BOOKS OF THE DAY

Not Without Prejudice (Lord Macmillan)

3

Dear Dead Women (Rosamond Lehmann) 4 Helen's Tower (E. L. Woodward). .. 6 Totemica (Raymond Firth) .. . 6 Horizons of Immortality (Dame Edith Lyttelton, 8

St. John of the Cross (Evelyn Underhill) ..

8 I Know These Dictators (Prof. E. H. Carr) . to The Miracle of Haworth (E. F. Benson) so The Victorians (E. E. Kellett) ..

12

Homer and Lucretius (C. M. Bowra) 54 A Vision (Michael Roberts) 14 The Grand Rebel (Mulk Raj Anand) 16 Baghdad Sketches (Christopher Sykes) .. 18 May the Twelfth (Christopher Hobhouse) 18 Prophetic Diaries (Goronwy Rees) ..

22

Pepita (L. A. G. Strong) .. 24

Sketches from Nature (Edmund Blunden)

26

The Book of Songs (William Plomer)

26

American Crime (E. B. C. Jones) ..

28

In Defence of Pink (Rose Macaulay) ..

30

The Other Beckford (John Hayward) ..

30

Sporting Literature (T. H. White) .. 34 The Country Life (Dyneley Hussey) . . 40 Fiction (Kate O'Brien) ..

46

OCCASIONAL ORATORY

By LORD MACMILLAN

IT must be very pleasant to be so completely adequate to every oratorical occasion as the Lord Chief Justice in this volume shows himself to be. Not all of the discourses here collected are speeches, for some of them are articles salved from the ephemeral Press, but they have all this feature in common that they were addressed to a particular occasion if not to a particular audience. The art which Lord Hewart practises is not an easy one. To be topical without being trivial, to be scholarly without being pedantic, to express commonplaces without being platitudinous, to be enlivening without being distres- singly bright—all this requires a nice balance not often exhibited in (his own words) "the world of after-dinner speeches, a long- suffering world." Those who have suffered most from the abundance of cliches which afflict post-prandial speakers will note with pleasure their absence from these pages. Never once does the Lord Chief Justice begin by askin4 the futile question why he has been chosen to speak on the particular occasion ; never once does he regret that a more competent speaker has not been selected ; never once does he say that he has been called upon at such short notice that he has had no time to prepare a suitable address. All these pitfalls he avoids, though it must be confessed that he does not deceive us when he speaks of his " too hasty impromptus." As essays in a difficultgenre of public utterance these specimens are admirable in their technique. Indeed, if they have a fault it lies in their impeccable faultlessness ; an occasional lapse is rather engaging, but the Lord Chief Justice never lapses.

Style is as elusive as personality and equally unsusceptible of description, but Lord Hewart would be the last person to resent the suggestion that his style has been disciplined on the models of Bacon, Johnson and Gibbon, whom he so frequently cites. Each phrase is neatly turned with an agreeable antithesis and a touch of, irony, usually gentle but occasionally mordant, nor does he neglect the device of the derisive aside. A happy choice accords the first place in the volume to an Address on Horace delivered to the Horatian Society. Here was a subject after his own heart, for what author more perfectly exhibits the sn•banitas and the curiosa felicitas of which Lord Hewart is a master ? And then, just to show his catholicity, he proceeds next to discoUrte delightfully on the Pickwick Papers.

But, paullo majora canamus (our author likes a Latin tag). Through all the urbanity and even levity of these papers there is to be discerned a detestation of portentousness and pretentiousness, an admirable loyalty to the two professions of journalism and the law, and a profound devotion to England and to English institutions with all that they mean for freedom and liberty. For reform when it is the real thing and not - that particular combination of humbug and pretence which is sometimes miscalled reform," Lord Hewart has a proper zeal, as witness his treatment of the subject of " The Young Offender " in his Clarke Hall Lecture, and his article on " The Law of Divorce." In the latter he hardly rises to the height of the famous diatribes of Lord Buckmaster and Lord Birkenhead, but he is certainly in their tradition when he scathingly hazards that " perhaps it is not vouchsafed to everybody, -whether in Holy Orders or out of them, to appreciate the full sublimity and beauty of the doctrine that if one of two married persons is guilty of misconduct there may properly be divorce, while if both are guilty they must continue to abide in the holy estate of matrimony." IncielenitillY he might have reminded his readers that this is not the law of

Not Without Prejudice. By Lord Hewart. (Hutchinson. tops. 6d.) Scotland. On a less exalted note he asks the question which is really at the root of the whole problem of divorce reform from the lawyer's point of view—" Once it is understood that marriage may sometimes be dissolved, is it not a pure question of practical wisdom, in full view of all the relevant circum- stances, to determine in the interests of all what the proper and sufficient grounds for divorce ought to be ? "

In " The Mischief of Bureaucracy " the trenchant author of The New Despotism returns to the charge. He yields to none in his admiration for the efficiency of our civil service but he cannot understand (nor can anyone) why, unless it be to protect what is illegal, the legislature should be asked and should consent to declare in advance that what a department does, whether it be right or wrong, shall not be open to question in any Court of Law. Lord Hewart is also an advocate of the view that " the elements of law should not only be explained in public but actually be taught in schools as a part of the regular curriculum. Intelligent children are taught every day the elements of geography, the elements of history and the elements of grammar. The pupils are all on their way to become responsible citizens. Why not, it may be asked, the elements of law also ? " He would find a precedent in the statute of the Scots Parliament of 5494 which ordains that the eldest sons of all barons and freeholders shall remain three years at the " Schules of Art and jure," so that they may have knowledge and understanding of the laws.

A volume so varied in its topics tempts to quotation rather than systematic review. The collector of aphorisms will find here ample additions to his store, as in the concise definition of democracy as " self-government through debate " and in this description of toleration—" There is no virtue in a man's listening with complacency to opinions with which he cordially agrees. Toleration begins only when he listens with patience to opinions from which he profoundly dissents." It is not possible throughout thirty-eight articles (any more than throughout thirty-nine) to maintain a uniform level of attain- ment,, but a high place must be given to Lord Hewart's generous tributes to his friends Carson, Reading and Avory, instinct as they are with sincerity and affection. And the two travel pieces, the fruit of a recent vacation in South Africa, are pleasant reading, not least for his vigorous vindication of the value of the right of appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, against which there has been " a slight murmuring on the part of a few individuals." " Does anybody," he asks, "really need to be reminded that that significant and conspicuous symbol of the essential unity of the British Dominions involves not the faintest hint or suggestion of subordination ? "

It is a common accusation against the !-.4a1 mind that it is apt, to grow narrow and technical and becomes set in the rut of professionalism—and a rut, we have been reminded, differs from a grave only in being narrower. Such truth as there is in the charge renders it the more essential that the practising lawyer should apply to his mind the corrective of liberal studies and pursuits. " How melancholy was the reflection uttered by one of the ablest judges and lawyers of the last age but whose whole mental stores were wholly limited to the ideas connected with his profession—` My whole life has been a chaos of nothing.' " No one has better avoided this condemnation, • as .this volume shows, than Lord Hewart, who has so amply obeyed the injunction of Cicero—Est born- oratoris multa auribus accepisse, multa vidisse, multa anima et cogitation, multa etiam legendo, percurrisse.