British readers will meet anything written by Mr. Brand Whitlock
with a prejudice in its favour, due to their gratitude to him for his work in Brussels in 1914-1917. The small volume that he published last autumn, The Little Green Shutter (Appleton, 5s.) does not directly concern Europe. It opens with a picture of a small town in the Middle-West forty years ago, when drunkenness was disreputable and the Anti- Saloon League was beginning to wage its war. It ends with a few pages describing the same place as it is to-day, having made progress in every direction except that drink is now fashionable. The rest of the book is an essay on Prohibition with lessons for all countries on the evils of bureaucracy and the folly of passing laws that have not the real assent of the M. Here we sometimes confuse crime and vice. In the tleed States they have made a crime of what many refuse to deem a vice., They had not.known sin, but by the law." Written in excellent English and with-- a gentle irony, Mr. Whitlock's book deserves to be read in-this country- as well as in his own.
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