The Magazines
A NEW series of articles begins hr the August Nineteenth Century, by Mr. Vernon. Bartlett, entitled " The Wider World." This first instalment treats of the stabilization
of the franc—" at a figure which amounts to an official recognition that the War has destroyed four-fifths of the savings of France " ; the relative calm in China ; and the Kellogg Proposal for the Outlawry of War. Mr. E. H. Wilcox asks " Who has a Good Time in Russia ? " He replies that the small circle of the real oligarchs of Moscow are alone having a good time in Russia, and it is for their sake alone that the Bolshevist domination is being maintained at so high a price, not only to the area of its jurisdiction, but to the rest of the civilized world. The peasant is not having a good time in the essential matters of food and lodging, though he possesses an even larger area of land than before the revolution (when he already possessed 70 per cent. of the privately owned land). The Russian workman is faring no better than before, despite the existence of a few thousand model artisans' dwellings. The professional class is notoriously wretched. Miss Gertrude Jekyll and Miss Eleanour Sinclair Rohde write charmingly of " The Garden," the latter giving a really delicious picture of mediaeval lawns and orchards starred with flowers. " The Case for a National Theatre " is plausibly supported by Sir Nigel Playfair. He deprecates the notion that a central position is essential for a playhouse.
He would like to see a State-supported theatre built in a garden, such a one as surrounded the Foundling Hospital. Dr. H. H. Bashford writes entertainingly of " Chaucer's Physician and his Forbears," and Mr. Beresford Chancellor analyses " A Hitherto Unknown Diary." The diarist is an Austrian diplomatist, Philipp von Neumann, attached to the Austrian Embassy in London during the first half of the last century. He liked England, and knew most of the great men of the time, seeing them, of course, through foreign eyes.
Dr. T. J. Macnamara, writing in the Contemporary upon " The Problem of the Rates," tells us that " the average local rate in the pound upon assessable value has approximately doubled since 1913." He suggests a readjustment of the propor- tions of responsibility between the localities and the State, as the best method of easing the situation. The Bishop of Man- chester, whose translation to the Northern Primacy we welcome, considering " The Relations between Church and State," declares " the freedom of the Church to order its own life in things spiritual must be affirmed and maintained. If merely to affirm this effectively causes the State to end the relationship called Establishment, so be it." He, however, hopes that the State will not press its claimed rights to the limit and that the relationship may readjust itself. A remarkably picturesque description by Sir Valentine Chirol of recent " Impressions of South Africa," received during a motor tour, will delight would-be travellers. Sir Charles Mallet writes in affectionate memory of " Mr. A. L. Smith," once Master of Balliol. " Spain under her Dictator,"
by Mr. -Horsfall Carter, gives a vivid picture of the attitude of the country at large, in respect of politics. It can be
briefly expressed in the Spaniard's own proverb, " God save our present ruler ; the next one may only be worse." Accord- ing to Mr. Branch Johnson, " The English in French Folklore " cut a poor figure. His very amusing article begins with the story of a recent French speech in which the conquest of England by William of Normandy was described as " France's greatest colonial triumph."
Mr. Charles Graves has a striking poem in the Fortnightly called " Miners." He describes their life where " Underneatk that monstrous roof The dragon Danger has his home." Ili " A Prison in Spain," Mr. Stacy Aumonier shows us the terribly grim interior of a Spanish penitentiary, and relieves his picture by a very pretty story of a release. The story is told as true. " Some Recollections of Joseph Conrad," by Mr. Ernest Dawson, are well worth reading. They are not altogether of a piece with the many " recollections of Conrad which we have lately read, and are therefore the more interesting. Sir W ilfrid Malleson, in " Curzon and Kitchener : Some Personal Reminiscences," attempts two rather ambitious character studies. Of Lord Curzon he writes very bitterly, of Kitchener with modified admiration. " An Irishman," writing in Blackwood of " My Fellow- Countrymen," delights us this month with stories of the Irish Civil Service in days not too long ago to be remembered by many of his readers. " Mr. Bernard Shaw's theory that the country, not the race, is responsible for the peculiarities of Irishmen finds some support in the ease with which we assimi- lated the Englishmen and Scotsmen whom the Civil Service Commission assigned to us. Some of them, of course, were transitory, and their natural respectability remained unchecked. The majority, however, fell into our quiet little ways at once." The " little ways " were not bad ways, but fostered " the art of creating the pomp and circumstance of toil without actually doing anything." One very good story concerns a clerk who admitted on being questioned that he had not yet done or even begun to do a piece of work which he had been begged to finish by a certain time, but excused himself upon the ground that he had " put everything else aside." " Village Uplift," by " Mofussilite," is also a very amusing paper which will appeal specially to Anglo-Indians. Mr. Douglas G. Browne in " Monks Magick " gives a grim picture of life in Northumberland more than a hundred years ago. Superstition was not more rife in the Middle Ages, if we are to believe his account.
In .The World Today Mr. Lowell Thomas tells the German story of the sinking of the Lusitania ' under the title " Raiders of the Deep." He has pieced it together from the U-boat's log and the conversation of Captain Schwieger, who com- manded her, as repeated by Schwieger's brother officers. Schwieger did not know until after he had fired his first torpedo that it was the Lusitania ' that he was destroying. The panic on deck, he said, was terrible to witness ; it was out of his power to save " more than a handful of passengers." Even that he did not attempt. " The scene was too horrible to watch," he used to say ; " I gave orders to dive to twenty metres and away." Upon his return to Wilhelmshaven he was congratulated on all sides. Later on he was appalled to discover from the foreign papers how universal was the sense of outrage, and shocked at getting a reprimand from the Kaiser. " Henry Ford Predicts Prosperity " in an interview given to Mr. Samuel Crowther. What he says is cncouiaging and very incisive. " It is said that a country cannot stand prosperity. But what is there about prosperity that has to be stood ? " he asks.
The Eugenics Review contains some interesting statistics about " The Kin of Genius," by Mr. W. T. J. Gun. " Over two-thirds of a group of great men of this country have had relatives of distinction. Of the men of action in this group over three-quarters have had kinsmen themselves recorded in the Dictionary of National Biography, and so have nearly three-quarters of the great thinkers, and well over one-half of the artistic geniuses. The proportion of men in the street with distinguished relatives is about one in five hundred." "Jews and Gentiles," by Mr. A. G. Hughes, would seem to prove the mental superiority of the Semitic race so far as boys and girls of primary school age are con- cerned. The book reviews are interesting. First among them is an article by Dean Inge headed "Human Geography."
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