26 JANUARY 1924, Page 17

It was Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer who started the English

Review, and under his editorship it was amazingly good. It is Mr. Ford Madox Ford (the same Mr. Ilueffer) who, now starts a more ambitious magazine. The Transatlantic Review, published in Paris, is designed to include creative literafrire from all parts of the civilized world. Mr. H. G. Wells, we notice, considers Mr. Ford "one of the greatest editors alive," and he is probably justified. The first number contains as its main attractions an instalment of a new novel by the editor, a story by the editor and Mr. Conrad, now rescued from pseudonymity, poems by Mr. Coppard and Mr. Ezri Pound, and a few reminiscences of Whistler by Mr.' Luke Ionides. The notes and articles are full of vitality, and it it easy to see the editor's preference for an unelaborate and free style in writing. Indeed, it is the colloquialism and fluency of most contributions that give its peculiar air to this magazine. So much writing nowadays is wrenched out of himself by the author with incredible pains that the contributors to the Transatlantic seem in comparison very versatile and fresh. All but Mr. E. E. Cummings. We must really protest against the involved triviality of Mr. Cummings' poems :-

"Voices to voices, lips to lips i swear (to noone everyone) constitutes undying."

Mr. Daniel Chaucer contributes the beginning of a " stock- taking " in English Literature, and writes very much after the style of the editor himself.