5 JANUARY 1929, Page 30

Twenty-Five Years , as Archbishop of Canterbury (Wells Gardner, 2s. 6d.),

by Mr. Herbert, is .not free from some of the signs of book-making. This defect, however, need not prevent the book from winning a large public. It is opportune. It gives all the material facts of the Archbishop's career and does justice to his striking achievement in holding together elements which would have fallen asunder under any rule less diplomatic and less comprehensively sympathetic. Mr. Herbert overemphasizes the importance of the early con- nexion between the Davidson family and that of Archbishop Tait. He seems, no doubt unconsciously, to attribute Arch- bishop Davidson's first successes as much to circumstance as to merit.. We can make little of the confusing chapter entitled " Modernism."