Chapter XVI: Part 2: the author discusses method in teaching, applied specifically (8)

“You open his pages—perhaps you distrust him and doubt him—but whether
you agree with him or disagree, whether you are pleased or annoyed,
you inevitably go on reading.”

+ — =Ath= p659 D ‘17 300w

“It is a trifle that a book should be sometimes too exuberant. The
main thing is that it should be alive. And Mr Chesterton’s history is
not only alive, but kicking. It has so much of the truth of
imagination that it may be forgiven for having some of its falsehood
as well.”

+ — =Ath= p661 D ‘17 1650w

“On the whole, it is one of his best books, the tendency to verbal
display and superficial antithesis being balanced by the demands of a
sustained argument.”

+ — =Ath= p683 D ‘17 200w

“This book, a pioneer in historical introspection, must kindle severe
criticism for its superficial conclusions, inferentially at least,
against the assertion of spirited leadership in transition eras, when
the persistence of ‘one good custom should corrupt the world.’ ...
However, Mr Chesterton is to be welcomed in this new rôle of political
philosopher for the fresh interest he brings.” L. E. Robinson

+ — =Bookm= 46:270 N ‘17 700w

“But it is true of Chesterton’s ‘History of England,’ as it is true of
any work of art, that the sanctities which it violates are not so
important as the vision which inspires it.” R. K. Hack

* + =Dial= 64:65 Ja 17 ‘18 1450w

“Finally, Chesterton is unable to make his book wholly impartial; it
is a partizan history, as bitter against the aristocracy as Macaulay
was against the Stuarts and as pro-Catholic as Froude was
anti-Catholic. Chesterton is at his best as a historian when he sums
up for us the general ‘atmosphere’ of an age or an institution.”

+ — =Ind= 93:128 Ja 19 ‘18 1100w

“Mr Chesterton’s thesis is that the middle ages were the time of true
democracy, and that parliamentary government is government by an
anti-popular oligarchy. Upon this general theme he has written a
strange and fascinating history of England.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:501 N 25 ‘17 700w

+ =R of Rs= 57:103 Ja ‘18 170w

“We love Mr Chesterton—we could ‘hug him’, as Johnson said of a man in
whom he discovered his own preference for rhyme—for his real
understanding of and sympathy with the rhetoric and the aristocracy of
the eighteenth century. Mr Chesterton’s ‘Short history’ is the
wittiest, most eloquent, and discerning essay on the history of
England which we have ever happened to read.”

+ =Sat R= 124:395 N 17 ‘17 1100w

“Unsuited, therefore, as Mr Chesterton’s style is to history, it is
still less suited to propagandism. ... A paradoxical partisan runs
very little chance of winning converts. When we want clear thinking he
gives us a jingling antithesis; in the words of Bagehot’s invaluable
distinction, he can make a loud argument but not a fine one. ... And
yet, when we have counted all the faults of the book, we return to its
great outstanding merits: its freshness, its vitality, its interest.”

+ – — =Spec= 119:493 N 3 ‘17 1500w

“Nevertheless the book is a brilliant history of Mr Chesterton’s
reactions from English history.”

+ — =Springf’d Republican= p6 D 18 ‘17 900w

=The Times [London] Lit Sup= p507 O 18 ‘17 140w

“It would be vain to review this book as a history of England, for it
is interesting only as an expression of Mr Chesterton’s mentality. The
historian is well aware that he can only see the past through a glass
of many colours, but he knows that the business of his science is to
dispel, so far as possible, the distortions of the various media
through which historical knowledge is transmitted. But to Mr
Chesterton the distortion is the reality.”

— =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p564 N 22 ‘17 1550w

=CHESTERTON, GILBERT KEITH.= Utopia of usurers, and other essays. *$1.25 (4c) Boni & Liveright 304 17-26888

The “Utopia of usurers” is an attack on modern society, with special
reference to Great Britain. Mr Chesterton “is up in arms against the
terror of a world which shall be ruled—in politics and literature and
art and all things else—by its ‘captains of industry.’” (N Y Times) He
is particularly concerned about “the way in which the capitalists of
today use art and the press for their own purposes. His spleen, it
seems, is largely directed against the liberal press.” (Springf’d
Republican) Some chapters such as: The amnesty for aggression, The
servile state again, and The tower of Bebel, deal with the European
war. Other chapters are: The mask of socialism; A workman’s history of
England; The French revolution and the Irish; The art of missing the
point, etc. Two poems are included: A song of swords and The escape.

=A L A Bkl= 14:85 D ‘17

“The general scope of his latest book, ‘Utopia of usurers,’ is
sociological, but it rambles so wildly and discursively through those
regions that we doubt if anyone who is diligent enough to read it to
the bitter end will have a well-formed idea of his theory of the
structure and organization of modern society. ... He gives us the
impression of the orator who has a plethora of words and a dearth of
ideas and who begins to talk and keeps on talking simply because a
multitude of English phrases are at his command and he cannot resist
the temptation to use them. ... His wit is not so agile as it once
was.” E. F. E.

– + =Boston Transcript= p8 O 31 ‘17 1650w

“The work is an impassioned plea, unmarred by any of the demagogue’s
shallow eloquence, for the natural rights of men and the restoration
of their earlier liberties. If there is somewhat less than usual of Mr
Chesterton’s wit, it is by no means wholly absent; and there is no
lack of wisdom, based upon enduring truths and expressed with the
clearness of a tocsin.”

+ =Cath World= 106:539 Ja ‘18 400w

Reviewed by E: Sapir

* =Dial= 64:25 Ja 3 ‘18 1650w

“The average literary critic always says that Chesterton is an
amusing, entertaining, attractive concocter of paradoxes but that he
is not sincere and must not be taken seriously. Chesterton’s latest
volume is neither amusing nor attractive, it is certainly the least
enjoyable book which he has ever written, but it has a savage
earnestness that puts the charge of insincerity out of court
completely.”

+ =Ind= 92:256 N 3 ‘17 350w

“The ‘Utopia of usurers’ is distinctly among the ‘negative’ creations
of Chesterton, and it takes high rank among those creations. Like all
his iconoclastic works, the ‘Utopia’ is a negation only in an
objective sense: it is destruction which is positive in its purpose.
Chesterton’s natural weapon is the hammer of Thor—in the service of
Christ. And in his latest book he utilizes this ancient weapon against
something very modern and vital, indeed—capitalism.” E. J. Mayer

+ =N Y Call= p15 N 25 ‘17 1000w

“He sums up the advocacy of eugenics as ‘one of the most strange,
simple, and horrible ideas that have ever risen from the deep pit of
original sin.’ He is against the ‘social reforms’ of modern government
with all the strength of his being. Of the view of English history
which is ‘current at public schools and colleges, part of the culture
of all the classes that count for much in government,’ he says flatly:
‘There is not one word of truth in it from beginning to end.’ He is
the reactionary radical here as elsewhere. Some of his essays are
exceedingly dogmatic. With some of his passionate convictions the
reader will not agree. But every page of the book is interesting.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:448 N 4 ‘17 1150w

“He who possesses the rhetorical power of Mr Chesterton and uses that
power to falsify current history, misinterpret motives, and stir up
class hatred is guilty of a crime against humanity.”

— =Outlook= 117:518 N 28 ‘17 240w

“‘Utopia of usurers’ is Chesterton a little grouchy, but Chesterton at
his best or very near his best. The object of the satirist’s attack is
modern plutocratic society, and, if he is not always at pains to
distinguish what is bad from what is good in that society he is always
amusing, without being too paradoxical to be pointless.”

+ — =Springf’d Republican= p17 O 28 ‘17 1400w

=CHEVRILLON, ANDRÉ.= England and the war (1914-1915). *$1.60 (2c) Doubleday 940.91 17-15314

M. Chevrillon, a nephew of Taine, has lived in England, has many
English friends, and has visited outlying parts of the empire. Rudyard
Kipling says in his preface to the volume that Chevrillon writes “with
the knowledge of the psychologist and the profound sympathy of one
long acquainted with our lives, our history, and the expression,
formal or idiomatic, of our thoughts.” The book is “a psychological
study of the English mind in the first eighteen months of war.” (Dial)
It tells how “England awoke from a mood of self-complacency to the
consciousness of being engaged in a life and death struggle; how a
dead weight of cherished traditions, habits, and prejudices, all
connected with much that is best in her life, was cast aside; and how
her scattered and incoherent energies were welded into one collective
and disciplined will.” (The Times [London] Lit Sup) All this is
discussed under the captions: Public opinion; The illusion of
security; The appeal to conscience; The men; The need of adaptation;
Adaptation; To-day and to-morrow. The papers were first published in
the Revue de Paris from November, 1915, to January, 1916.

“His book is not history in the technical sense. But it is the raw
material of history and of the greatest value. The French quickness of
understanding and ability to put oneself in another’s place come here
to the advantage of the future historian.” G. B. A.

+ =Am Hist R= 23:432 Ja ‘18 550w

=A L A Bkl= 14:18 O ‘17

“The best treatment of that aspect of events [national psychology]
that has yet appeared, and much of it is applicable, for one reason or
another to life on this side of the Atlantic.” C. H. P. Thurston

+ =Bookm= 46:286 N ‘17 240w

+ =Cath World= 106:397 D ‘17 310w

=Cleveland= p118 N ‘17 70w

“When allowance for the human fact of conviction is made this is the
best interim study of the English attitude the war has so far
produced.” H. J. Laski

+ — =Dial= 63:53 Jl 19 ‘17 1900w

“Tho M. Chevrillon’s study does not surpass or, indeed, nearly equal
that revelation of the English mind presented by Mr H. G. Wells, yet
skilfully made is his clean cut distinction between the British
sporting conception of war and the German vision of its glory.”

+ — =Ind= 91:474 S 22 ‘17 200w

“This may be regarded as the thesis of the book, the power of religion
and an inborn sense of duty to take the place of intelligent
governmental control before a great and sudden emergency. As coming
from a clear-eyed Frenchman, this study of a national temperament very
different from his own is peculiarly valuable.”

+ =Nation= 105:128 Ag 2 ‘17 200w

“It ought to be read by Americans as much for the light it throws on
our own processes as for the sake of making us understand better our
English cousins.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:261 Jl 15 ‘17 800w

“M. Chevrillon is, of course, no such theorist as was Taine; but he
has a very similar sensitiveness to national character and a like gift
of selecting and developing the essential elements. In this there is
something more than simple thesis-building or than unambitious
description. It is a combination, so to speak, of trenchant analysis
with artistic handling, of intellectual and moral honesty with the
desire to please. Like Taine, too, M. Chevrillon is perhaps a little
prone to exaggerate. But to exaggerate only in the interests of
clearness! If M. Chevrillon’s book really expresses in any degree the
attitude of France toward England, it is reasonable to expect that
there will be not merely a continued alliance between these two
peoples, but a true and enduring friendship.”

+ =No Am= 206:637 O ‘17 1000w

+ =Pittsburgh= 22:761 N ‘17 110w

“Some of this comment has been made obsolete by later developments.
But, as a study of the English mind in contrast with the German, the
book is interesting and it may also prove useful as a piece of
friendly criticism.”

+ — =R of Rs= 56:213 Ag ‘17 100w

“A piece of contemporary history which has, we think, a permanent
value.”

+ =Spec= 119:sup630 D 1 ‘17 180w

“If there is any one deficiency in a narrative and in comments vivid,
pointed, and studiously fair, it is a somewhat insufficient
appreciation of the work of the navy in our days of limited military
inactivity.”

+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p279 Je 14 ‘17 1350w

=CHILDS, LESLIE.= Legal points for automobile owners. 50c (7c) Ogilvie 629.2 17-14172

“The compiler has endeavored to set out, in a few words, the general
rules governing the operation of automobiles, and the liabilities for
violations thereof. This is in no sense a text book, is not intended
for the use of lawyers, or others learned in the law, but for the man
in the street, the farmer, the business or professional man, in fact
any owner of a car.” (Preface) Among the points covered are: The
employer’s liability for acts of his chauffeur; On turning corners;
Frightening horses; When required to stop; Unregistered automobile;
Unlicensed chauffeur; Lending your automobile.

+ =Ind= 91:77 Jl 14 ‘17 40w

=Pittsburgh= 22:664 O ‘17 10w

=St Louis= 15:330 S ‘17

=CHILDS, W. J.= Across Asia Minor on foot. il *$4 (2½c) Dodd 915.6 (Eng ed 17-26394)

The author started from Samsûn on the Black sea and traveled, by a
somewhat devious route, to Alexandretta on the Mediterranean. His
experiences were pleasant ones and he writes of them entertainingly.
He says, “Only in the quality of adventure did realisation fall short
of what might have been expected. Brigandage and robbery, fighting
between troops and deserters, murder and forcible abductions—affairs
of this kind took place before and behind me, but I missed them ever,
sometimes by days, sometimes only by hours, and moved always, it
seemed, in the peaceful intervals between storms. For this reason no
blood-shedding, no hair-breadth escapes will be found in the
narrative.” His journey was taken in the days before the war and he
met with universal kindness, from American, German, Turk, Armenian and
Greek. In his last chapter he touches on the international
significance of the undeveloped resources of Asia Minor.

“Incidentally sheds light on the Armenian situation before the war and
the German plan for a railway to Bagdad.”

+ =A L A Bkl= 13:397 Je ‘17

“Not only lovers of travel but those readers desiring to understand as
much as possible local conditions in the various fighting areas of the
war will find Mr Childs’ book a revelation. ... For on the same
battle-scarred terrain where Alexander and Cæsar fought for that world
hegemony only the control of the travel route to India and the Far
East could give the armies of the Allies are fighting today.” F. B.

+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ap 11 ‘17 800w

“A tale of adventure of never slackening interest from beginning to
end.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:196 My 20 ‘17 200w

=Pittsburgh= 22:677 O ‘17 60w

“The illustrations are attractive, but we are rather surprised that an
obviously competent writer has forgotten the detail of an index.”

+ =Sat R= 123:233 Mr 10 ‘17 830w

“Exceptionally attractive and brilliant book of travel. ... Mr Childs
does not devote much space to politics. He has too many other subjects
to deal with, and, like Borrow, prefers the wind on the heath or a
night in a crowded tavern among alien folk to debating high matters of
state. But his shrewd estimates of the native peoples are fresh and
valuable.”

+ =Spec= 118:273 Mr 3 ‘17 1950w

“To some not the least interesting part of the book is the indication
constantly given as the traveller gets farther south of the large
far-seeing policy which the Germans have for the last twenty years
been slowly, quietly, and consistently carrying out in the East. ...
We are grateful for a book which enables us to share the romance of
one great road before the railway opens up its hidden places and
destroys its guarded secrets.”

+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p221 My 10 ‘17 1350w

=CHITWOOD, OLIVER PERRY.= Immediate causes of the great war. *$1.35 (3c) Crowell 940.91 17-13588

“The object of this volume is to narrate briefly the direct causes of
the European war as they are given in the published documents of the
belligerents. These sources are abundantly adequate for determining
the immediate responsibility of each nation and apportioning the guilt
for this great crime.” (Preface) The author is professor of European
history in West Virginia university, and he says that his experience
as a teacher has shown him the need for such a work. Contents: Some
indirect causes of the war; The assassination of Francis Ferdinand;
The Austro-Hungarian note to Serbia; Serbia’s reply to
Austria-Hungary; Efforts to prevent war; Efforts to isolate the war;
The war area broadens; Great Britain declares war on the Teutonic
powers; The violation of the neutrality of Belgium; Japan and Turkey
drawn into the conflict; Italy enters the war; The lesser
belligerents.

+ =A L A Bkl= 14:88 D ‘17

+ =Ind= 90:556 Je 23 ‘17 50w

=N Y Br Lib News= 4:101 Jl ‘17

“Persons who do not have access to the various official statements of
the governments at war, or do not have time to read the evidence
therein presented, will find this summary convenient and useful.”

+ =R of Rs= 56:214 Ag ‘17 100w

=CHOLMONDELEY, ALICE.= Christine. *$1.35 (2c) Macmillan 17-21644

Reviewers differ from each other as to whether these letters are fact
or fiction. The publishers wrote the editor of the Digest on September
13, that “We don’t know and we have no means of finding out.” The
letters purport to be written to a mother by a young Englishwoman with
a talent for music, who goes to Germany to study the violin, and is in
Berlin from May to August, 1914. Christine believes all Germans to be
“simple and kindly.” Her disillusionment begins in Frau Berg’s
middle-class boarding-house where “she becomes a target for the
Anglophobe remarks of the other boarders,” and is continued in the
home of a family of the “junker-military-official military set,” where
she goes to live later because she has become engaged to a young
officer in the Prussian army with a leaning towards music. The point
of view of the well-to-do country folk is given when she goes for a
short rest to the home of a forester and his wife at Schuppenfelde.
The artistic set is represented by her violin teacher, Kloster, who
seems to stand “for fearlessness, for freedom, for beauty, for all the
great things,” but is silenced when the government “chokes him with
the Order of the Red Eagle, First class.” When war comes, Christine’s
situation becomes impossible and she starts to join her mother in
Switzerland, but contracts pneumonia on the way and dies in a hospital
at Stuttgart.

+ =A L A Bkl= 14:94 D ‘17

“In style and feeling ‘Christine’ reminds one strongly of ‘Fräulein
Schmidt and Mr Anstruther’ and other works of the Baroness von Arnim.”

+ =Ath= p526 O ‘17 160w

“It is not often that a collection of letters intended for no eyes but
those of a beloved mother turns out to be an amazingly accurate
revelation of the real, hidden nature of a great people. ... To the
earnest men and women of the time the book is a state document, to the
eager story readers an idyll, to the lover of music a perfect
interlude, to any reader an hour’s delight.”

+ =Boston Transcript= p6 Ag 29 ‘17 2400w

“Whether fact or fiction, they have the ring of truth and
spontaneity.”

+ =Cath World= 106:251 N ‘17 300w

“They tell a touching story, and give a vivid, but for artistic
purposes, somewhat over-emphasized picture of a whole nation
hypnotized by one man.”

+ — =Cleveland= p132 D ‘17 80w

“The doubt as to the legitimacy of the letters comes when one reads
the initial one, which, like all first letters in epistolary novels,
retails to the ostensible recipient all the facts the reader needs to
know. And as one reads on, the natural development of events, the
study of the actions and reactions of different classes of Germans to
war and then to the war, no less than the fluency of the style, seem
to indicate that ‘Christine’ is a clever, interesting, but fabricated,
narrative.”

+ =Dial= 63:220 S 13 ‘17 550w

+ =Ind= 91:353 S 1 ‘17 80w

“If the volume is indeed what it purports to be—it is a document as
significant as any which the war has yet furnished. For, on this
assumption, it goes far to wipe out the distinction gladly made by
many between the attitude of the German people and that of the German
government towards the possibility of a world war. Provided the
letters are genuine, they leave little doubt that the great middle
class in Germany ardently desired, even before the Sarajevo tragedy, a
testing of German arms, and especially with England. If this is not a
true history (and we prefer to believe that it is), then we can only
deplore the wretched taste of an author who just at this time would
dare to confirm our worst suspicions of Germany by an elaborate
fiction parading as a document before the fact.”

=Nation= 105:202 Ag 23 ‘17 1000w

“Were ‘Christine’ genuine, it would be impressive. Were ‘Christine’ a
‘human document,’ it would confirm many sickening doubts and fears, it
would fortify the indictment of a whole people. But whether those
doubts and fears are to be sustained or not, ‘Christine’ will not
confirm them or even support them because it is a book obviously
composed by a skilful writer of fiction, feeding the appetite for
hatred, supplying in detail and with subtle art the ‘confirmation’
which it is natural at this date for groveling natures to relish.” F.
H.

— =New Repub= 12:277 O 6 ‘17 1500w

“A book which is true in essentials though it wears the garb of
fiction—so real is it that one is tempted to doubt whether it is
fiction at all. ... It would be difficult to find a book in which the
state of mind of the German people just before and at the very
beginning of the war was pictured so clearly, with so much
understanding and convincing detail, as it is in this one. The letters
are admirably written, revealing an absolutely charming personality.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:285 Ag 5 ‘17 1200w

“Doubtless it is based on ‘genuine’ letters. But we can’t help
believing that in editing these letters ‘Alice Cholmondeley’s’
knowledge of the needs of fiction was drawn on repeatedly. And we
can’t see that the book—even as a ‘document’—has suffered in
consequence. The fact part has not been injured by the fiction.”

+ =N Y Times= 22:358 S 23 ‘17 930w

+ =Pittsburgh= 22:748 N ‘17 40w

+ =Pratt= p50 O ‘17 20w

“It is also odd to find a girl in real life so extraordinarily like
one in Mrs Ward’s novels.”

– + =Sat R= 124:509 D 22 ‘17 560w

+ =Spec= 119:389 O 13 ‘17 250w

“The chief value of the letters—assuming the correctness of the
author’s observations—is the vivid presentation of the German
viewpoint and the analysis of the bumptious, modern-minded, all
sufficient, yet fear-haunted Germany that plunged the world into a
needless war.”

+ =Springf’d Republican= p15 Ag 26 ‘17 700w

“In one sense, however, it does not matter whether the setting is real
or only made up. The matter, in either case, is full of truth. The
letters, whether written by an English girl in Berlin before the war,
or by a clever story-teller in England during the war, were written by
someone who knew Germany and the Germans.”

+ =The Times [London] Lit Sup= p450 S 20 ‘17 750w

=CHRISTIAN, W. E.= Rhymes of the rookies. *$1 Dodd 811 17-25969

The “sunny side of soldier service” is dedicated to Theodore
Roosevelt. The rhymes have been called the barrack-room ballads of the
American soldier, touching, as they do, upon the little monotonies of
life in camp. Aside from the short poems there is a glossary of
American and English army slang, words to the army trumpet calls and a
few hints for first aid.

=A L A Bkl= 14:85 D ‘17

=CHURCH, ALEXANDER HAMILTON.= Manufacturing costs and accounts. diags *$5 McGraw 657 17-3317

“It is the purpose of this book to present the subject of costing in
such a way as to bring together the points of view of cost men and of
general accountants. ... The book is divided into three parts, the
first of which gives a general outline of manufacturing accounts. ...