Outspoken Essays. By W. R. Inge. (Longmans. 6s. net.) —The
Dean of St. Paul's has reprinted in this volume ten articles from the reviews, three dealing with patriotism, the birth-rate, and the future of the English race, and seven with ecclesiastical questions. To these he has prefixed an interesting though doleful essay on "Our Present Discontents." Democracy "may be rationally defended, not as being good, but as being less bad than any other" form of government :— " The popular balderdash about it corresponds to no real conviction. The upper class has never believed in it ; the middle class has the strongest reasons to hate and fear it. . . . The working man has no respect for either democracy or liberty. His whole interest is in transferring the wealth of the minority to his own pocket."
The Pacificist type of Socialism is "individualism run mad." "The myth of progress is one form of apocalyptism." The Dean is a trenchant writer. The one thing he does not despair of is Christianity.
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