The Lost Cause
Let the Band Play Dixie. By Ursula Branston. (Harrap. is.) IT was, I think, 0. Henry who wrote that the man who bounded to his feet in a New York restaurant when the band played " Dixie " and gave the rebel yell had never, as a rule, been south of Trenton, New Jersey. Miss Branston is an English 200 per cent, unreconstructed rebel. "Cotton Ed" Smith has nothing on her! The South, for her, is the home of the lost cause ; her chief literary background before she went off to explore it was Henderson's Stonewall 7ackson ; and, if she has not been made an -honorary Daughter of the American Revolution and Colonial Wars and the Confederacy, she has suffered grave injustice. Here we have all the lime- light on the old plantation. We have Virginia provided with mythical Elizabethan settlers and James Monroe with a court suit that he wore when Minister to France. " Court " here is not the mot juste, for the government to. which Monroe was accredited was the Committee of Public Safety. The T.V.A., which Miss Branston set out to investigate, gets two very inadequate pages, and it is obvious from the casual remark dropped from time to time that Miss Branston has listened rather uncritically to certain Roosevelt-haters ; the New Deal and General Sherman get blamed for a good deal that is not their fault.
But abandoning pedantic standards and treating this book • as a bright account of travel in the South, it has many merits. Miss Branston is properly impressed by the good things ; by Monticello and Charlottesville and Chapel Hill and Charleston, and not by the less good things, Duke University and Williams- burg and Atlanta. Going round the country by 'bus, staying in student boarding-houses, having a keen eye for the amusing and picturesque, she has used her opportunities as a sightseer to advantage, and she has some admirable photographs.
D. W. BROGAN.
Previous page
