t leader of the Communists uondam friend and brother, one imagines that this will be most annoying. For it is easy to be con- while the sun is in the But nobody likes to be re- shadows grow considerably longer. This is the gist of the present vol- In greater detail. it is a pub- lication of certain documents, records and speeches designed to show how associates have con- falsified the history of Rus- since 1923, the aim of their falsi- sistent!, #olid gong. For the benefit of those | own betraval of Lenin's revolutionary who read it and shared the review- | plans by the creating of a straw vil er's opinion it must, be sa the book-length “Conversation improvement over the samples fered in the magazine; it some fine passages and some flights out of the gritty realm of problems and philosophies whic recognizable as poe form. For the most pa Miss Millay deals in distinctly pr thinking, and in many passages clothes it in se, too—noble exalted prose, to be sure just the same. Prose, not Once, more, unnecessarily viewer can say only that this i Miss Millay is not, of cour that of- remembers, ness. day for “I arise thee” rather more his expo: from dreams lovi y than ion of hu And the reason is that the lyric is better work. One can pred something of the same kind of mem ory for Miss Millay in years to come. of for Yet her present work is by far the | Can it be that best reading on the social theme which the reviewer has experienced in & long time, and the reason for that unquestionably is that a writer | will always do & better job at writ- ing than one who merely writes Social reformers and generally are persons write, salthough they may write a| very great deal. But M Millay is a | writer. ! who merely Plunging into her social thinking, | Some 10 yvears, and, consequently, his dialogue. She assembles a group nf ‘ bee people of various viewpoints on the | Ing social scene but, with one exception, | S ® common standard of culture and ed- | posed to lose ucation. Thus she gives us a suc- | TXOLSkY's cour she employs the old, old device of cessful stock broker paintings and breeds horses, a gifted painter for & satisfying religious who collects longs T a writer of successful short stories who | 1 sorrows to find them guilty. has no illusions about what he does. & Roman Catholic priest who pla Bach, a wealthy Italian. who engages in no occur has an “aristocratic and mind” and is & eral and an a nostic” and a young Yale graduate | '€ COnirast between the is an | were to be brought contains | be drawn away e But Shelley is remembered to- | 110t wrongs and | b in—Tr m charges sational e attention of the people would irely from the real ical events. The set- proceeded by that, in the days of the revolution, Trotsky that t course of pol Lenin were diametically opposed; | e corolla , of cot Ty se, would be that out Lenin’s aims be gotten rid of. Al he indignant Leon David- n the present volume. He and worked in harmony and mutual respect. The aim of the Stalinists not to follow Lenin's plans, but to destroy and Trotsky is recog- lacable (they are very f this destruction. Hence sky has to be framed. It simple, or as complicated, as that. ses that, on the | egations (and Com- rade Davidovich supports them pretty well) she was moved to a certain ad- miration for the object of his accusa- tions—for Stalin, that is fine Georgia gen- tleman has a sense of humor? Is it not humorous that he should rid him- self of the man whose presence is a eminder of own betrayal of Len- inism by charging that same man with being the betrayer? It is not C interpreters | Onlv effective; it is the stroke of an end of Stalin's in- For Trotsky, of c 1 out of Russia for 8 a scapegoat might have nsidered at an end. But, hav- posed of his enemy in person, has been, by no means, dis- e useful legend of er-revolutionary pur- take the place of the man To thoroughbreg | Trotsky he has created the blanket | eri e of “Trotskyism,” and whenever any of his comrades give him trouble It i 50 One is an an opera bouffe, carried out on e that this Stalin ly clever fellow. his tactics drive Leon Da- to the point of frenz two men whom hard times have driven into | G231 ORIy make one mourn that Ana- &n advertisting agency. The exception noted above is the Communist poet whose credo is hatred of all culture and education as he can identify with the capitalist system of | 2Chieved respectaby v i Taiaheet it s about such | IOW Baving laid the gnost of s Where Mr. Lamson Worked on the a gathering s one might fnq i | YOUNE Sense of inferiority in tre | Stanford University Press. He spent any prosperous home where the hoss | (TSt social scale, being now indeed | 13 months after the conviction as an has a taste ‘or honest human Al | ok h.‘mgju ity, & contempt for pretense and |0 TYOtsky's name love of intellectual examination of | the times. These people discuss religion, the | ©TR€RCe and tun | tole | Consider s France died before he saw it n, if you will, after a spent in dynamiting umors, now having and position, consider him plagued the gadfly of the memory of ali the promises he made in order to help himself to that g that gadfly into corTuption of manners which we are ;ge -:N‘:r:w u‘(:apsln km de[slnmuox; currently undergoing in the name of mr F.V‘SX 'f’L“‘QS- -(fi(mz it _one o scientific progress, the corruption of | f1S Cli€f instruments of tyranny! politics, the failure of the human BDIrit in individuals, the threat of war, | ‘women and love, communism, disillu- | (‘0]2‘15”‘“[ ;12 ik They bring their various view- | [NStance of th sion. pointe duly to bear and the book closes Wwith a furious exchange between the stockbroker and the Communist--as an indication, one s seems to be ahead for the wr Miss Millay, one feels. puts her own convictions into the mouth of Ricardn, the Italian-American. And he the complete apostle of serene dispas- sionate disillusion. The work is divided among variou: poetic forms. There are sonnets and lyrics, there is free verse. T of the volume is high, 1t is sententious phrases, some poems are truly noble and 8t least two exquisite ly uttered by Ricardo and one of t &ppertains 1o women and one liness, Yet at times one detec curious technical uncertainty t casionally overtakes Miss ) finds her committ odd perticularly in the way These instances, however If the social problem car interesting to any one but the specialist, it will be by rendc in human terms, and M has accomplished b dialogue of rhymes. are few thinking is men and women 15 not hap which we ¢ says, “A nference ). CAUSE Us ar have bro cestors some cent covery of Ar THE STALIN SCHOOL OF FICATION. By Leo Pioneer Pu while comrade, Stalin, dull moments as poss some extremely shar) tn this volume and hurls tt & neat dexterity straight at Stali head. Employing sometimes an en- gaging straightforwardness of & most ornate and serpentine verbal embroidery, the venerable Davidovich characterizes the supreme head of the Boviets as a murderer, a liar, a thief, @ traitor and a corrupter of the people. And then, having gotten those trifles | | B guage, and making use at others of | b And then consider Trotsky, incon- ently incorruptible, enragingly ng every ny as an occa- for eping before oppor- friends. t- | roned in this Trotsky hurls veral thousand be made |, And the received dignity of its perfect re- i and her ed about home of i to the when m, 1 { are grandmother who, aded upon he brother, ops being nor- alarming of the sudden r things, and adopting a protective atti- toward hin 1volves herself in a imber of ne 1gic complications little story of childish | an adult world stness of the divorce, d does not concern herself ng accomplished when the 00k opens. The parents, however, are own to be entirely vapid and char- acterless, so that one cannot escape wondering how it came about that they had been able to produce and rear so strong and intelligent a child as young Julia. That seems a bit curious. How- off his pugnacious chest, the old gen- | ever, if you accept the people as the tleman gayly throws in the ultimate, | author presents them, and there is no the unforgivable insuit: Stalin, he says, ¥ not only an unmitigated so- and-so, but he is a failure, too. He 48 mot going to get away with it. Nemesis (in the form of the Fourth ) real reason why you cannot do so, the book becomes a moving thing. Though of minor scope, it provides food for seriolif musing in {ts presentation, through the modern instance of di- h is as | honest childish courtesy ruled and thwarted by the desperately selfish, { comically shortsighted desires of | adults. It could make one ask oneself the passing question, “Is life long | enough for any purpose?” For it would seem to be only in childhood, and mortality, that there is room for generosity and tolerance. The adult, | seeing the shadows grow long, seraps these commodities with greater haste ; than beauty and turns all his energies | Into snatching his desires while yet he can. | But, says Mrs. Delafield, these de- and in the panic to realize them the | humankind does not scruple to injure | the beings which it has created, its! own young. “And Time which gave| | doth now the gift confound.” Shake- speare, of course, said it best, but it | will always bear restating. It is put here in terms of simplicity that are| well worth a new examination. WORLD REVOLUTION, 1917-1936. | By C. L. R. James. New York: | Pioneer Publishers. "T"HIS book begins at about the point | where “The Stalin School of | Falsification” (reviewed on this page) | leaves off—that is, it takes up Trot- sky's statement that a new Interna- tional is in process of formation for | the combined purpose of saving the | Russian workers’ government and | forwarding world revolution, and pro- ceeds to show how such a develop- | ment is necessary if the “gains” made | by the workers in the overthrow of | czarism are not to be utterly lost | To this end it reviews the history | of the International since 1917, goes enthusiastically into the Marxian doc- trine that economic revolution must | be conducted on world scale and generally presents a case for the | millennium. 1t is written with intense emotional feeling but still presents a fairly comprehensive history. Mr. James agrees with Trotsky that | Stalinism in Russia is a complete de- parture from Leninism and consti- tutes a betrayal of the aims for which the Bolshevik revolution was fought. He further agrees with Trot- sky in claiming that the pomt at which Stalin left Lenin's doctrine was his abandonment of effort toward world revolution and his assumption of the position that socialism could be achieved in a single country. | But he feels that Stalin’s regime 1is only a phase and that the new In- ternational will revive the crusade for world-wide Marxism and that in this crusade Russia will take the initiative. The value of the book would seem to | lie in its historical material. | WHIRLPOOL. By David Lamson. | New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. AVID LAMSON, as readers may | remember, 1s the man who in | 1933, in the midst of a promising and | blameless career as a teacher and writer, was convicted of murdering | his wife (who was found dead in her home) and was condemned to be ihanged, This was in. California, | inmate of Condemned Row in San| | Quentin State Penitentiary. At the | end of that period the Supreme Court | of California reversed the decision; | he was granted a new trial and was freed. He wrote his reminiscences of his time in the death house in 1935 under the title of “We Who Are About to Die.” Now he writes a novel | centering about the conviction and death in prison of an innocent man, | likewise accused of the murder of a member of his family. A mnote at the beginning of this book states with some insistence that | "no analogy with actual people, places nts is intended” in the work and declares that “none should be sought.” And it is necessary to state, as a point |in criticism, that the novel would | stand on its own feet even if published anonymously. The similarity be- tween the author's experience and that of his hero, however, is no coin- cidence. We can accept the word }zlm he has not attempted to fiction- ize his own trial in physical objectiv- ity, but his account of the emotions of his accused hero and of prison | existence cannot be taken as the products of impersonal research. The book is the book of a man with a scar, unquestionably. But who will say that a scar is not a highly fertile literary soil, provided that an author uses his memory of his wound with universality? No one, surely. This book is a dignified thing, moving with long inevitability through & maze of circumstances to the hero's |undoing. He is a young farmer, he | finds his brother and his wife kissing, | he 1is certain that there has been no ong doing but punishes his brother g him. The brother then runs off. Somewhat later a skeleton is discovered near the farmer's land and the train is lighted. One cir- cumstance after another conspires to hasten the flame—the malice of neighbors, the sensationalism of the press, the ignorance of the accused man of any chicanery or political technique. He is tried and found guilly. While waiting for execution he attempts an escape and is killed His brother returns shortly afterward | and the falseness of the verdict is| proved. But nothing is done, for the | men who have railroaded the inno- cent stand together, naturally, for their own protection. That is the plot To the reviewer’'s mind the story suffers somewhat, from multiplicity of detail, from its innumerable conversa- tions, its great volume of technical legal explanation, and so on. These | things give the book & current realism, | but they impede, too, the smooth move- | mer. of the universal theme. For the theme is universal; it is so old, indeed, | that it may be regarded as timeless. | Mr. Lamson's treatment demonstrates | how it may be fitted into 50 passing & phenomenon as modern jurisprudence. The real indictment, however, is* not Against any system of laws, but against human viciousness—eagerness to strike the man who is down, eagerness to | Join in any hue and cry, eagerness to be near a sinister crime, delight in the misfortunes of a fellow being—all thau blackness of spirit, in short, which de- rives from the negative qualities of cowardice, envy, disappointment and vital boredom. These are the villains in the case, and they are no more vil- lainous today than they were at the time of the crucifixion. No system of laws will ever control them either, for the human heart is not amenable to law, and those who administer law are like the rest in yielding to their desires. HE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., SATURDAY, JULY 24, 1937. E. M. DELAFIELD, Whose book, (Harper.) “Nothing Is Safe,” has just been published. A Bertrand Zadig drawing of Ramona Herdman. whose novel, “Today Is Forever,” has been published by Harper & Bros. Brief Reviews of Books Biography. JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER. By B. F. Winkelman. Philadelphia: The John C. Winston Co. The predictable post mortem life story of the famous money-maker. Satisfactory enough, but certainly not brilliant. Casual Novels. LAUGHTER IN CHEYNE WALK. By Ursula Bloom. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. Harmless stuff about how the single. untalented daughter of a family of geniuses proved herself “the greatest of them all” by having & baby. Some- how it seems a trifie easy. Mysteries. THE MAN WHO WAS MURDERED TWICE. By Robert H. Leitfred. New York: Green Circle Books. How & young “play boy” is almost mulcted of his millions by wicked gangsters, and how the crime is pre- vented by & private detective, Simon Crole. Average. TENANT FOR DEATH. By Cyril Hare ew York: Dodd, Mead & Co. How a defaulting broker is found murdered and how the inspector from the Yard solves the mystery. Fair. A MAN'S ENEMIES. By Lee Thayer New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. A new Peter Clancy mystery. Up to standard. DEATH BY INVITATION. Stockwell. New York: millan Co. One of those week end parties where queer guests are assembled for no good reason. Good reading. By Gail The Mac- a victim. From time to time the mob must needs see blood. Who will sa: at these occasions, that innocence or guilt is in any real sense an issue? It s not. If it were, society would deal more sternly with all criminals whos guilt is declared in the courts, and less spectacularly so with those whose cases have a sacrificial picturesqueness. We would have & justice more nearly even- handed. Today, as far as public in- terest is concerned, we swing between cynically indulgent indifferences and outbursts of primordial cruelty. One feels that Mr. Lamson has meant to demonstrate this condition in his novel, and he has done so.’ But he would have made & more memora- ble picture and, of course, a greater book, if he had told his tale with less insistent refernce to & day and civili- zation. It is, however, a dignified and commendable work. One feels thdt he | may become a writer of merit on other subjects than the one which is neces- sarily now so near his mind. GUILTY IN THE TROPICS. By Edmund Whitman. New York: Sheridan House. 'HIS is & novel of Central America, of the “banana republics,” land of comic opera revolutions and pas- sionate romances between handsome, blond civil engineers from the North and dark-eyed senoritas indigenous to the soil. It uses all these old props, too, in & plot which is no more than a romantic farce and fur- ther adds, by the device of mental soliloquies by the hero, what is evi- dently meant to be & serious inter- pretation of the Latin-American peo- ple. These miscellaneous ingredients hardly make for & harmonious lite- rary composition and, moreover, the book is very, very badly written. However, the farce is not & poor one, being lively and full of broad comedy, and, full of glaring faults as it is, the book could make a harm- less afternoon’s entertainment if one had nothing else to hand. It tells how the handsome engineer was thrown into prison after he had killed & native in self-defense and how by his prowess with his fists he won the hearts of every one, down to the monkey in the prison yard. It will not induce brain fag. At least that can be assured. TODAY 1S FOREVER. By Ramona Herdman. New York: Harper & Bros. ’I‘HIB is one of those novels in which the action takes place wholly in the mind of the central character. In this case the character is & woman who is seeking & full | | | descend actress; she has had a a lover. Still young, st she feels that reality, in any personal sense, has escaped her. She broods over the situation and reaches into her past to see if she can find the place where she left the course of her destiny. But with success. She seems to be about into spiritual when she meets a young playwright, and, by throwing herself into a role which he has created, achieves at last & sense of power. One gathers that she is able to give life to the role because she finds herself as an artist. That seems to be about all of it. The book is written complished smoothness, but the re- viewer could not escape the feeling that it was, essentially, about noth- ing. The young woman is never in- teresting, and her problem seems al- ways more important to her than she herself could be to any one. The worship which her husband and lover accord her is hard to accept on the basis of the vague personality with which Miss Herdman endows her. And when, with great suddennes the last two pages, she solves problem, the reaction of the read apt to be, “Who cares” It piece of earnest research, but it ject is a soul without streng color. It is to be hoped that i next novel Miss Herdman wi to with an ac- sub- use her gift for psychological analysis on | trifle | & character who can mean a more to that poor wretch, the reader. PRINTING IN THE AMERICAS. By | John Clyde Oswald. New The Gregg Publishing Co, S ITS title would imply, this book is a history of p! in the ‘Western Hemisphere. It takes up the cases of various of the American Col- onies and Territories, covering the advancement of the press westward as the frontier moved in that direc- tion. It also treats of the advance- ment of printing in Canada, Green- land, Mexico, the West Indies, Cen- tral America and & number of the South American countries. Chapters are given over to families famous in the printing trade- the Franklin family, most notably, and also the Greens, the Sowers and the Day printing equipment and methods are discussed, and the interesting fact that & number of Colonial print shops were owned by women is brought out On the whole, the book contains an immense amount of information and picturesque incident. It must be con- sidered at once as a valuable hand- book and a highly entertaining vol- York From time to time the tribe demands malimation of herself. She 4 sn ume. » back | true | | Library at Eighth and K streets. bankruptcky | | | | | | ment, | SPAIN | more enlightenment than encourage- IS BRITISH FAIR PLAY MYTH? Duke of Windsor’s Recent Treatment Inspires Magazine Articles Questioning Traditional Sportsmanship of English. " Periodicals Analyze Russian Crisis. By M.-C. R. VER since the coronation of George VI the reviewer has been privately surprised over the venom with which the English government—or the English people have systematically loaded the | new King's brother, the former Ed- ward VIII. As to whether govern- ment or pesple was responsiole, the reviewer quite frankly did not know, but she did know, as anybody could see, that all canons of dignity and courtesy, to say nothing of that ex- clusive British quality, sportsman- ship, were being blatantly violated by the treatment meted out to Ed-| ward. Now two authors come out in| our periodicals commenting caus- tically on the phenomenon. One is Mrs. Katherine®Fullerton Gerould, who writes in the August American Mercury under the title, “The British Fair-Play Myth.” Mrs. Gerould blames the people rather than the government in her attack on the treatment of the former King— not that she blames the people for the savage pettiness of the assail- ment of Edward, but that, as she| says, “no Briton ha% protested.” And she goes on, “No Briton * * * has even been ashamed of the utter aban- donment of logic, fair play and de- cent manners” which has charac- terized the official attitude toward Edward since he conceded to offi- cialdom what it asked of him She is pretty sharp in her own| analysis of this lack of “logic, fair | play and decent manners.”, She points out that after Edward's perfectly cor- rect farewell address, “almost as soon as the tears of listeners were dried, the B. B. C. (government controlled) forbade thé manufacture and sale of phonograph records of the speech. Edward had hardly settled in his Austrian retreat when the Archbishop of Canterbury went on the air to slan- der him. British newspapers did their | best to suppress information about | his movements.” But, she says, the crowning incon- sistency and pettiness came when the time for Edward's marriage ap- proached. “Those powerful individ- uals,” she says, “who had already de- | prived Edward, as far as they were able, of liberty, good report and fair | dealing settled down (the coronation | once accomplished and the empire | saved for Hollywood) to perfect their vengeance. They had * * * no diffi- culty in keeping Edward off the civil list and flinging him back on his rela- tives for support * * * They an- nounced that they were going to de- | prive Edward of the services of an Anglican clergyman for the ceremony; | though I have seen it responsibly stat- | ed that, as long as Parliament permits the reMarriage of divorced persons, no bishop of the Established Church can | forbid a clergyman to remarry the | innocent party to a divorce * * * The | royal family also forbade the atten- dance at the wedding of any member of Edward's family, and extended the | prohibition to all individuals in gov- | ernment service. “Then,” says Mrs. Gerould. ‘‘came the most extravagant of all the ges- tures made with regard to the ex- | King: the extraordinary document in | which George VI proclaimed that the | lawful wife of H. R. H. the Duke of | Windsor will not be H. R. H. the Duchess of Windsor. This procla- The Public Library THE SPANISH WAR GOES ON. | R the N ITS first anniversary Spanish civil war appeared to be as far from a peaceful end as in its beginning, and fighting on many fronts it forward with renewed vigor. sharp = carryin This week the Public Library pre- sents a short list of books and maga- zine articles on Spain and the revo- lution; books for background and mag- azine articles for contemporary com- In so far as material is avail- able both sides are given a hearing. All of the references may be consulted at the central building of the Public Background. TOWARD THE NEW SPAIN. By J A. Brandt. 1933. JU40.B73. A good background volume for | events leading up to the present crisis. | IN REVOLT. By Harry Gannes and Theodore Repard. 1936. F4062.G2. “‘Spain in Revolt’ might be de- scribed as an official communist text- book of the situation . . . but it is the fullest book written on the subject and contains, an admirable second half dealing with the background in Spain —church, landowners, etc.” Lincoln Croyle. BEHIND THE SPANISH BARRI- CADES. By John Langdon-Davis, 1936, F40621.25 “His conclusions are stated with ad- mirable candor, but there will be | many who will question the wisdom | of his contention that the anti-fascist powers should not seek to maintain peace at all costs, but band together in immediate war against Italy, Ger- many and Japan.” N. B. Cousins. SPAIN IN REVOLT, 1814-1931. By Joseph McCabe. 1931. F40.M13. A history of nineteenth century and early twentieth century revolutionary movements in Spain. THE SPANISH TRAGEDY, 1930- 1936: dictatorship: republic: chaos. By E. A. Peers. 1936. F4062 P34 “Readers of the book will find in it ment, but it is worth careful study, nevertheless, for the sake of its re- liable and quiet unbiased informa- tion.” Herschel Brickell. Current Comment. IMPRESSIONS OF SPAIN. By H. N. Brailsford. New Republic 91: 119-21, 152-4. June 9-16, 1937. “With all its failings, this nation can boast that when at last it is roused to action, it moves with a will and endures to the end.” FUTURE OF SPAIN. By Jose Cas- tillejo. Contemporary Review 151: 11-19. January, 1937. “Spain has found no satisfactory political structure from the Visigoths to the present day.” EYE-WITNESS IN MADRID. By Geoffrey Cox. Harper 175: 27-37; 151-62. June-July, 1937 An objective account of Spanish fighting from the loyalist point of | view. | the ne | sPAIN. | call | history.” mation was * * * really Baldwin's last | act as prime minister. One almost wishes that Mr. Baldwin had con- sented to sit in the House of Lords as Earl of Bedlam. Only thus could a prime minister who, in December, 1936, told his monarch that a mor- ganatic status does not exist in British law and any woman he married would necessarily and automatically take his rank, and who then, in May, 1937, announced that the woman he mar- ried did not take his rank—only thus, | one feels, could such a prime minister | begin to explain himself.” Of the “fair-play myth" she writes “For a long time the English have been announcing that free speech and fair play are wrapped up in the folds of the Union Jack, and are spread | abroad wherver that standard un- | furled. They have been telling us that, even as the Englishman always dresses for dinner in the desert, so he plays cricket as scrupulously in Equa- toria as at Lord's. * * * This was the really disillusioning fact: Not that a few people in power behaved badly | * * * but that a nation of ‘sportsmen’ (as the British are so fond of calling themselves) should have applauded | their bad behavic , and given them- selves up, 20 willion strong. to an| orgy of kicking a man after he was| down.” Mrs. Gerould says that the next time she hears a Briton talking about this “myth” she will make a “mute, de- risive gesture.” The reviewer will hap- pily join her in doing it. "THE second article on this theme is by P. W. Wilson and appears in the August Commentator. It is called “British Public Enemy Number One.” Facetiously, but earnestly, too, Mr. Wilson describes what he calls “a strange battle * * * All the fighting | is on one side “In solid formation,” he goes on, “advance two immense archbishops, a score of bishops almost as immense, eight immense prime ministers, Brit- ish and Dominion, with bevies of peer- esses acting as Red Cross. Assailed by this grim and glitering host stands Public Enemy Number One. “® * * What Americans cannot ex- plain is the vehemence of the animus against this Danger to Mankind. Why is he handled as a desperate char- acter?” Mr. Wilson agrees with Mrs. Gerould in pointing out that Edward has been wronged. He lists his wrongs as fol- lows: “Before the abdication Edward was refused a morganatic marriage. After the abdication a morganatic marriage was, in effect, forced on him. . “An idea occurred to some bright intelligence at the war office. Pos- sibly he had been reading the Dreyfus case. Anyway, the distant bridegroom was handed the Bronx cheer. He was stripped of a dozen colonelcies. * * * “It was even demanded that he be expelled from hjs rank as marshal, admiral of the fleet and air marshal. * * “Finally there was ordained spiritual and official boycott of wedding. No clergyman must ciate. civil servant must tend. > a the offi- No at- .. The archbishops especially have made it quite clear that so far as their ecclesiastical authority ex- tends, whether in Heaven or an earth, there must be no place of repentance | for Edward Windsor and Wallis War- REVOLUTIONARY CATALONIA, B: FORCES IN L. A. Ferns- | there are deeply field | field. By this implacable denial of pardon, human and divine, the world has been shocked and astounded.” Mr. Wilson does not agree with Mrs, Gerould, however, in feeling that the English people have a great sympathy with this bitter wrath against their former King. “It is not mass hatred,” he aays, “that is concentrated against Edward. It is class hatred. It is the privileged few, not the people as a whole, who are determined that he shall be hounded out of society as a ‘pariah.’ " He is in accord with her, however, in declaring that British prestige in America has not been helped by the unjust treatment heaped on Edward. “Millions of Americans have mie grated to this country from a backe ground of oppression. They and their children are sens consider to be an use of au- idual who Britons also They bol of the to be hime NHERE is some significance, su g in the fact that two articles ap=- pear simultaneously on this subject, treating it in essentially the same manner. But is not a wonder. Edward was the most popular man in the world, and that on the basis of his personal quality. No matter how his own people react, the world could not stand by without a word while, as Mrs. Gerould puts it, his enemies, “after they had got him down * * ® kicked him, not once, but many times * * * kicked him over a period of months, and, as far as we know * * ® have not vet got through kicking i It is too much against any warm human nature, | \"ITH two books on Russia reviewed on this page, the reviewer feels that mention should also be made of two magazine articles on that coun- | try which appear this month. Both iare in the Atlantic Monthly. They | are grouped together under the title “Crisis in Russia.” The first, by Wickham Steed. bears the subtitle “The Long View"” and the second, by William Reswick, that of “The Human Equation.” Together they make up & very considerable portion of the Ate lantic for the month. Mr. Steed considers the inferences to be drawn from the recent Soviet trials and comes to the conclusion that interesting possi= bilities in those ordeals which have not yet been fully brought out. He suggests that Stalin, since the murder of his close friend Kirov, has been obsessed by fears of assassination, and | that he adopted the purge of the | Totskyites” as a means of removing | enemies who might treat him as Rus- | sian revolutionaries have customarily treated those in power. This is a | fairly simple possibility. A somewhat more complicated one which he takes up is that Nazi Ger= many, realizing that the internal sit- | uation in Russia has for some time | been one of delicate balance, has un- dertaken to wreak havoc among the Communists by giving every possible | 2ld to Trotskyites among them, just as in 1817 the German Imperial Gov- ernment sent Lenin in to wreak havoc with Czarist politics. This is & hu- | morous speculation, certainly, if one looks at it from a detached point of view—the engineer hoist by his own petard is always comic. If, however, | one sees Trotsky or his adherents made the agents of Nazi dictatorship to destroy the workers' state, why, it becomes just a little too ironical. It cloys the palate. It is an exaggeration of the comedy, if you please. worth, Foreign Affairs 15:674-84 July, 1937. “The defeat of Fascism seems to the Spanish workers and peasants necessary phase in their struggle for redemption and freedom. But the Barcelona rising shows that separate creeds and g still seem important to them also." WITH THE SPANISH ANARCHISTS. By L. A. Fernsworth, Current His- tory 46: T1 July, 1937, “Spanish anarchy made its appear- ance in the land before socialism and long before communism, which ex- plains the deep hold it has on the masses.” BRITISH POLICY SPAIN. By D. G. Hutton. Foreign Affairs 15:661-73. July, 1937, “Thus from the outset Spain became the crucible of Europe's two warring ideologies—despite the reiterated, if somewhat platonic, contentions of the British government that it rejected ssity of any choice between TOWARDS the two.’ Impressions and Reflections. By Douglas Jerrold. Nineteent Century, 121:470-92. April, 193’ “If democracies are incapable of dis- interested sacrifice, then they have no to attempt the government of men.” SPAIN: The Politics Madariaga. Atlantic Monthly 159-364-7. March, 19 “Spain is a deep country, and no| superficial explanation will ever fit her | By Salvador de SPAIN: “Six of one and half a dozen of the other.” By Marqu de Merry del Val. Nineteenth Century 121:355-71. March, 1937 A defense of insurgent policies. AGRICULTURE AND THE SPANISH WAR. By Heinz Paechter. Con- temporary Review 151:667-74. June, 1937. “Whatever may be the outcome of this war, the agrarian revolution is already so deeply rogted in national | life that the actual progress cannot be undone.” | VOLUNTEER IN SPAIN. By John Sommerfield. New Republic 9:-| 239-41. July 7, 1937. (Continued). | Chapters from the author's book of the same title. | SPAIN, A SOCIALIST VIEW. Norman Thomas. Na 698-700. June 19, 1937. “The Spanish government and the Spanish workers should not be sub- | Jected to the dictation of any nation, be it Russia, England or France.” TRUTH ABOUT SPAIN. Open letter to the press. By Michael Williams Commonweal 226:33-7, 85-7, 113- 15, 151-3, 231-4. May 7, 21; June 4, 25, 1937. Discussion: 26:217. June 18, 1937. ““I shall begin by stating my be that the main cause for the pro-‘loy. alist’ attitude of the greater part o the American press, and also of greater part of the Ameriean public, is one that is whelly to their ewagdit It is their instinctive sympathy f" what they believe to be a ‘democratic movement.” \ By | f f al | cent | that Yet Mr. Steed points out that Trot- | sky must feel a degree of bitterness at hi atment by Stalin; that he sin- believes that Stalin has be- e original aims of the revolu- . and that the technique of ac. | cepting foreign assistance would be b no means an innovation in revolution- ary practice. And so, he says, this might be the case. 'THE second article, “The Human Equation,” takes up the question as to why Stalin suddenly revived the old specter of Trotskyism, 10 | years after Trotsky had gone into exile, and insisted that the menace was so acute that some of the most honored veterans of the Bolshevik party must be condemned to death er to lay it, as he did in the sts two answers One is that Stalin feared to put his own popularity to test in the balloting promised by the new constitution, and preferred to remove any possible rivals by legal assassination before the eon- stitution should come into effect. The | other is that, because of conditions in Spain, he believed that war was impending, and that he ought to crush any international Trotskyist party as a movement of defense to S own regime. Neither is a very pretty solution of the puzzle, but then the puzzle is not a pretty one either. And one does not envy Stalin his place today, The reviewer, for her part, s re- minded of a passage in Edna St. Vin- Millay’s book, “Conversation at Midnight” (reviewed on this page), in which one of the characters says that the enemies of communism have in at last to drive an effective wedge into party ranks, and that wedge is Trotsky. His wrongs will divide the bolsheviks as no other cause might. And from division will come weakness. Well, there it is. No one seems to understand just what it is about. But all agree that it ig tremendously serfous. BEST SELLERS FOR WEEK ENDING JULY 17, FICTION. Northwest Passage, Doubleday Doran American Dream. Foster, row. The Years. Brace. The Outward Room. Simon & Schuster. Bugles Blow No Mors. Little Brown. The Wind From the Mountains, Gulbranssen. Putnam'’s. NON-FICTION. Orchids on Your Budget. Bobbs Mer: Present Indicative. Coward. Dou- bleday Doran Mathematics for the Million. Hog- ben. Norton, Capital Kaleidoscope. Harper's. Miracle of England. Harper's. Return to Religion. Link. Mae- millan, Roberts. Mor- Woolf. Harcourt Brand. Dowdey. Hillis. Keyes. Maurois.