SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.]
We are glad to receive the first number of The Review (New York, 15 cents), an independent American weekly, edited by Mr. Fabian Franklin and Mr. Harold de Wolf Fuller, which made its appearance on May 17th, and which is destined, we are sure, by its sanity and its wit to a long and prosperous career. It has been a cause of keen regret to many English readers that the once famous New York Nation, which used to reflect the spirit of New England, has become openly pro-German, pro-Bolshevik, and anti-English, while the New Republic, which was started some years ago to compete with the Nation, has also displayed a curious partiality for the Germans and Bolsheviks, though it is less hostile to this country. We are pleased to find the genuine American note sounded in The Review, as it is in the Hellman of Minneapolis, the Villager, and, of course, in the popular illustrated weeklies. It is highly important in these days that the educated public here should study the development of American opinion, and The Review will, we believe, represent the real America and not the wealthy little cliques which are more at home in Berlin or Moscow than in New York or Boston or Washington. Mr. Landfield's crushing exposure of "The Soviet Fiction" and Mr. Fuller's amusing "Thoughts on the New Worlders " are the chief features of this excellent first number. Mr. Fuller contrasts with the intellectual Radical's " romantic desire for radical innovation" the Liberal's desire for ordered progress based on the "principle of individual self-reliance which has been the cornerstone of free institutions in this country," and on the rights of property which " are to him not merely arbitrary relics." The vast majority of Americans, we are sure, are faithful to Mr. Fuller's Liberalism, just because they are "plain people." We may add that The Review is owned not by one wealthy man but by a number of shareholders in different parts of America, and that the editors, under the act of incorporation, enjoy complete independence in their conduct of the journal.
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