The Great 1Var Brin g s It Home. By John Hargraves. (Con:
stable. 10s. 6d. net.)—Mr. Hargraves is a most disarming writer. Suppose that crusted person, the critic, should consider his scheme of rebuilding the nation by means of the Totem Pole, the tribal chant, the pipe of peace, and the rest of the Fenimore-Cooper-cum-Boy-Scout-cum-Thompson-Seton " complete camper's outfit" to be great nonsense ? Suppose he should have chuckled over Mr. Hargraves's counsel on the bringing up of babies or his grave advice to the expectant mother ? Suppose the jumble of Darwin, The Jungle Book, Carlyle, and the Great White Spirit fails to strike a responsive chord in his over-civilized, and probably fattily degenerate, heart ? Mr. Hargraves counters him on the next page by showing a real knowledge of the nature and tastes of boys in the " gang " stage, by a real horror at the recent statistics of infant mortality, insanity, and venereal disease, and by giving evideece of a' genuine longing to lead the tired, stumbling world alonglis forest-path to a new life. Finally he stops the critic's mouth completely by remarking that he was eighteen when he wrote the book, and that he enlisted leaving the MS. to be published in the event of his not coming back. He did come back, how- ever, and as much of a boy as ever, as infallible, as generously anxious to help, as sure that the nation is on the down-grade, as sure of the efficacy of his tribal system, buffalo robes, tents, and tracking as a cure. It is curious that so competent a draughtsman as the illustrations in this volume prove Mr. Hargraves to be, seems to have no conception at all of the para- mount part played by the arts in the lives of many men and most nations. He has as completely forgotten the whole coib pany of Muses in his Redskin Utopia as he has blandly ignored the fact that, though the physical condition of the race is bad, it is at least better than it has ever been before.
Previous page
