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du Moi, and then in his second series, Le Roman de l'énergie nationale, he proved once more the soundness of Carlyle's philosophy of action which may be summed up as follows: "Know thyself? Long enough hast thou tried to know thyself. Know what thou canst do, and do it, that were thy better task.”

In the sociological novel Les Déracinés (1897), the historical novels, L'Appel au soldat (1900) and Leurs Figures (1903), which form his second trilogy, Barrès set forth his traditionalist doctrines, traced his connections with the Boulangist movement, and exposed the Panama scandal. If anyone upon reading this author's harsh criticisms of Germany before, during, and after the late war should be inclined to accuse him of racial prejudice, he would have to admit after a perusal of the works in question that he did not spare his own people from the lash of his tongue whenever he found them guilty of wrong doing. The first of these books aims to prove that a man thrives best in his native country, in his own particular region, surrounded by the molding force of family, home, and local traditions. If he be uprooted without proper regard for his antecedents and probable destiny, the chances are that if he does not fail he will not reach the highest possible point of self-realization. Such a doctrine does not appeal to the average American, who often changes his abode, his profession, even his political or religious faith, over night without serious consequences, so far as can be seen in the short space lifetime. But this deracination, according to Barrès, may gradually bring about the disintegration of the nation. The other two volumes of this series are of great value and interest to the student and historian of the France of the eighteen-nineties concerned with the question of the Revanche (the recovery by force of the lost provinces from Germany) and the Panama Canal scandal. In these works of fiction real events and people are so thinly veiled or not veiled at all by Barrès that one can see the youth of France at the time of Boulanger vainly groping after a chief who might lead it back to its national self-confidence and lost glory. While Boulangism ended in a fiasco, it was valuable as a symptom of a larger and more powerful movement under way, the slow but sure union of the divergent but conservative forces under the Third Republic. By Barrès's fearless picture

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in his Leurs Figures of the political corruption of the French Parliament in connection with the miscarriage of the Panama Canal undertaken by de Lesseps, the contemporaries of the author were tremendously aroused and shocked. They learned by the daring exposé of his political colleagues in questionable transactions that he was a dreadfully earnest man and a patriot when it was a question of cowardly silence or of national housecleaning.

In his next series, Les Bastions de l'Est (1905-1921) Barrès took up boldly the question of Alsace-Lorraine as the French bulwarks facing the East, and endeavored to show the superiority of the Latin race over the Teuton as a spiritual, intellectual, and artistic force in Western civilization. In the first of this trilogy, Au service de l'Allemagne, in contrast with René Bazin's famous novel on the same subject, Les Oberlé, he advocated that the young men in the annexed provinces should serve their time in the German army and by the example of their conduct and life keep up the French spirit in the lost territories. In the second volume of this set, Colette Baudoche, perhaps the best of his novels, he advocated that there should be no marriage between conqueror and conquered lest this same spirit should be diluted or submerged. The last of the series, Le Génie du Rhin, was preceded by two shorter works called L'Appel du Rhin, which were plain propaganda for the extension of French influence on the whole left bank of the Rhine, considered by Barrès as the old and natural boundary line between his country and Germany. The treaty of peace annihilated all hopes in this direction, so the author in the third volume of this trilogy limited himself as best he could to pleading for the closest rapprochement between France and the Rhineland. However, whatever the pros and cons of the Alsace-Lorraine problems might be, and whatever extravagance might lurk in some of the author's claims, the decision of the treaty of Versailles to restore to France her lost provinces has justified in a large measure Barrès's stand. By hewing to the line and letting the chips fall where they might, he finished the task bequeathed to him by his predecessor, Paul Déroulède, the founder and first president of the League of Patriots, whose aim was the recovery of the territory ceded to Germany in 1870.

The most extensive of Barrès's literary productions is the Chronique de la Grande Guerre, in fourteen volumes, which are made up of articles that first came out in almost daily succession in the Echo de Paris. They not only traced the history of the World War as seen by this littérateur turned journalist, but they also reflect the ebb and tide of the morale of France and her allies as felt by this most discerning analyzer of souls and sentiments. Probably no other single work on the recent world cataclysm contains so much valuable information about the state of mind of the French nation and its supporters abroad. Barrès's chief aim in these collected articles was to maintain the Union Sacrée born at the outbreak of the war, to act as the faithful and inspiring interpreter of his race to his own people, and to win hosts of friends and admirers to the French cause.

In an early study called Armori et Dolori sacrum, and some halfdozen others, among which is Un Jardin sur l'Oronte, Barrès revealed that at heart he was a modern romanticist, a literary grandchild of Chateaubriand. Although at times he reached a certain classical perfection and restraint, as in Colette Baudoche, he is most likely to endure as a writer in these impressionistic works of travel in Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Orient, because of their rare and subtle style. We are yet too near Barrès to assign him any definite rank in the hierarchy of contemporary authors, but those critics who consider him only second to Anatole France as a supreme artist are probably not so far from the truth in their judgment.

For nearly all of his life Barrès was an apologist of the Church outside of its fold, and many evidences of this were shown in his political and literary career. His successful campaign for creating Jeanne d'Arc as the patron saint of France first comes to mind, and then his fervent addresses in the Chamber of Deputies, and his eloquent appeals in two of his best known works for the preservation of numerous old churches allowed to go to ruin through the law of the separation of the Church and the State, attracted wide attention and support. Again in his La Colline inspirée and Les Familles spirituelles de la France, we find him the firm upholder of Catholicism, although in the second work we perceive a liberal tolerance of other faiths.

Furthermore, one of his last missions as a Deputy found him actively engaged through long study and travel in preparing a report to his Government on an investigation carried on in Egypt and the Levant that looked forward to the founding of lower and higher institutions in France for recruiting the teaching force for the French Catholic schools in those countries. His sudden demise interrupted him in the midst of this last project.

As stated before, Barrès's name dominates the history of political and literary France during the past thirty or forty years. Whatever position posterity may assign him in the hall of fame, it will certainly be a prominent one. During his twenty years as Deputy he played a leading rôle in all the important issues that have harassed his people to the depths of their soul, such as the Boulangist movement, the Dreyfus affair, the Separation of Church and State, and lastly the World War. Before and after his entrance to the French Academy in 1906, he had a profound influence in lifting the literary taste of his generation to a saner, healthier, and more inspiring plane. His most abiding honor, however, will be to have been one of the foremost artisans of the victory of France.

As Victor Giraud, one of his best biographers, appropriately says: "Happy are the writers who by circumstances and the nature of their preoccupations and talents are led to make of themselves the spokesmen of their country!"

F. D. CHEYDLEUR.

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED

A STUDY IN AMERICAN LETTERS

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT: 1833-1847. Edited by Roger Wolcott. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

One hundred years ago-on January 19, 1826, to be preciseWilliam Prescott, then at the age of twenty-nine, entered in his diary his decision to write a history of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. Misfortune had retarded his career. Blinded in his left eye by an accident during a Sophomore scrimmage at Harvard, he had since passed through periodical ordeals of cruel suffering and the tragic threat of blindness. This threat was to shadow his path throughout his life. Yet he had laid out for himself a vast course of study in many hundred books, though the Atlantic lay between him and most of his materials. Further, the blessings of Prescott's destiny as well as its mischances were to act as deterrents of his large purposes. His family's ample means enhanced a tendency of his to utter indolence; and he had an uncommon power of enjoying life apart from the art and science of history. Everybody delighted in his company and loved to serve him. This had its advantages. In his months in a darkened room his sister used to lie on the floor with a book placed to catch the streak of light entering at the sill of the closed door, and read aloud to him for hours. But in general Prescott's pleasure in companionship was a distraction from history.

He was a tall, dark-haired youth, long-limbed and free-moving, with a vivid color and an inexhaustible fund of high spirits and good humor. The injury of his sight was not disfiguring. Many persons considered him the finest-looking creature they had ever seen. Testimonies to his social talent are as abundant as those accorded to Burns:

I have never known any other man whose company was so universally attractive equally to men and to women, to young and to old, and to all classes that he mingled with.

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