Book Notes
LORD HARDINGE OF PENSHURST spent more than forty years in the public service. At the outset of his career he served at Constanti- nople, Sofia, Berlin and Washington. Subsequently he was Minister in Teheran, Ambassadqr at St. Petersburg and Paris, Viceroy of India, and for many years Permanent Under Secretary of Stare at the Foreign Office. During the reign of King Edward. VII he always accom- panied the King on his official visits abroad. In addition, and in- evitably, he knew all the notable people of his day and practically everything that was going on behind the scenes. Obviously the private papers of such a man are bound to provide a particularly rich field for exploration, but in addition Lord Hardinge, formal in his official despatches, was in his private memoirs an unusually candid chronicler. A selection from his diaries will shortly be published by John Murray. The first volume, entitled Old Diplomacy, covers his diplomatic career. His experiences in India remain for a further volume.
A useful series of books on economic subjects of widely different interest by writers from the London School of Economics is pro- mised by Longmans Green. The first title is Reason and Unreason in Society : Essays in Sociology and Social Philosophy by Morris Ginsberg. the Martin White Professor of Sociology at London University. The first papers deal with some recent trends in sociology, and Professor Ginsberg then proceeds to an examination of problems which are on the border-line between sociology and social philosophy such as the function of reason in morals. He ends with a study of national characteristics which includes an account of the German mind as the Germans themselves see it and an analysis of anti-Semitism. The book will be published on August 11th.
Sir Norman Angell, writing in The Spectator a fortnight ago, dis- cussed two books which, he said, stood out above the recent flood of books devoted to the debate on Russo-American relations and the spread of Communism. One of them, The Struggle for the World by James Burnham, author of The Managerial Revolution, is announced for early publication in this country by Jonathan Cape. Briefly summarised, Mr. Burnham's theme is that we are faced with two alteznatives. One is the conquest of the whole world by the Communists, a World Federation of Soviet Republics. The other is a democratic world order, led by the United States and backed by the atom bomb. " The United States is called before the rehearsals are completed. . . . And the summons is for nothing less than the leadership of the world, for that or nothing. If it is reason- able to expect failure, that is only a measure of how great the triumph could be." * * * * Hilda Andrews, author of Modern Harmony, has written a memoir of Sir Richard Terry, entitled Westminster Retrofpect, which is to be published by the Oxford University Press. For almost twenty- five years Sir Richard was the director of the choir at Westminster Cathedral, and between the years of 19o1 and 1924 he presented to the public almost the entire corpus of pre-Reformation English music and rescued from manuscript obscurity-masterpieces which dated from the time when England held pride of place in the world of European music. This book is a record of his work and a commen- tary on our pre-Reformation composers and on the historical back- ground of Tudor music for the Roman rite.
The inshore fishing industry is dying in the British Isles: Much has been done by folk museums and the like to preserve the memory of rural crafts, but fishing, perhaps the most ancient of them all, has been badly served in this respect. Much useful information on the subject is. however, contained in Severn Tide, which is a study of the upper part of the tidal estuary of the Severn about Tewkes- bury and the mouth of the Wye. Its author, Brian Walters, writes of the varied forms of inshore fishing which are followed on the estuary—for eels, salmon, sturgeon and lampreys. In addition to fishing he writes of many local activities of the West Country, in- cluding the dead coastwise shipping trade and the cider- and perry- making industries. Dent's are the publishers. G. W.
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