THE WESTMINSTER GAZETTE

London, England

3 November 1913

(page 6)

REVIEWS & MAGAZINES

OF THE MONTH.

THE “ENGLISH REVIEW.”

Recent railway accidents provide material for an article in which Mr. Rowland Kenney insists that there must be war between the public and the railway companies on the question of safeguards.

If the members of the travelling public are not prepared to help themselves, there is no help for them. There, however, the matter lies: Railway shareholders want dividends, railway directors must make dividends How much longer is the public prepared to continue to let dividend-making interfere with the provision of adequate safeguards against accidents to human life and limb?

Mr. Kenney points the way to safety in automatic signalling on a system by which the position of the signals will be conveyed to drivers in their cabs. The present system of picking up signals puts an impossible strain upon the men in bad weather.

The editor of the “Review” gives us an entertaining, if entirely personal, account of the difficulties of his office. Mr. Maurice Hewlett opens the “Review” with a poem which strengthens his claim to recognition among the men who are giving a new note to English verse. The second article is a reproduction of letters written by Dr. Shortt and his wife during Napoleon’s stay in St. Helena. Dr. Shortt was Principal Medical Officer in the island, but he had very little contact with the great captive, who detested doctors, and only allowed their ministrations within a few days of his death. There is, however, a simple and pathetic account of the funeral of the former Emperor.

Mr. Israel Zangwill gives us a long historical account of the militant suffrage movement. of which it need not he said he is a supporter more enthusiastic than the women themselves. In eyes those who have suffered prison are at once martyrs and heroes; they should not be excluded from the vote, they should be given a hundred votes each. The errors of the women “will seem small to posterity in comparison with the Liberal Leader’s sin against Liberalism”:

That the protagonist of the people, the historic over thrower of the Lords, should be the evil genius of the women’s movement, is a tragic paradox. Mr. Asquith is a statesman of grave and lofty conceptions and otherwise unblemished honesty, but his latest pose that there is little to be said on one side or the other is more amazing than his ancient antagonism. That was well-stultifying, but [illegible]; this is unpardonable frivolity.

We may all be prophets; time alone can decide between the value of different predictions.

A desponding account of “Art in America’ is given by Mr. Aleister Crowley. In every form of art America is comparatively barren. “The Himalayas are too big for anyone to sing, and America is all Himalayas of one kind or another.” So we must wait for all the problems of America to subside before American art comes to its own.