C URRENT LITERAT UR,E.
MR. BELLOO'S ALGERIAN IMPRESSIONS.
Esto Perpetua: Algerian Studies and Impressions. By H. Belloc. (Duckworth and Co. 6s. net.)—What is it that Mr. Belloc wishes to be perpetua ? So far as we can follow him, it seems to be that abstraction which we are familiar with in his writings, and which he calls variously the Latin, the European, and the Catholic tradition. The Mediterranean, he says, is the true European sea, and its southern shore should be part of Europe. The original race of that shore—the Berbers—are of our own stock, he maintains in a bold ethnological speculation; it was part of the Roman Empire till it was lost in one cavalry charge ; and now it is again Europe under French tutelage. The earlier pages are full of racial generalities, many of them wildly exaggerated, for Mr. Belloc has the French love of definitions, and is intent on making history fit into the lines of an priori theory. The Phoenicians are his "awful warning," and, if it were worth while, it would be easy to show that his views on that singular people are more than doubtful. But we have no quarrel with Mr. Belloc's dogmatism. If he were a careful historian, he would be much less amusing, and the cloak of the sentimental traveller would sit awkwardly on him. For it is as a roving sentimentalist that he excels here, as in his earlier "Path to Rome," with his wonderful gift of seeing, not the truth, which is unimportant, but what he wants to see,—namely, romance. The whole of this little book is full of air and light and colour, and the English style is of a singular and delicate simplicity. It is the carnets de voyage which attract us, the story of wayside inns and wayside people, the bits of conversation, the delectable sketches with pen and pencil, and not the political generalisations. And yet now and then Mr. Belloc, as if by instinct, stumbles upon a profound truth. He says finely that "the States which are destined ultimately to dominate the world by thought or by armies are in every age those whose energy creates a perpetual conflict within themselves." He protests against considering the decadence of the first four centuries of our era as proved because its great men proclaimed it, since a violent self-criticism accompanies vitality, and must not be taken at its own estimate. He attributes the Arab conquest to the fact that its creed formed a system and was final. .And we recommend his fair and illuminating summary of the French character. "Of the French you can say no more than that any French thing you see to-day may be gone to-morrow, and that only France remains." In catching the spirit of a scene Mr. Belloc is a master, and he achieves his efforts without verbiage or rhetoric. Take this of the lateen sail: "She comes along in front of the twilight, as gradual and as silent as the evening, and seems to be impelled by nothing more substantial than the advance of darkness." And on the last page there is a picture of the Southern fringe of Europe, the edge of the Sahara, where a little palm troo
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