SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
( Notice in this column does not necessarily preclude subsequent review.) THE SOCIAL INTERPRETATION OF HISTORY. By Maurice William. (G. Allen and Unwin. 10s. 6d. net.)
Mr. William gives his volume a confident sub-title, but we cannot believe that it is a more final " refutation of the Martian economic interpretation of History " than are many works of more attractive style. His two prefaces are an uncertain mixture of egocentricity and bias, and when, in the body of the book, he proceeds to test Marxism by such popular queries as " Is it scientific ? " we begin to suspect him for an insufficient economist. Insufficient, indeed, as Mr. H. G. Wells, who, with Drake-like schoolboy audacity, raided Moscow to poke fun at the Prophet's beard ; but not half so amusing. Mr. William writes with heated sincerity ; his thesis is a just one ; and many of his arguments on behalf of Capitalism are as powerful as Mr. Hartley Withers and a dozen predecessors could make them. But his matter is not ordered, nor his tone engaging enough, to give his book any great appeal. Mr. William's emotionalism, however, is fortified by a commendable measure of conscientiousness. One of his appendices should be found useful for an enumer- ation of the Third International's famous Twenty-one Points and copies of the Communist Manifestos during 1919.
Previous page
