Evening Star Newspaper, October 9, 1937, Page 18

THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTO NOVEL DEALS WITH DIV ORCE Sigrid Undset’s Latest Book Is Called “The Faithful Wife.” Member of Maritime Commission, Harvey Klemmer, 7 By Mary-Carter Roberts. THE FAITHFUL WIFE. By Sigrid Undset. Translated from the Nor- wegian by Arthur G. Chater. New York: Alfred A, Khopf. W! ARE told by the jacket blurb of Mrs, Undset's lat- est novel that it deals with the “problem of marriage and divorce” and--regrettably—it does, It has no more significance than that. It is a dreary little tale of how a couple, after 16 years of marriage, sep- arated, mourned about unhappily for & while, and then remarried. Read- irg it, one can comprehend how the misunderstandings and sorrows of these two people were important and real to themselves. But that they thould ever interest any one else is highly unlikely. ‘The reason for the dreariness which &0 afflicts the story is not, to be sure, Mrs. Undset's handling. Alihough she has used & plot of no greater distine- tion than those which one finds in ladies’ magazines, she has treated it with intelligence and dignity. Dreary it is, none the less, and one has to wonder that a writer of Mrs., Undset's | genius should have occupled herself with material so meretricious, For obviously that business which the jacket writer called “the problem of marriage and divorce” is no ma- terial of any novel that belongs on the lofty plane which Mrs. Undset, by | her past work, has set aside for her | own. The pangs of the suburban wife, | as she waits in the evening for a hus- | band who does not promptly arrive, | the stealthy little amours of the fun- damentally moral husband — these might be held up before the world in | & novel if the novelist took care to | stamp them with the folly, pity, stu- | pidity and limitation which truly ap- | pertains to them. They are not fit for novel usage, however, when the writer assures his readers that any | such personal problem is important. | For it is not important. It matters | not a particle whether Mrs. X di- vorces Mr. X for his confessed infideli- | ty or not, and whether, having di- vorced him, she does or does not re- marry, is similarly without conse- quence. That the Faith Baldwins, | Ruby Ayres, Warwick Deepings and Fanny Hursts of the world should think otherwise, and should prosti- | tute the art of novel writing to the level of the mentality of the pulp reader, is perfectly understandable, for such prostitution is enormously profitable. Moreover, it is possible in the case of one or two of those mentioned above, that they are inno- | cent of cynicism, that they write sin- | cerely, actually believing that the | drivel that they gush forth is true, beautiful and significant; the re- | viewer has more than once suspected Fanny Hurst of such illusions. But Sigrid Undset knows better, Her pres- ent performance therefore is simply amazing. | The reviewer can think of no more | definite summing up of “The Faith- | ful Wife” than this—that it could have been published in “Good House- keeping” with perfect propriety. Those | who read “Good Housekeeping” may | take that as a recommendation. Thos who do not can always re-read “Kristin | Lavransdatter.” | HARBOR NIGHTS. By Harvey Klem- mer. Philadelphia; J. B. Lippin- | cott Co. Tms is the book of a sailor's mem- | ory, written a decade and more | efter the last sailing. Mr. Harvey Klemmer, as he tells it here, jnin(‘d} the crew of a lake freighter at the age | of 17 and spent the next four years in ehips, with the exception of an inter- Jude as a lumberjack and one or two other interludes bumming around in search for work. All this was back in | the days immediately following the | war, but 1937 is the Autobiographical | Year of Years and so, with bull fight- | ers, gypsy fiddlers, wemen surgeons, missionaries, taxi dancers, Hollywood | extras and multi-millionaires joining the world’s entire corps of journalists | and correspondents in writing memoirs | there scems to be no reason why a | simple sailor should not break down | and confess, too, even though it does come a bit in the wake of the event. | Mr. Klemmer’'s narrative is plain | and unadorned. It follows the chrono- | logical plan, and is very little given to | comment or editorializing. In such and such months, it says, I was on such and such ships, making such | and such voyages. As plain as that. | But its plainness notwithstanding, it | contrives to be a pretty interesting book. What is & sailor’s life? Writing | with & frankness which is quite devoid | of sensationallsm or artiness, this | suthor gives the answer as he knows | it. A sailor's life, he says, is hard | work, poor food and cramped quarters | #t sea and drunkenness and fighting ashore, The calling which romance is prone to name its own, therefore, stands pretty cleanly stripped of glam- | our here. In “Harbor Nights” it is demonstrated as sordid, narrow and dreary to an almost incredible degree. Yet this does not mean that the | book itself has those qualities, It is the book of a young man's experi- ences, and Mr. Klemmer has captured his youthful reactions pretty honestly. One gathers that the young fellow who went to sea in 1916 found things very different from what he had expected, but that he adjusted himself to them without self-pity. He took his part | in the brutal and stupld existence. Writing of it now, 20 years later, he makes a picture which with & few ex- ceptions manages to be convincing. ‘Those exceptions, naturally, are in the chapters given over to memories of love affairs. In those passages, un- happlly, objectivity of method is aban- doned. The reader is asked to believe that the waterfront lady was as won- derful as she seemed to the youthful gailor 20 years ago, and that puts-a pretty heavy strain on tredibility. Such chapters break also the plain movement of the narrative, and are, generally, out of harmony. On the whole, however, the book is interest- ing and vivid. Mr. Klemmer, it should be added, 1s # resident of Washington, having been 8 member of the Maritime Commission for the past two years. WAR WITH THE NEWTS. By Karel Capek. Translated by M. and R. Weatherall. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. THE ingenious mind of Karel Capek, ‘" who added “robot” to our vo- cabularies, is turned, in this book, to. s satire of modern civilization in which almost no phase of our cur- rent public folly is neglected. It is founded on the fancy that a certain specles of sca animal—the newt, or, | in biologleal parlance, Andrias Scheuchzeri—develops mental powers equal to man’s own, He'is then set by men to do their work for them. In time, Andrias, who has multiplied until he outnumbers men enormously, decides against being ensiaved and rebels. By that time he has been given the best of human education— there are newt scientists, newt engi- neers, newt statesmen. They pro- pose to secure more space for them- selves by the simple expedient of leveling the continents, which they| can do by undermining from the sea. Eventually they are on the point of engulfing the world, but at this stage the author stops his narrative with the prophecy that civil war will break out among the hitherto harmonious creatures and that they will destroy themselves. Man, who has been driven to the mountain tops, will slowly regain his ascendancy, conti- nents will reappear and there will be & new myth of the deluge. And 20 on. The book is impressive in the breadth of its satire. From Holly- wood to Geneva it hardly misses one of our proud follies. Yet it is never heavy-handed, but always amusing. To read it is to b2 consistently enter- tained. The reviewer recommends it without any reservations at all, YOUNG HENRY OF NAVARRE. By | Heinrich Mann. Translated from the German by Eric Sutton. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ’T'HIS is a book which might have | been conceived by Dumas. In the hands of a modern German, as it is, it still contains elements in which Dumas would have delighted. It is endowed with a complicated plot, courtly charaeters, romance, glamour, intrigue and combat. With so much | novelistic wealth in his hands, Dumas certainly would have been content. He would have told, if not a plain tale. Not so Heinrich Mann, brother | of Thomas. He has taken these rich | elements of the novel as his point | of departure and not as his be-all and | end-all. He begins at just about the | point where Dumas would have laft off. The result is a novel vasty above the Dumas plane, a great tower- | ing, dragging, mystical, engulfing thing which bodles forth with incredible | life the spirit of a past day and which brings us men and women in the brutal round of that day and | not in silhouettes which bear a com- forting likeness to our smooth selves | in all but costuming. The work tells the story of the life of Henry of Navarre from boyhood up until he was well on his way to the kingship. The scenes are set succes- | sively in the savage Pyrenean castle where young Henry spent much of his youth, in the court of the Medici Catherine and her sons, and in the fleld of war. The underlying theme | seems to be a delineation of the mo- | tives which made Henry the extra- ordinary fellow that he was—a man who hated intrigue, cruelty and perse- | cution, who loved the pagan pleasures of action and amours, yet who could | play the parts of a plotter capable of | matching wits with the subtlest of the | Medici, & ruthless soldier and a re-| ligious partisan. These motives, as| Herr Mann outlines them, were the | influence of his Huguenot mother, ! Jeanne d'Albret, whom Henry believed | poisoned by Catherine, his dimly dis- | TARE HARVEST. By Eleanor Peters, | cerned conviction that he could | serve the true happiness of the people | if he could once get the power, and, overwhelmingly, the whole drift and circumstance of that blindly bloody time, Caught in this drift, confronted moment by moment by realities which demanded irstant action or dear life, Henry strove deviously but faithfully | toward his purpose. He was incor- | ruptible, with the safety of perfect health in a world that lay diseased and | dying. Or thus Herr Mann shows him | to us in & novel which deserves the attention of all believers in the novel as an instrument for the creation of brave, strange and wonderful worlds, | To be sure, some readers may find | the method of narration troubling. It | is an alternation of furious action witn passages of sententious reflection as, when describing the Massacre of St.| Bartholomew's day, the author halts | the terrific course of events to muse over the state of mind of Admiral | Coligny, waiting his certain fate.| ‘These static passages are often pitched | in a vein of mysticism, strange and | seemingly apart. Yet, in the entirety of the composition, Herr Mann makes them bear their part in his story of | Henry's development; they are fore- shadowings and interpretations. The | reviewer found their interpolation im- | mensely effective in the course of the | tremendous story which the book has | to bear along. ‘The novel can be safely commended to' true novel lovers. To them it wili be a delight. To the rest of the public the | “romantic” aspects of the work may be | enthralling enough to arouse forgive- ness for its real excellencies. The re- viewer cannot predict. She will watch reports of the work’s progress, however, with more than ordinary interest. SIR RICHARD GRENVILLE OF THE REVENGE. By A. L. Rowse. Bos- ton: Houghton Mifflin Co. HEN the reviewer was a schoolgirl, every child knew of Sir Richard Grenville. Not less than Sir Walter Raleigh was he a sign among her young contemporaries for might and wonder. This may have been =0 be- cause Charles Kingsley's “Westward Ho!” and Robert Louls Stevenson's “English Admirals” were on school reading lists in those days, or it may have been because most of us were descended from people out of the British Isles whose stock ran back to exploration times and had parents who deemed it their duties to acquaint their offspring with the tradition from which we had come. Be that as it may, if you had mentioned Sir Richard Grenville of the Revenge to any class of which the reviewer was a member in her elementary school years, all but the dullest children would have piped up, “He was a very great sailor and a brave man, he sailed the Spanish Main and said he would sink his ship before he would surrender.” The reviewer herself might have added, for she had private superior knowledge, having already, at the age of 9, had a serious love affair with Sir Richard as he stood in the pages of “Westward Ho!” and spent many hours of silent unchildiike horror try- ing to understand the fate which Frank and Rose (of that same work) suffered at the hands of the Inquisition —she might have added, “He lived at Bideford and was a friend of all honest men and an enemy of rogues and knaves.” For even then the vo- cabulary of any author whom she A Writes Mgmoirs of a Sailor. happened to read was embarrassingly apt to creep into her own. . . . And yet, the reviewer did not know, until she read the present biography of her erstwhile hero, that it was 8ir Richard Grenville who brought Raleigh's firat colony to Virginia. Neither did she knhow that it was Francis Drake, Grenvilie's greatest rival, who took that colony off again, #1x weeks after Sir Richard had sailed away. ; Somehow in all her reading, the names of those great captains had never been become associated with colonization, but only with exploration, discovery and tremendous battle. Con- sequently, in apite of her early passion for the Devonshire knight, she was able to read the present work with considerable profit. It is in no sénse & romance or & romanticized biog- raphy. It is pedestrian in style {0 the point of heaviness and it is painstak- ingly devoted to presenting pure facts. The reviewer found it interesting to test the magnificent figure of the legend against the man who emerges from the meager record. Curiously, even In this author's determinedly factual presentation, there is little discrepancy. ‘The book simply fills the legend out and gives it flesh. 1t takes the years of 8ir Richard’s life about which romance is silent and tells us what he did in those periods. He sat in Parliament, he served on parliamen- tary committees, he bought good lands for his estate, driving hard bargains when he could, he engaged in the shipping business as a formal cover for taking mercantile prizes on the high seas, he was sheriff of his county in which capacity he rigorously en- forced Elizabeth's anti-Catholic laws, he raised levies of troops for service in Ireland and for defense of the coasts, he built & fine houss and, like | Kit Marlowe, engaged in a brawl in { | which a man was killed, but his luck | stralght tale, at least a fancy straight | was better than poor Marlowe's, for it was not he who was the victim. On the contrary, Queen Elizabeth found it neeessa to pardon her future captain for a homicide. None of these things were extraordinary in an Eng- lish country gentleman of that period, as Mr. Rowse points out. As Sir Richard carried them out they reveal & hard-thinking practical mind with & capacity for business and accurate detail, a violent energy and a furious personal pride. And then—against this, the legend. | 1t is epitomized in Raleigh's account of | that last apocalyptic fight in the Avores when, caught betwesn two Spanish squadrons, assailed by the boarding parties of 15 armados, all but 100 of his company ill, his ship without ballast, Sir Richard might have -fled but “out of the greatness of his mind, he could not be persuaded.” And so he was not persuaded but would have blown up his ship when he had men | to fight no longer if only his wounded | condition would have allowed it. This | | Account from Sir Walter's hand Mr. | Rowse examines thoroughly, and comes to the conclusion that there is little reason to consider it exaggerated. From which it may be concluded | that a schoolgirl may keep her hero, | even when grown older in a debunking day. Mr. Rowse decides as much himself. It is too bad that he writes so laboriously. He has a truly great story here to tell. New York: Reynal & Hitcheock. ’I‘HE locale of this novel is the Andes country of Chile. The theme is the conquest of the country | by the English settlers, and portrays & period analogous to the conquest of | our own West by the cattle kings. It is a them: and a period worthy of romantic recording, and enhanced by the novelty and beauty of its setting might have been a great novel, or, at any rate, an absorbing one. Instead it is a dullish chronicle of stupid, grasping, unworthy people, held to the soil by the greed of an unjust and tyranical father, & clan which reverts to the middle-class narrowness of small-time farming on the outskirts of a small town at his death. Miss Peters has a seeing eye and a facile pen with which she produces vivid bits of description of both the purple poetry and the sternly realistic type. The way her characters live and the surroundings in which they live are far more elearly realized by the reader than are the characters themselves. R.R.T. LOOK ELEVEN YEARS YOUNGER. By Gelett Burgess, New York: Simon & Shuster. HERE is a textbook for keeping young that is, to say the least, different. Mr. Burgess, in his own in- imitable Way, points out to his readers | the warning signals on the road to middle and old sgee. Illustrated by candid camera shots showing most horribly the contortions, nervous grimaces and generally unattractive little habits which grow on one with the years, the book brings home very forcibly the fact that such doings con- tribute years to our actual age. Older people are not told to mimic foolishly the younger generation in their at- tempt to retrieve youth-—but they are told how to keep the essential youth- fulness that is rightfully theirs, and how to avoid appearing even as old as they really aré. “Old Age Is a Habit” is the title of the first chapter, and the rest of the volume is devoted to detailed instructions for overcoming that bugaboo. Sensible, amusingly written, and chock full of good, hard, common sense, Mr. Burgess’ book should prove a refreshing note in the general welter of “how to keep youth- ful” contributions. B.C. THESE LOW GROUNDS. By Waters Edward Turpin. New York: Har- per & Bros. 'HE Eastern Shore of Maryland is the setting of this novel of four generations of a Negro family. In many novels we have had the old- fashioned Negro, the new Negro, the Harlem Negro and the Negro in the reawakened South. They are all in this chronicle of the entire period since the Civil War. Martha, first of three matriarchs, was an industrious woman who sur- vived the war and accumulated some property in Baltimore. Her husband came back years later and with no questions asked, even though he brought & woman he had picked up in Virginia. Martha's daughter Carrie was left in the care of this woman, who turned Martha's respectable house into & brothel. Carrie, rescued by an Eastern Sho’ farmer, made him a good wife; but his miserliness and petty suspicions drove her out. She took her two daughters, Blanche and the second Martha, with her to & nearby oystering, crabbing town, Tragedy befell her despite bar natural inclina- Harvey Nights,” published by J. B. Li; by the Literary Guild. Mr. time Commission. L D. C., Kiemmer, Washingtonian, whose book, “Harbor incott Co., is being recommended emmer 18 a member of the Mari- Washington Is By Cedric Larson. ENEALOGY, or the study of | one's ancestors, once the| humble pastime of the anti- quarian and the recluse, hnx‘ | of late achleved such popularity and; respectability in America as to rival| stamp collecting and golf as the avo- cation of countless persons. Prac-| titloners and students of the science of | genealogy have come to look upon| Washington as the Mecca of their geanealogical pursuits, & fact which seems to have escaped the public & Jarge, for a number of reasons. Ever since the World War and the shutting off of immigration, a new nationalism has manifested itself in our country, showing itselfl in a myriad ways, one of which is the heightened interest in American his- | tory, institutions and ancestry. As for ancestry, perhaps no better | current example could, be chosen than President Roosevelt himself. Books have appeared on the Roosevelts in America, the history of the Delanos, | and the pictorial magazines carry por- traits of a score of Presidents of the | United States all related somehow or | other to the President. A Washing-‘ tonian has even published an article | recently (in “The Yankee” May, | 1937), entitled “2,537 Years of Frank- | lin Delano Roosevelt,” which traces back the family history of the Presi- | dent to the Guelphs of Italy and the | | Actli of ancient Rome to 600 B.C. But the ordinary mortal has to be satisfled with delving into his family tree for a period of two or three cen- | turies: The mists of time generally obscure his earlier record. ‘Washington may be termed the | genealogical Capital of the Nation for several reasons. Foremost, perhaps, is the Bureau of the Census, which con- tains & wealth of information of all | | nial census records may be utilized by the genealogist to about 1870, but | | after that, for obvious reasons, | Census Bureau files are a terra incog- | } nita to the general public. | Bmle the records of the Census | Bureau there are the important | | pension lists and annals of accredited | | military or naval service, found in vari- | our Government departments, which cannot be duplicated elsewhere and which are invaluable to the profes- sional genealogist. Another reason that Washington | leads in the genealogical fleld is that | & number of influential patriotic or- | ders and socleties maintain their per- | manent national headquarters here and, often as not, membership is lim- | ited to an indisputable proof of lines descent from an ancestor who partici- pated in a certain war or historic event. | the Daughters of the American Revolu- tion, whose headquarters are here, have to maintain one of the finest genea- logical libraries in America, with an| elaborate card index of names, to meet | the demand for the great number of applicants for membership whose an- cestry must be checked. There are in the United States some 90 or 100 orders of a patriotic nature with "admission to their ranks based upon & rigid genealogical inspection. Representatives of nearly all these or- ganizations are located in Washing- ton and the amount of constant prob- ing done into ancestral trees is great. Genealogists arrive on nearly every train to make use of the greatest of all genealogical collections and local history sections’in the world, which is located in -the Library of Congress and contains close to 100,000 volumes. Between 600 and 700 readers utilize this collection each week and trained experts help the searchers. There has been such a demand for names of reliable genealogists by the public, that the Government Printing Office recently brought out a sheet entitled, “Names of QGenealogists in ‘Washington, D. C., Furnished by the State Regent of the District of Co- Jumbia D. A. R” This pamphlet, which may be obtained in & number tion toward a good life. The second Martha fled to Harlem and a career on the stage. Her son, returning to his own people, was baffied by deep- seated racial problems. ' Ths long story—and it is told in & book of no more than ordinary length —brings into play almost every Negro problem of the last 50 years, but it is free of pleading, anger or moraliz- ing. It is & type of book which has been done often before, and this one ‘has no great novelties of style or con~ struction. But the difference is in the Negro character, which has not been portrayed before as a continu- ous element. The instability and in- consistency of the character may have stopped writers who attempted to use the saga method. But even if the value of the book belongs more to the subject than to the treatment, it must be said it is a competent, sin- cere piece of writing. It is & first the censuses since 1790. These decen- | For example, the National Society of | Genealogical Center of United States of places, lists a number of genealog- ical experts who reside in the Capital City. ROFESSIONAL genealogists in- crease in numbers each year. The 1937 edition of “The Handbook of American Genealogy” says there are 2,992 “professional and savocational SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1937. . IS LIBERALISM A SUICIDE “Liberalism Commits:| Suleide” which appears in the Oc- tober American Mercury. The author is Lawrence Dennis, The paradox is the one which Mr. Dennis sees pre- sented by the ideals of liberals today as these ideals are contrasted with those held by the great liberals of the past. “In its modern form,” he says, “it (liberalism) may be said to have com- menced with the American and French revolutions. From these great upheavals down to 1914, demorcacy made swift progress throughout the world . . . Was this period from the American Revolution down to the out- break of the World War one of uni- versal peace gnd respect of treaties, International law, and the rights of weaker peoples? Emphatically not. Yet that was the dawn and high noon of democracy.” liberalism was not retarded by our conquest of Florida, Mexico or the Philippines, nor by the British con- quest of the Boer Republic or the French conquests in Africa and Indo- China. The most predatory and least defensible war of the nineteenth cen- tury, that of Prussia against France in 1870, in which Prance lost two provinces and & billion-dollar in- demnity, was followed by a great ad- vance of democracy in both countries.” As he sees it, therefore, democracy has not been established in the world by men or nations striving consciously to Make the World Safe for Democracy, but by men who “were after making & home, and making it safe for them- | selves and their children.” And this |end they accomplished, he says ir- | revereatly but with truth, “by daking the Jand from others and shooting Indians and Mexicans.” " His present application of these genealogists and local record search- ers” in 567 cities in 1,165 counties throughout the Nation. This figure is undoubtedly too conservative as it includes only such individuals who are certified and takes no account of the throng of amateurs who delve into amily history as a hobby or on a | semi-professional basis. Many profesional genealogists spe- cialize in certain families or gea- graphical areas. Fees for research are usually predetermined. An expert who knows his fleld readily may work on a basis bf $1 or $2 an hour, or a minimum fee of $25 as a common practice. One of the largest genealogical reseerch bureaus in the United States maintains its offices in Washington and handles a considerable volume of business, especially during the hol- iday peak season, when the services of scores of employes are necessary. Genealogical socletles are to be found in most large centers. The Na- tional Genealogical Bociety of Wash- ington is well known as a scholarly and distinguished body and contributes no small share to the prominence of Washington as a genealogical cap- ital. The Family Association is a dis- tinctly American institution, resem- | bling in aspect the Scottish clan. The | | Pederation of American Family Asso- | ciations, recently organized, lists more than 500 family associations in its last directory. Several family asso- ciations are listed as having head- quarters in the District of Columbia— | the Boone, Dennis, Jenks and Mec- Dougle Family Associations, the Lake Clan of England and America and the Lake Clan of Maryland, Dis- trict of Columbia and Virginia. | The publications of genealogy are | myriad. Almost every week appears a new family history or “lineage book.” At least seven magazines of a Na- tionwide circulation are devoted to genealogical interests. The well- known “Burke's Landed Gentry” of London is bringing out a special “Coronation Edition de Luxe” and for | the first time “distinguished collateral | families overseas” which include spe- | cifically American cousins of British | lines will be incorporated. There is now going forward the publication of a work entitied “The Compendium of American Genealogy” American Genealogy of Chicago, and t is estimated that it will require two generations to complete the project. The first volume of 1,148 pages was published in 1924 and took seven | years to complete. Since 1924 five other ponderous and bulky tomes have appeared, which grace the shelves of every reputable library. Only an an- cestor-conscious land could make such an undertaking possible. One enterprising firm has issued & sumptuously bound album for gene- alogical lore, especially designed to appeal to children, wherein one may enter family tradition and history for 10 generations back. As the national interest in gene- alogy mounts yearly, Washington will increase correspondingly as the focal point around which this sclence flourishes, Mysteries. THE CASE OF THE SEVEN OF CALVARY. By Anthony Boucher, New York: Simon & Schuster. Murder on a campus. Average. DEATH FOR DEAR CLARA. By Q. Patrick. New York: Simon & Schuster. A prominent literary agent is found murdered. Average. THE MOVING FINGER. By Cort- land Fitzsimmons. New York: Frederick A. 8tokes Co. A Miss Ethel Thomas mystery tale, involving the fate of a scandalous diary which too many people want to possess, Average. For Young People and Children. EVERY DAY WITH CHEMISTRY. By H. H. Bunzell. Illustrated by Samuel Nisenson. New York: Grossett & Dunlap. The elementary terms of chemistry explained, with the history back of their origin. In simple terms and pleasantly illustrated. A work that could be of use to the adult novice as well as to the young. ALBUM OF THE GREAT. By Rolf Klep. Illustrated by the sauthor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. The brief romantic stories of 16 great characters—such 88 Columbus, novel,.and its author, a native of Oxford, Md., 18 now teaching in iw‘rru College _at Harpers Ferry.— Alfred, St. Francis and Leonardo da Vinei. Attractive. ALL THE YEAR ROUND. By A. J. - Grodin. Illustrated by the author. under the auspices of the Institute of | facts is to the circumsiance that Japan, Italy and Germany—those | notorious Have-Not nations—in striv- ing to do this very thing, are being opposed, morally at least, by the na- tions which built up thelr own | democratic institutions on just such bases. How about it? he asks brusque- What of our own record of con- quest and manifest destiny? (Well, what?) | "He finds the answer in the fact | that, at the close of the World War, place terms were dictated by pro- | fessional liberals rather than by real- | ists. Cromwell, Wellington and Washington he rates as realiats: President Wilson and Lloyd George as dreamers. Cromwell in his day | fought a liberal revolution, but cer- | tainly no one would call him a per- sonal liberal. Wellington was as far to the right as soldiers usually sare, yet after Waterloo he spoke in favor | of lenient terms for France. And Washington was on out-and-out Federalist. Notwithstanding, the Jifs | Dennis sees it, contributed vastly to | the cause of democracy. Against this, he says flatly that it was the Tiegty {of Versailles which prepared Europe for today's fascism. And that weaty was of course dictated by professional liberals of the purest ray. It all makes a diverting paradox, as Mr. Dennis sees it, and he cirries | it to its truly paradoxical conclusin in | writing that the hope of modern lib- eralism lies in the fact that Tory | leadership has asserted itself ence | more in Great Britain. He may not be s0 far wrong at that. Anyway, when he says that America must make known its intention to stay sut of all wars, he is expressing a seati- ment which any one can find sails factory. exactly the periodical in which to losk | for en unbiased account of Russis's new constitution, it occurs to the - viewer to commend an article in the October issue of that cantankerows | publication just the same, and the subject of that article is that very same constitution, too. For if the Mercury is likely to be severe in its | jJudgments on the new liberty vouchs safed the comrades, it is no mort bere-faced in its bias than are the periodicals that lean to the left, and a great deal better reading. The piece in question is by William Henry Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain certainly has had experience enough in Russian affairs to be regarded with respect. He says the new document s pure baloney. He is most amusing in the passages wherein he examines the championing of the constitution by Miss Anna Louise Strong. Now Miss Strong may be the most admirable person in the world, as a person. But any one who has had to read her books (as this melancholy reviewer has had to do) must conclude that she is a very bad writer. She writes as badly as the professional cause-monger generally does; which is to say, she is simply awful. She writes like a loud brass gong, unrhythmically beaten. 8o when Brief Reviews of Books New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Agricultural activities month by month. Very pleasant and attractively informative for the young. RIEMA. By Kathleen Morrow Elliot. Iilustrated by Roger Duvoisin. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ‘The story of a little girl from Java. For those quite young. WHEN MARIUS WAS TEN. By Helen Hill and Violet Maxwell. Illustrated by the authors. New York: The Macmillan Co. Charming book about a little French boy who lives in & very ancient French town. For those old enough to read & book-length tale. THE PIG WITH A FRONT PORCH. By Emma Brock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. A gay little story about a pig who lived in the Gaspe in a little house on the side of a hill and the house had a front porch. For the very young. Pleasantly illustrated. WOLF THE STORM LEADER. By Frank Caldwell. New York: Dodd Mead & Co. The true story of the leader of the famous dog team of Eli, the Arctic mail carrier. Interesting to any one who loves dogs, young or old. A PLACE FOR HERSELF. By Adele De Leeuw. New York: The Mac- millan Co. . Story for teen-age girls, about a young lady who made & career run- ning a library. And he goes on, “The progress of | Mr. Chamberlain picks up her recent book, “The New Soviet Constitution” and' shoots {t full of holes, the re- viewer, with bitter memories of good hours and better eyesight expended on Miss Strong's various past effusions (for they are effusions) responds with pleased applause. She is quite con- tent to let Mr. Chamberlain write the review of the latest opus for her. He says, “Miss Strong is intensely, not to say painfully (oh, say it!) serious; the only glint of unconscious humor in the book is to be found in 8 few extraordinary bits of Pollyanna author casts on the Russian peasants. | Two of these couplets read as follows: “‘Where do we get the happy looks You see across our Jand? | You never saw them under the czar Or on a foreign strand. ““Let the balalaikas ring, Ralse anew the chorus, Isn't it & happy thing— The road that lies before us.’” Well, of course, it may be the trans- lation. But Pushkin did use to come out s trifie better. One wonders that | the Russfans themselves do not see | that such blithering drivel as this must | necessarily hinder the friendship of the cultivated. ORDON CARROLL, in the October Mercury, writes his second article | 1n the promised series of three “con- cerning the. New Deal's vast propa- | ¢anda machine and the methods it | employs to further the personal politi- | cal ambitions of Franklin D. Roose- | velt.” The first of the series appeared | last month; it was a study of the em- | ployment by New Deal agencies of: pro- | fessional publicity men and women. In it Mr. Carroll brought out the in- teresting fact that in some bureaus the salaries of the publicity workers | reaches as high as $140 a minute. In his present plece he takes up specifically the W. P. A.; in fact, the name of the articl How the W. P, A. Buys Votes.” Now the manner in which the W. P. A. does that is pretty well known in general. Mr. Carroll, however, adds some rather piquant | details of the method, as. for example, | when he explains the way in which | the penmen of the Federal Writers' Project fit into the general propagan- ist scheme. The State directors of the project he describes as “erudite individuals who function a&s city editors on a large scale, bulwarked by staffs ranging from a few industrious leg-men to more than 100. Naturally, many of the staff men | are former journalists, and to them is assigned the duty of answering at- | tacks on W. P. A. and developing fa- | vorable public sentiment through news | stories, feature articles and the like. | These white collar press agents were +originally hired to prepare the remark- | able, many-volumed American Guide, | sometimes known as the American | Baedeker; but when any Works Prog- | travel book experts drop their re- | searches into local folklore and turn to answering the critics, relaying such | defensive propaganda through their State offices to Washington. As the | writers’ projects are so organizad as to | cover every section of every State, the | field workers are within Teach of all | The Publ CRIME PREVENTION. Increased efforts to understand and | control the behavior of maladjusted | children and adults are a sign of a hopeful trend in the drive to lessen crime in this country. As a back- | JTHILE it may seem to readers trat ground to the work being done by | the American Mercury is rot | Agencies in this fleld, the library sug- | | gests the following reading list which provides information on a large number of the experiments in the | prevention of delinquency now in progress. These books may be bor- rowed from the Sociology Division, Public Library, Eighth and K streets. CRIMINOLOGY AND PENOLOGY, by John L. Gillin. 1935. IC.Gé4la. General statement of the facts about | crime cost, causes and control. | FACTS ABOUT JUVENILE DELIN- QUENCY; ITS PREVENTION AND TREATMENT. United States Chil- dren’s Bureau, Pub. No. 215. 1935. Pamphlet file. Resume of what the citizen needs te know about the prevention and tieatment of juvenile delinquency. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, by W. C. Redkless and Mapheus Smith. 1932. IFX.R243. Comments on the preventive work of a variety of agencies such as boys’ cltbs and recreational groups. Crime Prevention and the Home. BEJAVIOR ASPECTS OF CHILD CONDUCT, by E. L. Richards. :932. BP.R39. Reviews for parents the common pringiples of emotional adjustment. OUR CHILDREN IN A CHANGING WORLD, by Erwin Wexberg and Hmry Fritsch. 1937. BP.W5490. Prarides a working knowledge of the viriety of causes for problem be- havior in childhod. PARENTS' QUESTIONS. Child Study Asociation of America. 1936, BPC435p. Coursel on a variety of behavior problens and control measures. THE PROBLEM CHILD AT HOME, by Mary B. Sayles. 1928. BP.§a88p. A seres of case studies giving in- sight itto the reasons for frequent maladjuitments of children. SOCIAL DETERMINANTS IN JUVE- NILE DELINQUENCY, by T. E. Sullerger. 1936. IFX.Su5. Descrites the factors in home envi- ronment vhich are thought to lead to delinquert: behavior. Crime Prevention and the School. EDUCATING FOR ADJUSTMENT, by Hirry N. Rivlin, 1936. IKLR53. Class roan applications of mental e —— JUST P { { | | | comm¢entators makes a kee; poetry, responsibility for which the | Lawrence Dennis Contrasts Ideals of Liberals Today With Those of Great Liberals of the Past in the October Mercury. New Magazine for Men Makes Debut. | projects, no matter how small, insig- nificant or isolated. The result of such mass coverage,” adds Mr. Carroll la- conically, “upon the political for tunes of Dr. Roosevelt can easlly be comprehended.” ‘Well, it can if it be true that the subsidized writers are expected to ute ter only the sentiments of the afore- said doctor. Mr. Carroll declares that that is the case and produces soma pretty substantial evidence to prove |it, too. The reviewer finds this par- | ticularly interesting, for she has long considered that there was grave dan= ger in any government buyving the {lump services, a5 it were, of a large body of utterly dependent writers—un= less, of course, it bought these services openly, as those of paid propagandists, The writers on the Federal project, however, are not on this basis. They are being employed as a form of work relief, a highly benevolent form orig- inating with the present administra- tion and designed to reach the meedv artist who ordinarily does not come within relief schemes. Well and good! But if the artist is to produce in ar= | cordance with dictation from his boss, how is he to remain an artist? The left-wingers who wept so uproariously when the Rockefelier Center ca 4 removed Diego Rivera's picture Lenin might well do a little thinking along these unaccustomed lines. How- | ever, it seems dublous that any real | talent will be destroyed by the Govern- ment's scheme. For no one of real talent would submit to it long. Mr. | Carroll's article is commended to th: | long-suffering creature—the taxpayer, | He should find it informative, | MIAGAZINES for men seem to ha 5 definitely on the increase. This | month a new entrepreneur in Esquire's | field makes its appearance, under the | none too enchanting title of “Mr." Tha reviewer bought a copy in order tn he able to know what the newcomer por- | tends. She can report that, having carried it home and examined i§t, she is hoping that nobody saw her on the way. Mr. is obviously an effort— | an effort to cash in on all the facets (of vulgarity which are used in the magazine field, from the salacious joke | of Esquire to the pseudo-health articie of Macfadden. The result is distinctly unsavory. This upcropping of periodicals oe ;temmlv designed for men seems tn be a feature of this seaton. Apart from Mr. at least two more are fight= |ing for a foothold in the precarious field of magazine success. These are Bachelor, which began well but now | seems to have subsided into a sort ot | masculine Ladies Home Companinn, |and For Men and Men Only, which is about as bad as Mr. and yet has { managed to get some pretty eminent | names on its contributor list. These periodicals, of course, are not really | meant for an exclusively masculine public. They are carefully labeled “masculine” in the pious expectation that women will buy them to see whas ot e " 1 | ress activity comes under fire, the |the reason for the label is. 8o far, works of these three men, as Mr. | | | however, Esquire remains pretty well | unchallenged. Bachelor is its nearest approximation, and it is far off, and | getting farther. Unless, that is, it has | suspended publication altogether. The | reviewer’s last copy is of August. So | maybe Bachelor has just died & gentle, ! natural death. ic Library hygiene principles as exemplified by the best school practice. OUNCE VERSUS THE POUND, hv | Sanford Bates. National Eduration Association, Department of Super- 1 intendence, Official Report, 1937, pp. 152-162. ITUB3.N217. Enumerates means by which the schools may meet their responsibilities in crime prevention. PERSONALITY ADJUSTMENT OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOI CHILD. National Education Asso- ciation, Department of Elementary School Principals, Yearbook, 1936 IP.6N216. | A survey of the schools’ attempis tn facilitate the adjustment and develop- ment of children. | | Crime Prevention and the Community, THE BOYS' CLUB AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, by F. M. Thrazh- er. American Journal of Sociology, vol. 42. July, 1936. pp. 66-R0. | The results of a study of a New York City Boys' Club, which indicate that, | group’s place in a program of delin- quency control. | THE COMMUNITY APPROACH TO DELINQUENCY TREATMENT National Probation Assocfation Yearbook, 1936. IFX.N216. pp. 1-155. | Describes & variety of community | efforts to get at the sources of behavior | problems and remove them. 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