Radical Rascals
Storm Over Europe. By Douglas Jerrcll. (Ernest Benn. 8s. Od.)
MR. DOUGLAS JERROLD has written a political extravaganza of considerable ingenuity. He is of that school, whose patron Saint is Mr. Hilaire Belloc, with Mr. Chesterton as the second member of its hagiology. Some irreverent Oxford under- graduate once christened this school "the Cathalcoholies,"— a name which suggests their almost equal reverence for Roman religion and British beer. Whatever, however, we may think about their peculiar tenets, the school contains writers who can gwe doiisideiable pleasure to their readers. '‘
. Mr. Jerrold incidentally shows one of the unmistakable
marks of the school in that he supplies his novel with a detailed Military map of the imaginary country in which the story is laid ; for some reason not altogether clear to the laity, to the central doctrines of this school, Catholicism and alcoholic liberty, is joined the subsidiary characteristic of a passion for military cartography. Perhaps it is merely that Mr. Belloc combined these three predilections and that his followers have piously preserved them: perhaps, on the other hand, there is some important connexion between the three interests which only the devout can appreciate. But at any rate, the present book makes pleasurable reading.
Cisalpania. is a country whose post-War politics bear an extra- 'ordinary relation to those of Great Britain. The rise of Radicalism-and the rise of a counter movement of romantic Royalism are amusingly depicted. The book combines being an exciting adventure story. with pointing, the moral that all Radicals are rascals, all capitalists, financiers and indus- trialists, thievish swine, and that all decent men believe in
feudalism and monarchy. Needless to say, in the end the " right " (in both senses of the word) is triumphant.
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