ECONOMIC PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY. By Arthur Twining Hadley, President Emeritus of Yale University. New York: The Macmillan Company.

The title of the volume in which the former President of Yale has collected certain lectures which he delivered at several British universities under the Sir George Watson Foundation, is in itself significant. Not very long ago it appeared to be the general sentiment of America that the world had no problems which Democracy could not solve. Today it is generally felt that Democracy is still in its experimental stage and that the success of the experiment is not absolutely assured by any law of nature or any divine decree.

The progress of conservative thought in the last half century is pretty accurately marked by some of the more definitive statements made in this book. No more clarifying sentence about our present economic and political situation has been written than President Hadley's statement that "we have two large pieces of ethical deadwood to remove: the belief on the part of capitalists that property right is something sacred, and the belief on the part of the workingman that labor creates value." Not only does this saying neatly embody two fundamental truths, but it accurately measures the progress in responsible thinking that has been made since the days of the classical economists. Similarly significant is the author's insistence on the really progressive doctrine that "private property is in the large sense a public trust, and that the rights of the property owner in the courts depend upon the extent to which the perpetuation of the trust contributes to the purpose for which it was created."

Equally with the belief in dogmas regarding property and value, our belief in education as a panacea for all the evils incident to democracy is being subjected to criticism. Substantially the education of our fathers and of our grandfathers was a good education because it was fundamental and because it taught intellectual honesty and self-reliance. As the problems of national life have become more and more complex, we have tended to rely more and more upon popular education and to make that more complex, too. Educational theory was adversely affected by two influences that have gained greatly in strength down to the present time: the over-valuation of mere knowledge as compared with training, and the disastrous supposition that all subjects ought to be naturally interesting to the student, from which was deduced the idea that it was the duty of the teacher to make them so if they were not. In all the theoretic discussions of possible remedies for the defects of democratic government, it would be difficult to find a single remark really more closely related to the subject or more sound and practical than the observation of President Hadley that "by putting a proper responsibility upon the pupils, we can vastly increase our amount of real teaching without any corresponding increase in cost."

In its treatment of many different phases of Democracy, the reader will find this book sane and deliberate in the judgments it expresses, but also critical, searching, and progressive.

EBONY AND IVORY. By Llewelyn Powys. New York: American Library Service.

It is with curiosity, with half painful, half pleasurable expectation, that one opens a book which one knows to be the expression of an impressionable spirit that has experienced some sort of terrifying intimacy with life, with reality, with what we call nature.

Llewelyn Powys was born at Dorchester, England, in 1884. He received the education of an English gentleman at Sherbourne School and at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Normally his career would have been that of a scholar and man of letters. In 1912 he visited the United States and delivered a course of lectures upon English Literature under the auspices of the University Extension Society. But ill health forced him to live in a wandering, provisional sort of way. In 1914 he travelled to British East Africa, and there, in the Rift Valley, he recovered his health sufficiently to permit of his taking up the life of a stock-farmer. On the declaration of peace he returned to England, having lived in Africa for five years. The spirit of the Dark Continent had sunk deep into his soul.

The studies in savagery-the savagery of nature and of human naturewhich form the "ebony" part of Mr. Powys's book are better by far than the slighter sketches of civilized life which make up, presumably, the white or "ivory" part. There is in Mr. Powys's almost too eloquent descriptions of African life a perfectly genuine shudder which supports his uncompromising realism. But it is only through association with a remarkable though undisciplined power of description and with certain general, though not very profound, reflections about life, that the African sketches seem to approach literature. The author lacks the power to convince one that he has touched fundamentals—that one's own reactions would have been measurably the same as his under like conditions.

In the European tales, there is a frank, if superficial, paganism, and a naïve acceptance of the gay life of cities as a summum bonum, which some minds may find refreshing. Yet the significance of these tales is really so slight that there seems to have been but little excuse for publishing them. Leaving the moral tone out of consideration and adopting a Pyrrhonistic attitude in matters of morals, one may at least say that Mr. Powys's philosophy, though fairly good in Africa, is decidedly inapplicable to Europe.

Throughout the whole book one feels the lack, not, indeed, of any particular creed or any special conventions, but of any of the essentially human, the truly literary qualities; of any large attitude, whether of acceptance or rejection, of any especial fineness or distinction, even, in the profession of a hedonistic creed. Leavened by the high spirit of a Jack London, the intellectual virility of a Samuel Buller, or the penetrating sadness of a John Masefield, these stories might be great.

DEADLINES. By Henry Justin Smith. Chicago: Covici-McGee.

In its extraordinary combination of two elements almost never united, Deadlines, the new book by the news editor of The Chicago Daily News stands apart from all other books-be they works of fiction or of sober fact-that have dealt with journalism. This series of sketches is written with the authority of the professional. It comes the nearest to accurate description of physical conditions and character in a newspaper office of all books that have essayed in any degree to picture these things from within. In a way, the volume is a vade mecum for the cub reporter. At the same time, it is written with literary breath, with full cognizance of the viewpoint of the outsider, with a thoroughly modern realism that te'ls the reader all the secrets of the prison house.

The character portraits in this book, though composite, have the stamp of reality upon them, the atmosphere is a true atmosphere, above all the mental attitudes are obviously genuine. All the boredom and all the fascination of newspaper work are here, and one learns why able men hate it and remain in it.

The glamor of the newspaper world, as commonly conceived in fiction, is stripped away, and a new glamor is substituted, a glamor that takes account of hideousness and weariness and bad temper, of thwarted ambitions and preserved ideals, of the “dank, blank canvas dawn" and the weary nightwatch, as well as of the excitement of the big scoop. It seems as if the so-called "cynicism" of the newspaper man, an attitude dramatized and merely hinted at by such writers as Kipling and R. H. Davis, here found its true expression as a sort of ingrained philosophy, devoid of pose, the inevitable outcome of experience.

What we have here, indeed, is something more than fictionized fact or factual fiction. It is a searching study of a business, a profession, imperfectly socialized, incompletely professionalized. Newspaper work is an occupation that maddens, hardens, or breaks many of those who are involved in it. For the life of the newspaper man and the nature of his product, the public, its cravings, its tastes, its notions of efficiency, are responsible. Our civilization, which makes news what it is, is also responsible. Unlike the men of other professions, the newspaper man cannot, if he would, set up a protective wall between himself and the world, shutting out all but a limited number of interests, impressions, or demands. He cannot possess his soul in quiet by receiving patients or clients in an office. He is at the mercy of everything, and life, crude life, is his master.

It is difficult to express these ideas without seeming to overdraw and without implying that Mr. Smith has overdrawn. The essential fact is that Mr. Smith, a newspaper man, really does see the newspaper life as a phase of civilization and has thus portrayed it.

GLIMPSES OF AUTHORS. By Caroline Ticknor. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Half the knowledge that Caroline Ticknor possesses concerning notable authors, ranging in date from Charles Dickens to Eugene Field, would amply justify the writing and publication of a larger book than her Glimpses of Authors. In this book one will find authentic reminiscences of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Mark Twain, Lafcadio Hearn, William Winter, Henry James-an astonishing list. Whatever facts, great or small, can be gathered concerning any of such eminent or notable persons as are written of in this book are in general worthy of careful collection and of publication in some form or other. But of course there is gossip and gossip, anecdote and anecdote.

Some persons are more fortunate than others in the kind of gossip and anecdote that comes to them, and still more fortunate in the gift of a fine discrimination. The author of Glimpses is among the particularly favored ones—so much that is distinctive and truly prizable has come within her ken, so nice is the sense of values which enables her to present acceptably the tiniest things as well as the more striking phases of life and character that she has observed or known about.

Surely that sense of immediacy which some writers of reminiscences are able to convey to their readers is a great gift. Possessing it, Miss Ticknor seems to bring us face to face with those of whom she writes and to make the past as vivaciously appealing as are the better moments of the present. A book of literary reminiscences so artfully natural, so deftly put together, and so genuine in its contents as this will be everywhere welcomed.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

JUNE, 1923

THE UNITED STATES AND THE NEW TURKEY

BY ALFRED L. P. DENNIS

THE delegates to the adjourned Conference at Lausanne, which is to meet on April 23, are gathering as I write. It is impossible, therefore, to prophesy what they may do or how they may act. Enough has happened, however, to give occasion for a brief recapitulation of the original situation as it developed at Lausanne. Then the difficult condition in which Americans find themselves may become clearer. Furthermore, there are the fundamental factors which must continue to affect the entire question of the relations of the United States to the new Turkey.

The first Conference at Lausanne was notable in that, while it did not produce an agreement, it exposed at least two clear examples of Turkish diplomacy. The pledges given by the Angora Government to Soviet Russia in respect to the régime to be adopted for the Straits were speedily abandoned by the Turks. The agreement which was not signed at Lausanne but which was practically secured regarding the Straits was opposed by Soviet Russia. It was tempestuously denounced by Chicherin on February 1. He declared: "If the convention is signed without Russia, the Ukraine, and Georgia, the latter will retain an entirely free hand and complete liberty of action. If certain Powers sign this convention without Russia, the Ukraine, and Georgia, the Straits question remains and will remain open."

This was in accord with the pledges mutually given by both

Copyright, 1923, by North American Review Corporation. All rights reserved.