The Magazines
AN exceedingly interesting article by Sir Charles Hobhouse in the Contemporary Review weighs the chances of the conflicting political parties in the coming Election. " Russo-British Relations," by Mr. E. F .Wise, is an arresting piece of reasoning. The results hoped for by a rupture of relations with Russia have eome,he thinks, to nothing " Of the twenty-two nations who at any time have had diplomatic relations with the U.S.S.R. only Great Britain has broken them off." The effects of the rupture have been to transfer a considerable amount of trade from England to Germany or elsewhere. " Is any responsible person," he asks, " really afraid of. Communist propaganda, Russian or English, in this country '1 " or does any such person really fear a world revolution in the near future ? "Persecution anyhow is a notoriously inadequate method of combating ideas. The best antidote to those ele- ments in Russia and elsewhere who attach more importance to stirring up world revolution than to the peaceful develop- ment of Russia, is to make it transparently clear that economic co-operation with the rest of the world is possible and worth while." Dr. Greville Macdonald and Dr. Scott • Lidgett write of " King's College, London : -1829-1929," the latter with special reference to Frederick Denison Maurice.
The Fortnightly opens with a timely and very lively article by Mr. Adam Gowans White on " Our Three Political Leaders, Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Baldwin,and Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. In " Three Victorians and the Theatre," Mr. Harley Granville Barker discusses Tennyson, Swinburne,and Meredith from the point of view of the drama—Tennyson's Queen Mary, Swin- burne's Bothwell, and Meredith's " Essay on Comedy " and the unfinished " Sentimentalists " lead him to the following con- clusion :—" Tennyson, Swinburne, Meredith, would be drania- fists ; and in a theatre that could not profit them, nor profit by them something was very wrong, surely, and for that matter still is perhaps. Miss Mary Bradford Whiting writes charmingly of " Nicholas Breton Gentleman," ornamenting her paper with delightful quotations from the poet - who died • just three hundred years ago.
Two Frenchmen, M. Andre Paulian and M. Edmond Preclin, write of " The Roman Question " in the Nineteenth Century. They ask those who rejoice over the reconciliation of Church and State in Italy to pause and think. Having laid many probable difficulties before their readers they sum up in favour of the agreement. A clergyman and a layman, Mr. J. C. Hardwick and Mr. R. S. Cochrane, write despondently of The Church and the Village," the former declaring that villagers of to-day while in no way hostile to the Parson " are in varying degrees quite indifferent "—the latter ascribing the present emptiness of the Churches largely to the spread of Anglo-Catholic views among the Clergy. " Mind, Matter, And Prof. Eddington," by Canon. Quick, is a paper whieb will delight the plain man longing for a • little light upon the Pro- fessor's much-discussed Gifford Lectures. The attitude of the child mind towards poetry is considered by Mr. Aubrey de Selincourt under the heading " Poetry for Preparatory Schools." He deprecates the too much comment and too many notes with which the poetry put before school children is so often loaded. Complete comprehension is not always necessary to the enjoyment of great literature.
Mr. Leonard Whibley's article on " Thomas Gray at Eton " is, we think, the most interesting thing in a very good number of Blackwood. He gives a wonderfully real picture of the Eton of Walpole and Gray. Whatever hardships upper-class boys of two hundred years ago bad to bear, it is certain that at Eton they were not overworked. " Some personal recol- lections of George Gissing," by Ellen Gissing, add materially to our knowledge of the novelist's strange personality,
Phantom Delivery," by Mr. L. Luard, is a yachting experience very well told.
Mr. Roy Chapman's adventures while " Exploring the Gobi " again delight the readers of The World To-day. A :wonderful find has rewarded the efforts of the expedition : they have unearthed bones of the largest prehistoric beast yet discovered. It is of " the rhino type.' In " A New First Lady in the White House," Miss Mary Rinehart describes the duties and personalities of Mrs. Hoover and of other wives of former Presidents of the United States. Her account of the Court life of the New World is full of gossiping interest much enhanced by photographs. The experiences of Howard Thurston, the conjurer, as told by Mr. Joseph Kay, are very amusing. The article is headed " Think fast, or be lost.
Sir Arthur Yapp in the Empire Review writes of " The Young Emigrant," with expert knowledge, and Miss Muriel ,Kent entertains her readers by her picture of The Notable Educationalists," i.e., Hannah More and Miss Edgeworth's father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth.
It is cheering to see that in the May number of The Realist (Macmillan, 2s.) the editorial policy of giving serious thought to our social problems continues. The first article by Prof. G. E. C. Catlin discusses " The Next Step for Democracy," and makes a plea for the extension of scientific control in adracis. tration. The second article, a review of the theories of M. Julien Benda, by Mr. Herbert Read, brings forward a radiew criticism of democracy itself. Almost all the other article, have some social bearing, especially the papers on " Usern_ ployment and Empire and of " A Future for British Agri. culture." Some of the contributors seem to identify radian with jocularity - even Mr. Aldous Huxley in his study ot "Pascal" is not free from this fault.
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