THE MANCHESTER GUARDIAN

London, England

6 January 1914

(PAGE 6)

THE REVIEWS.

THE "ENGLISH," "CORNHILL," AND "BLACKWOOD'S."

In the "English Review" Mr. Anthony L. Ellis has a short appreciation of Stanley Houghton. Perhaps he stresses unduly the element of revolt in Houghton, who most certainly did not rate himself as "a daring and original thinker." Mr. Ellis praises heartily; he is not content to speak of promise, but recognizes positive achievement; and especially, he believes that Houghton would have done fine work if he had lived. There is much of interest and entertainment in Mr. George Moore's "Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge," which is a chapter of "Vale," to be published presently; Mr. Moore can gossip, but he is always critical, and he has first-rate standards of social intercourse. A piece of curious interest is a translation of the preliminary sketch of Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata"; it strikes us as more shocking than the completed work, which was more charged with edifying intention. Other interesting articles are Mr. Ernest Newman's on the Piano-Player; Mr. Gosse's address on Sterne, which was delivered to the Authors' Club last November; "Dialect Words," by Mr. Logan Pearsall Smith; and an examination by Mr. W. M. J. Williams of that complicated subject "The Land of London"; those who have read Mr. Gretton's novel, "Almayne of Mainfort" may appreciate Mr. William's remark on the difficulties of obtaining knowledge of London estates. A queer item is Mr. Aleister Crowley's poem on Moscow [The City of God], with which the review opens. Mr. Crowley is an expert in the portentous, a collector of clanging, menacing phrases; we are a little doubtful about it all and disposed to seek for relief in Anthony Trollope or Jane Austen. Mr. Wells continues his "Story of Mankind," and some indication of the sensations is in the titles of the chapters—"The New Source of Energy" and "The Last War." But there is very much more than startling events. There is, for instance, the great Dubois, one of the sane imposters on a credulous mankind. He is the French General in the great European war, and "deep in his soul he had hidden his own profound discovery about the modern art of warfare; the key to his career. And this discovery was that nobody knew, that to act, therefore, was to blunder, that to talk was to confess; and that the man who acted slowly and steadfastly and above all silently had the best chance of winning through. Meanwhile one fed the men." We may be reminded of Tolstoy's "War and Peace," but Dubois, if comparatively superficial, makes a fine ironical figure when he is shattered in the cataclysm and remains a torso with his usual expression of assured confidence.