The commonplace interview is apt to lose freshness in a
year or two, and Mr. Herman Bernstein, who has collected his interviews with many great men in Celebrities of Our Time (Hutchinson), was certainly commonplace in his methods. We can see him well prepared with a list of questions : " What do you think of modern literature ? " ; " Who are your favourite authors ?" ; " Do you deplore the rise of Anti-Semitism ? " We can see him, too, vigorously suppressing his own person- ality ; epitomizing the answers of his subjects ; and working them up again, with much logical ability and much knowledge of affairs, into long connected statements. So Tolstoy, Einstein, Trotsky, the Pope, Rodin, and Mr. Bernard Shaw speak all in the same tone of voice. Only here and there have the subjects been rebellious and succeeded in pushing in some small prejudice, as when Tolstoy announces that Darwin will be a laughing stock in a- couple of hundred years, or when Mr. Shaw states, " Why should I go to America There is nothing there that will interest me. When America will be a real American nation, when the American type becomes fixed, when the American's skin turns red and his forehead recedes, then it will be interesting to go to America."
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