Chapter C: A. Tait (10)

One peasant, I remember, Paul Simur by name, of whom my father was
specially fond, was so dirty and unwashed that a sort of mark of
dirt had formed upon his features. One day, at a hunting-party, papa
called to Paul to come and sit beside him, and the other huntsmen,
with singular bad taste, began to make fun of Paul, who sat much
abashed, with hanging head. Papa affectionately laid an arm about
his neck and defended him, until his friends finally cried out that
they wagered he would not kiss him. At this, although he confessed
afterwards to the most intense repugnance, he at once kissed Paul
heartily. Poor Paul was quite overcome. He came to my father
afterwards with tears in his eyes and said, standing before him and
gazing at him: "_Oh, mon maître, que je t'aime!_"

Although the accounts of old Breton customs--the glimpse at the Folgoat pardon, the gently critical analysis of the lives of the gentry, the sidelights on the peasants, their cooking and their cottages--are all full of interest, the book is chiefly to be valued for preserving the fragrance of an order of living which too many of us are apt to think of as one of harsh tyranny alleviated by wanton luxury.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY

THE LIFE OF THOMAS COUTTS, BANKER. By ERNEST HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 2 Vols. Lane. 42_s._ net.

Thomas Coutts, virtual founder of the Bank of his name as it now is, was born in 1735, and, according to the standards of Scotland, well born, having, that is, wise, reputable forbears, relatives with place-names of their own--Stuarts of Allanbank and the like--and a coat-of-arms. "Instead of which," as the old story has it, at the age of twenty-eight he married his mother's nursemaid, and loved and served her faithfully until, after some fifty years' partnership, she wandered out of her mind and then out of his world. By that time his three daughters by her had married, one an Earl of Guilford, one a Marquis of Bute, and one Sir Francis Burdett. By that time also Coutts was one of the most considerable bankers in London, and one of the richest men in England. It might now be thought that his adventures in life were over--but not at all. At seventy years of age he stepped once more into the _Pays du Tendre_, and took into his protection--which in his case, it really appears, had no secondary meaning--Miss Harriot Mellon, a low comedy actress of abundant charm, humble birth, little education, and excellent disposition. She was then twenty-eight. He fell headlong in love with her and head over heels. He endowed her with stock and other movables to the amount of £500 a year, and when, at the age of eighty, he made her his second wife he settled the whole of that endowment upon herself. At his death, Mr. Coleridge tells us, her private fortune could not have been less than £200,000. Notwithstanding the estrangement and unconcealed disgust of "the ladies," as he always called his daughters, she made him perfectly happy for nine years; and when, at eighty-nine, he died, very reasonably, he left her practically everything he possessed.

That in outline is the life-history of Thomas Coutts as Mr. Ernest Coleridge pleasantly and ably narrates it in two portly volumes. The book offers a view of eighteenth-century manners which is not often, and seldom so well, illustrated. Coutts must have been, and he was, a notable man of affairs; but he was a good deal better than that. He knew, of course, everybody who was anybody. He was the friend and correspondent of Lord Bute, the favourite of Lord Chatham, of William Pitt. He lent, _mero motu ejus_, £10,000 to Charles Fox without security of any kind. He lent large sums to the Duchess of Devonshire, and forwent the interest until such time as her son was pleased to pay it; for her husband never would. He lectured that great and gay lady upon her follies with perfect freedom and no result. All the royal rips, sons of George III., banked with him, or, in other words, borrowed from him; and they dined with him too. Edward Duke of Kent, the only one of them who was not a rip, made a friend of him as well as a convenience. It is interesting to remark how Coutts deals with these disreputable magnates. He is respectful of their degree in so far as he is shopkeeper and they customers; but outside the bank-parlour he stands on level terms. His children are to commence with their children; his wife's table is as good as their tables. Servant-girl or not, his wife, Mrs. Coutts, is the equal of their wives. There is nothing of Sir Pertinax MacSycophant in his letters, although, as a trader, he continually has his eye upon business, and is never above doing himself a good turn. Mr. Coleridge is to be congratulated upon having presented so engaging a picture of the sound, cautious, and upright Scots merchant, who kept his head and his balance through the convulsions of the American and French wars, and cultivated the domestic virtues in the same social set as Old Q. and the Duchess of Gordon.

But, except for that sappy core of romance which twice betrayed itself in act and once in word, Tom Coutts was a dry stick. While his views of political affairs were sound and uncommonly independent, his expression of them was not interesting. He was by inheritance a Tory, yet he was staunch upon the American war. "The idea," he wrote in 1775 to Lord Stair, "of reducing such a continent to obedience (especially after letting them have so much time to unite) appears to me, so far as I am capable of judging, to be absolutely impossible." So, too, he opposed the war with revolutionary France. "The war made against their growth seems to me to be exactly the way to encourage instead of destroying them. There is no instance of opposition by force of arms subduing opinions! which by such manners have always grown stronger and more inveterate." One might be reading the present Dean of St. Paul's. The same faculty of seeing things as they really were allowed him to have no good opinion of Pitt's Reform proposals of 1784, and gave him as early as 1785 a plan of dealing with Irish disaffection which was in fact adopted in 1800, to our cost. "As to Ireland, I apprehend it is an aristocracy of about thirty nobles, etc., who command two hundred votes in the Lower House, and that these thirty may be bought and a union accomplished more easily than that heap of nonsense called the Irish propositions." They _were_ bought.

Mr. Coleridge prints a recently discovered bundle of his love-letters to Harriot Mellon, from which, if one could feel love-letters to be fair game, it would be tempting, and easy, to make extracts. They are striking by their extraordinary difference from his other familiar correspondence. Coutts becomes emotional, profuse, sentimental, and occasionally ridiculous. Few love-letters, however, will stand the test of examination in cold blood. It can be said of his at least that there is nothing in them which is not intended to honour the recipient. To Coutts his Harriot was a pattern of womanly virtue. It is Mr. Coleridge's opinion, as it is our own, that she deserved it. That she made him happy is obvious; that she returned him a grateful love let this, which was written by herself five years after her wedding-day, bear witness:

"I never lose my spirits." My blessed Tom said these words to me in a
dream. After he had kissed me and laid his dear head on my bosom, I
felt his tears on my cheek--I was so happy, but so melancholy happy.
He looked so well, tranquil and divine.... I see him at this moment,
upright, beautiful and composed, as in his long and immaculate life.
He looks just as I first saw his dear, blessed face upwards of twenty
years ago.

That is both tenderly and prettily said. Tom Coutts, in his marriage as in other things, knew what he was about.

THE TURKS IN EUROPE. By W. E. D. ALLEN. Murray. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

"La Turquie est le pays classique du massacres," it has been truly said.... "Son historie se résume à ceci: pillages, meurtres, vols, concussions--sur toutes les échilles--révoltes, insurrections, répercussions, guerres étrangères, guerres civiles, révolutions, contre-révolutions, séditions, mutineries." All these things are the theme of Mr. Allen's interesting and well-written sketch of the Turkish power, from the rise of Osman in the thirteenth century down to the Treaty of Bukarest in 1913. Mr. Allen does not, however, confine himself to a mere record of horrors. He contrives throughout his book to draw in a few lines the characters of the chief actors in the drama, and, especially in the later chapters, to expose the policies, European and Turkish, which have created and complicated the long nightmare of the Near East. Many of our troubles of the last forty years are attributed by him to the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the triumph of Lord Beaconsfield's policy. It was a treaty concluded, he says, "in a spirit of shameless bargain, with a sublime disregard of elementary ethics, and in open contempt of the right of civilised peoples to determine their own future. It was essentially a temporary arrangement concluded between rival Imperialist States." A few years later the "grim raw races" in the Balkans were again in a savage ferment, and we could enjoy "the spectacle of the heads of the civilised world, in their palaces in the capitals of Europe, setting those same 'grim raw races' to kill." Mr. Allen in his narrative of this later period does not spare his criticism of the diabolic diplomacy of Berlin and Vienna, of the brilliant cunning of their agents in Turkey--and notably Baron Marschal von Bieberstein.

ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA. By ALFRED W. POLLARD. Sidgwick & Jackson. 3_s._ net.

In this little volume, one of a series called _Messages of the Saints_, Mr. Pollard has re-told the ever-fascinating story of St. Catherine, Siena's fourteenth-century saint. "In the present sketch," says the author, "there is nothing original, save possibly its point of view and (I believe) the chapter on St. Catherine's book."

Its point of view is that of an ardent if critical admirer of St. Catherine, and full justice is done to what after all are the qualities which made of her not only the most lovable, but perhaps the most amazing of saintly women. _Amor vincit omnia_ is the motto which springs to the mind as most fit for Catherine of Siena. In an age of cruelty she is love personified. It was love for her fellow-creatures, concern for their immortal welfare, that led her, a poor ignorant "little bit of a woman," to face with the simplicity of a child and the wisdom born of simplicity princes and popes, and force them, not to her own will, but to what she conceived to be the Will of God.

To all who have lived long enough in Siena, Catherine becomes a living personality. So real indeed that it would scarcely be surprising to meet her one evening at dusk in that long steep street--still the street of the tanners--where six hundred years ago she walked with her lantern on her way to the sick and dying during the plague. In Siena one is apt to forget that St. Catherine was a figure in politics and the composer of a book about which the learned dispute. Still, on the day of her festival the townsfolk sing the "Praise of Catherine," to them merely the tanner's daughter who, greatly to the glory of their beautiful little city, somehow became a saint.

Mr. Pollard's chapter on the _Libro della Divina Dottrina_, the treatise said to have been dictated by St. Catherine while in a trance, is valuable because it summarises typical pronouncements of the mystic upon the various stages of the soul in its pilgrimage towards a spiritual goal.

As a revelation of the subconscious self, if for no other reason, St. Catherine's book has its own intense interest. Those who are already familiar with her story may, by the help of Mr. Pollard's pleasant sketch, refresh their memory of its details, and to those who are not it should, as he hopes, prove a stimulating introduction to the life of a wonderful woman.

VICTORIAN RECOLLECTIONS. By J. H. BRIDGES. Bell. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

Mr. Bridges deliberately adopts the attitude of the _laudator temporis acti se puero_. The worst of this prose is that, just as it may attract the sympathy of men of his own generation, it inevitably repels slightly those of a younger. Nothing is more tiresome than to listen to judgments on life and manners whose chief point lies in the opening words, "Well, I tell you in 185--we did not," or "we did"--such criticism automatically provokes the retort, "Well, this isn't 185--," whereat your ancient growls, "I would to God it were," and youth and eld stand back to uncomfortable back, with no chance of doing any useful work.

Fortunately Mr. Bridges, although angry at the modern depreciation of things Victorian, is better than his threat. He is not too comparative, and although overfond of censure, his blame has a humorous quality which keeps it inoffensive. At times the humour is unconscious, as in Mr. Bridges' charming suggestion that the beauty of the primrose is more noticed and "more respected" because ardent Tory enthusiasm associated Peter Bell's flower with the late Lord Beaconsfield: but Mr. Bridges' essentially "pawky" quality of mind--we use the word in an amiable sense--crops out not infrequently as, for instance, in his grave statement that he would be "in favour of a law forbidding anyone to own more than 150 newspapers."

Mr. Bridges gives an account of his schooldays under a flogging master, which adds yet another count to the indictment against Victorian methods of education. He does not tell us much that is unfamiliar, either of Eton or Oxford, though many will be glad to have his description of the old-time Don, and the Dean Gaisford's letter to a noble father who enquired after his son's University progress:

"My Lord, Such letters give much trouble to
"Your humble servant,
"THE DEAN OF CHRIST CHURCH."

In the late fifties Mr. Bridges visited Canada and the United States, and he records his conviction that Senator Douglas was Lincoln's "superior as speaker and politician," a verdict which makes one wonder a little what his standards of oratory are, and how a politician, obviously inferior in moral character, who also fails to keep his country's confidence can be called the inferior of one who wins its trust. Mr. Bridges abandoned his plan to settle in the New World, and returned to England and started farming, first in the Eastern counties and subsequently in Shropshire. In the chapters dealing with his life in rural England he sketches some village types for the reader with a genuine feeling for character. Particularly good is the final chapter, "A Survival," with its touching picture of Old Tom, "the last survivor hereabouts of the old-style agricultural labourer." Whatever one's political colour, one cannot help sympathising with Mr. Bridges and Old Tom in their lament at the decay of rural England, and at the growth of conditions which made it possible for "more and more people to wax rich in London and in the big towns, while no one can earn a living in the country." Though the latter ceased to be true during the war, one is yet uncertain how far the prosperity then enjoyed by the farmer will continue as war conditions slowly depart.

THE LIFE OF LIZA LEHMANN. By HERSELF. T. Fisher Unwin. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

Born in London, daughter of a Scotswoman, educated in Italy, married to an Englishman, Liza Lehmann's heart--and she was a woman who always let her heart rule her head--was unconsciously fixed in England. Yet as we turn the pages of her autobiography there is hardly one in which we do not feel conscious that she belonged by unalterable temperament to the land of _Die Gartenlaube_ and _Familie Buchholz_. Many English singers and audiences in the happy days before the war have felt that for all their devotion to Schumann, the domestic intimacies of _Frauenliebe und Leben_ were too intensely German for an English sense of proportion and sense of humour. Let them read _The Life of Liza Lehmann_ in their own tongue, and they will turn with relief to the reticence and dignity of Chamisso's lyrics. It is evident that she was a woman who never did an act, never cherished a thought, that was not a kind one. She collaborated in an opera with Mr. Laurence Housman; he considered that she had wrecked his play, she thought that he had wrecked her music; but she records the awkward incident without the least trace of ill-will, nay, without the least supposition that he or anyone else in the world could have borne ill-will to her. Liszt, Brahms, Browning, and Verdi were among her acquaintances; but she has little to tell us about them. They counted for far less in her life than Madame Clara Butt, Mr. Kennerley Rumford, Mr. Arthur Boosey, and Mr. Landon Ronald; and even these were unsubstantial shadows compared to her mother, her husband, and her sons. A large proportion of her book is taken up with newspaper criticisms and interviews, mostly American. They gave the authoress no little pleasure, and they will give the reader no little amusement; indeed, as studies of American literary style, they are most instructive. The final chapter, dealing with the death of her elder son, so shortly to be followed by her own, can hardly be touched upon in a review; it seems an intrusion to read it.

THE GLORY OF THE COMING. By IRVIN S. COBB. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._ net.

THE 25TH DIVISION IN FRANCE AND FLANDERS. Harrison. 4_s._ net.

These two war books, extremely dissimilar, belong to two well-known types. Mr. Cobb is an American journalist, and he gives a lively, journalistic account of the coming and doing of the American armies in France. The other book is a detailed and somewhat bare record of the doings of the 25th Division, by Lieut.-Col. M. Kincaid-Smith. The 25th Division made a great name for itself in the war; this book shows that it was not unearned.

THE PARAVANE ADVENTURE. By L. COPE CORNFORD. Hodder & Stoughton. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

The story of the paravane, the remarkable anti-submarine contrivance invented by Commander Burney and used by the Allied navies and also by merchant ships during the later period of the war, is told by Mr. Cope Cornford in a popular style and with considerable enthusiasm. It is possible that he is over-enthusiastic, for in a prefatory note he tells us that some naval officers and also the Admiralty consider that he exaggerates the effects of the paravane. There is no doubt, however, as the official figures themselves show, that paravanes and "Otters" (as they were called when fitted to merchant vessels) did have an enormous success. The total tonnage of H.M. ships and merchant ships definitely saved by them comes to over a quarter of a million; and the financial saving to the British Empire is estimated at approximately £100,000,000. Mr. Cope Cornford has a good deal of criticism--some open and more, we think, implied--to make against the Admiralty. Exactly how far it is justified we cannot say; but there are certainly a good many people with inside knowledge who assert that the Admiralty were decidedly cold about the paravane, even if they did not actually "crab" it. And the rewards and honours bestowed on the brilliant young officers who devoted themselves to the paravane and Otter services were not particularly generous.

SUBMARINES AND SEA POWER. By CHARLES DOMVILLE-FIFE. Bell. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

Mr. Domville-Fife's purpose is to discuss the importance of the submarine arm in naval warfare of the future. His treatment of the subject is very balanced and his conclusions are cautious. He gives us a great deal of interesting information about the history of submarine craft (beginning as far back as 1578) and of the submarine explosive mine. In dealing with the tactics of submarines and their influence in naval strategy, he speaks as an expert; for not only has he devoted many years to their study, but during the war he was in command of anti-submarine craft and an instructor at H.M. School of Submarine Mining. The economic influence of the submarine on this country, Mr. Domville thinks, is summed up in the words of Lord Selborne in 1915: "After the war the whole question of our agricultural and economic policy of the food production at home will have to be revised in the light of our submarine experience." But what of the League of Nations? Are we not entitled to voice our views of the future of naval warfare in the light of that? Here Mr. Domville-Fife is guarded. He looks forward "steadfastly and even hopefully towards the vivid dawn of a new era." But he is not for abandoning the old motto, _Si vis pacem para bellum_.

POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

BEFORE THE WAR. By VISCOUNT HALDANE. Cassell. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE. By JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES, C.B., Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Macmillans. 8_s._ 6_d._ net.

These two books must rank among the most important documents yet produced which bear upon the antecedents and the consequences of the war in so far as British policy is involved. Lord Haldane was for many years War Minister, and during the critical period of Anglo-German relations he was also a sort of supplementary Foreign Secretary whose influence over the most important department of Foreign Affairs was very great, partly because of the weight his opinion carried with Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith, and partly because of his special knowledge of Germans and Germany. His book has a double subject as it has a double object. He outlines the main elements and the principal stages in our policy _versus_ Germany before the war, and he sketches what was done during his administration to perfect the organisation of our Army. He defends our national policy (there are interesting sidelights thrown by his personal experiences with the Emperor and among the governing classes of Prussia) on the ground that we did the best we could when we combined an earnest effort to prevent war with a resolution to be ready for it; and in his personal apologia he argues, in effect, that in the circumstances (we must not forget that the nation as a whole, and Parliament in particular, viewed military expenditure with a very jealous eye) his régime did the utmost that could have been expected. It is now commonly conceded, even by those who distrusted Lord Haldane's views in foreign affairs, and those who were bitterly against him because of his refusal to adopt universal military service, that he did a great work at the War Office. What he says about the efficiency of his Expeditionary Force ("If the warrior looked slender he was at least as well prepared for the ring as science could make him") must be universally admitted; and with his great work in that department must be coupled the creation of the Territorial Force. On the point of compulsory service Lord Haldane defends himself by saying that in 1912 the General Staff was allowed to investigate "the question whether we could or could not raise a great army." "The outcome was embodied in a report made to me by Lord Nicholson, himself a soldier who had a strong desire for compulsory service and a large army. He reported, as the result of a prolonged and careful investigation, that, alike as regarded officers and as regarded buildings and equipment, the conclusion of the General Staff was that it would be in a high degree unwise to try, during the period of unrest on the Continent, to commence a new military system." We might have become "seriously weaker before we had a chance of becoming stronger," and an enemy might have sprung on us. "I quite agreed, and not the less because it was highly improbable that the country would have looked at anything of the sort." We imagine that the one thing which should (in the light of our subsequent experience) have been done and was not done (though lack of money would have been a severe limitation to the actual accumulation of large stores, whether of rifles or of clothing) was to prepare a scheme whereunder the material for a greatly expanded force would be easily and rapidly obtained immediately an emergency had arisen.

Lord Haldane has many interesting _obiter dicta_. He insists on the need (never more necessary than now) for politicians to understand the meaning of the words they use, and the nature of the main conceptions which are entertained by the nation, and those which dominate their own minds. He says that his opinion of the German people remains unchanged. "They were very much like our own people, except in one thing. This was that they were trained simply to obey, and to carry out whatever they were told by their rulers. I used, during numerous unofficial tours in Germany, to wander about incognito, and to smoke and drink beer with the peasants whenever I could get the chance. What impressed me was the little part they had in directing their own government, and the little they knew about what it was doing." Lord Haldane dates this habit of mind back to the days of Frederick the Great; but is there not something to be said for the view that it is to be traced back through the period of the religious wars into the baronial Middle Ages?

Lord Haldane's conclusion is that "the question is not one simply of the letter of a treaty, but is one of the spirit in which it is made.... The foundations of a peace that is to be enduring must, therefore, be sought in what is highest and most abiding in human nature." These sentiments are eloquently supported by Mr. Maynard Keynes, who resigned his position at the Peace Conference (where he represented the Treasury) because he felt that the negotiations were not being inspired by that spirit and by those high and abiding ideals. His argument, which is supported by very acute reasoning, is that the economic clauses of the Treaty threaten the ruin of our interlocked economic civilisation; and, with the skill of an artist, he strengthens the gloom of his tale by giving in introductory chapters a tragic setting: a concourse of statesmen, oblivious of the greatness of the issues involved, men of mechanical or cunning minds, men obstinate and narrow, ruthless and cynical, adroit and cunning, intriguing, hoodwinking, whilst their world was rolling towards the precipice. The issues he considers, the arguments he advances, are far too controversial to be entered into here: but it is a book which states one point of view far more powerfully than it has been stated anywhere else and, as such, should be read, if only to be answered. We take it that beyond the public questions which engage the author's mind there must have been a personal one (which is also, however, a public one) which must have caused him much disquiet: the question how far a civil servant, whilst the events under discussion are still in progress, is morally entitled to divulge things he would not have seen save in his official capacity. He may--this we suppose is beyond dispute--resign and conduct argument on the basis of facts known to the public; but should he watch statesmen at private assemblies, judge their characters by what he sees there, and then come out and attempt to blow them sky-high? We suppose that Mr. Keynes, who is no doubt convinced that his estimates are sound and that the whole future of the world may depend upon people realising what he believes to be the truth, would say that there was a conflict of obligations, and that the larger one had overcome the lesser. But we do think that there is room here for investigation and definition by a political philosopher with some practical experience. The problem is not a simple one.

A HANDBOOK OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. By SIR GEOFFREY BUTLER. With an Introduction by Lord Robert Cecil. Longmans. 5_s._ net.

THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE LEAGUE. By EUSTACE PERCY. Hodder & Stoughton. 6_s._ net.

It would hardly be possible to find two more different books on the same subject than these two. Hence it is extraordinarily instructive to read them together. Sir Geoffrey Butler is an academic international lawyer, a lecturer in International Law and Diplomacy in the University of Cambridge. He is therefore well qualified for the task which he has undertaken, a short and elementary treatise, "which tries to place the League in its historical perspective." He traces the history of international relations and shows that the League is a development of the idea of a Concert of Europe as opposed to the idea of a Balance of Power. He then explains the constitution and machinery of the League as it appears in the Paris Covenant, gives the text of the Covenant, and adds a commentary or explanation of its various clauses. Sir Geoffrey does not possess a light or facile pen, and occasionally his meaning is singularly obscure. The book is academically cautious and unoriginal, but it sticks to its object, which is to explain the kind of international instrument which the victorious statesmen fashioned in Paris. Hence it will be useful to those who do not possess technical knowledge but wish to understand the significance of the clauses, or bare bones, of the Covenant.

Lord Eustace Percy is not concerned with bare bones, but with the flesh and blood which may or may not one day clothe the skeleton which the victorious Powers produced at Paris. No one could call the author or his book cautious; they are always trying to get back to fundamentals. To Lord Eustace the Covenant of the League is a "revolution," and he endeavours to show the revolution in British policy which it implies--the ultimate, fundamental responsibilities which, with the signature of the Covenant, the nation and its statesmen assumed. In order to do this, he not only examines the League and Covenant; he gives a most interesting account of the previous international position and policy of Britain, the United States, and the chief Continental Powers; he analyses and criticises the terms of the Paris peace treaties; he deals with Labour unrest; the epidemic of revolution, Bolshevism. The whole forms a restless, brilliant, and often paradoxical essay on international relations. Its great merit is that the natural reaction to it in the reader is thought. It is true that the author's own political thinking is frequently much less deep than it would appear to be on a cursory examination; but at least if he cannot himself go to any great depths, he always tries to go as deep as he can, and he carries his reader below the obvious surface of political platitudes. His method is to appear at first to go almost to the extreme limits of "progressiveness" and unorthodoxy, and then, by the help of a paradox, to double on his tracks and to show that after all the "progressives" are out of date, and nothing much could have been done other than has been done. Thus he begins by writing about such terms of the Peace as the Saar, the Balkans and Austria, Shantung, the Adriatic, and the economic clauses, in language which we might expect from the extreme Left, and then, when the reader is beginning to feel that he has been robbed of his last illusion, he is headed back from despair with the paradox that "in a sense, the strength of the Treaty lies in its weakest parts--in those provisions which are the least workable in practice."

For some tastes there will be too much of this kind of paradox in this book. Lord Eustace is, perhaps, at his best when he is dealing either with past history or with the immediate subject of his book, the Responsibilities of the League. The League, in his view, is "the one novel contribution made to the settlement by the Conference at Paris"; it creates the conditions and machinery necessary if the family of nations is to realise a "policy of joint responsibilities," and to deal continuously in a spirit of friendly co-operation with "the standing common interests of nations." This thesis is explained, worked out, and illustrated with very great ability. Lord Eustace obviously considers that those who framed the Covenant produced the best international framework and machinery which at the moment it was possible for practical statesmanship to produce. Those who expected or asked for more are, in his opinion, impractical idealists, or, what is worse, they do not see that the whole object of the League is to continue and develop the existing international system of absolutely sovereign States. His treatment of this extremely difficult and important question of sovereignty is the least satisfactory part of his handling of the League. He holds that the doctrine of communal society "applied to the League of Nations clearly rules out first of all any encroachment upon the sovereignty of its members." But sovereignty does not consist solely, as he seems to imply, in "the claim of the State against any of its members," and surely the League might limit or "encroach upon" the sovereignty of its members without necessarily creating a Super-State. It is a pity that Lord Eustace has not dealt more thoroughly with this question, for it is vital to another important opinion held by him, namely, that the League must be the enemy of and bulwark against Bolshevik or Communist Governments.

THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. By J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. Swarthmore Press. 10_s._ 6_d._ net.

This is not a mere list of criticisms and reminiscences written by a carpet-bagger. Mr. Macdonald was in India as a member of the last Public Services Commission. He has studied numerous official and unofficial books and documents, and has met and heard the views of representatives of all classes and schools of political thought. He has stayed with Provincial Governors, Indian leaders, district officers, and heads of native institutions, such as the Gurukul of Hardwar and the Rabindranath Tagore school at Bholpur.

The result is a book of great interest, written with an insight and moderation which will commend it to many who do not agree with all its conclusions. It was written, Mr. Macdonald tells us, before the Montagu-Chelmsford Report was published; but it is none the worse for this. References and comments on the Report have been added, and every line may be read with profit alike by the extreme reformer, the moderate constitutionalist and the firm conservative.

Mr. Macdonald begins with an account of the rise of Nationalism and a sketch of the history of European penetration and the advance of the East India Company in India. This enables the British reader at once to understand the remainder of the book, and places him in possession of a store of knowledge which may help to foster that interest in India and her problems so lacking in British electors and politicians alike.

The pronouncement of August, 1917, the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, and the passing of the Government of India Act of 1919 are first steps towards the establishment of self-government for India; but the real difficulty to be solved is the representation of the mass of the people. Mr. Macdonald holds that "The democratic forms of the West are not the only forms in which democracy can take shape.... India is not a nation of equal citizens so much as an organisation of co-operating social functions." The question of diversity of race and language will remain even when primary education has become general, and Mr. Macdonald might have made clearer his views of the lines on which genuine popular representation can be secured. He does, indeed, in his account of the 50,000,000 "outcastes" of India give us a dim vision of his hopes that with education will come leaders of ability to represent them; but this does not solve the main problem of ascertaining and giving expression to the will of the people. With the Councils and reformed administration India will be somewhat in the position of England in 1832, and whether she is to develop under British tutelage, or to be left to work out her own salvation under her own bourgeois Government, is a question which statesmen will be called on to decide in the near future.

The chapters on finance and on religion and Nationalism are among the best in the book, while the pithy accounts of the ceaseless toil of a Lieutenant-Governor and of a District Officer should disabuse the minds of those who have been accustomed to regard Indian civilians as comfortable overpaid loafers.

SCIENCE

THEORETICAL AND APPLIED COLLOID CHEMISTRY. By WOLFGANG OSTWALD. John Wiley & Sons and Chapman & Hall. 11_s._ 6_d._ net.

THE CHEMISTRY OF COLLOIDS. By RICHARD ZSIGMONDY. John Wiley & Sons and Chapman & Hall. 13_s._ 6_d._ net.

Colloid chemistry, for which Dr. Wolfgang Ostwald claims to have established the right "to existence as a separate and independent science," is a study of very recent development, which has come to its own during the past twenty years. In many respects its development offers a close parallel to that of catalysis, a branch of chemistry recently noticed in these columns. In both cases we have a few brilliant, isolated studies, succeeded by a long period during which little attention was paid to the subject; in both cases this century has seen a large body of chemists, especially the younger men, attracted to the investigation, the phenomena in question, and results have been rapidly attained which have proved of great theoretical interest, and have already found wide application in industry. Just as the old idea that there were a few special catalysts has been succeeded by the belief now held that every substance can be made to act as a catalyst in suitable circumstances, so it is now stated freely that, instead of there being a small class of colloids, any substance can be prepared in a colloid state. Incidentally, colloidal preparations are widely used as catalysts.

Colloid chemistry may be said to have arisen some fifty years ago in the researches of Thomas Graham, who showed that a large class of liquids or semi-liquids would not diffuse through animal membranes, as do ordinary solutions of salts. Because many of these substances were sticky he gave to the whole class the name which they now hold, colloid. Since then his conception has been extended, and it is now realised that, strictly speaking, we should talk rather of a substance in a colloidal state than of a colloid, since typically crystalline substances, such as ordinary salt, can be prepared in colloidal solution. The characteristic of such a solution is the fineness of sub-division--the dispersion--of the "dissolved" substance. In a true solution, in the ordinary sense, we have, in general, the substance existing as separate molecules dispersed throughout the solvent. In a mechanical suspension, such as may be prepared from exceedingly fine sand and water, the suspended particles, which take some time to settle, can be easily seen with a microscope, if not with the naked eye. In between these two classes of dispersed systems we have solutions in which the particles, while consisting, in general, of a very large number of molecules, are small enough to pass through filter-paper and escape the ordinary microscope, while at the same time they do not diffuse through membranes and can be seen by special optical arrangements, _i.e._, the so-called ultramicroscope. Such dispersed systems are colloidal systems, which have only recently been investigated in detail, although Faraday prepared colloidal solutions of metallic gold which still exist. Colloidal chemistry has been picturesquely called "the world of neglected dimensions," which is appropriate enough. Of course the exact degree of dispersion which constitutes a colloidal solution is purely arbitrary, since, as Wolfgang Ostwald--the son of Wilhelm Ostwald--insists in the book before us, solutions are known which show all ranges of sub-division of the dissolved substance, from molecular dimensions to visible particles. Various distinguishing tests have led to solutions in which the diameter of the particles lies anywhere between a millionth and a thousandth of a millimetre being conventionally called colloids.

The scientific, industrial, and medical applications of colloid chemistry increase in number daily--we are already confronted with the word colloidotherapy--and there is a growing demand for books on the subject. The two before us are each by authors who are celebrated for their researches in the subject: Zsigmondy invented the ultramicroscope, which has been responsible for the most important recent advances in the study of colloidal solution, and Wolfgang Ostwald has added clearness to nearly every branch of the subject. Ostwald's book, adequately translated by Dr. Martin Fischer (although, we may remark, the word "enormity" is not generally used as a synonym for hugeness), is based on a series of lectures given by him in America just before the war. Publication has been delayed by the war, and it is interesting to note that in the preface, written in 1915 when Germany was apparently in a good position, the author looks to science to form the first bridge between the peoples then at war, and exclaims, "How should I, for example, cease to admire, to adopt, and to develop the labours of a W. B. Hardy, a W. M. Bayliss, a J. Perrin, a P. P. von Weimarn, and others, just because they belong to a people hostile to my own?" The book gives a most excellent sketch of the whole field, by one who is an enthusiast in his subject, and may be thoroughly recommended as an introduction for those who are beginners, even if their general knowledge of chemistry is slight, while even the expert will find much in it to interest him. As a detail we may mention that Ostwald gives a quick receipt for the preparation of red colloidal gold with ordinary distilled water, while other authors, including Zsigmondy, insist that the preparation is a delicate undertaking, requiring specially distilled water and the greatest care. The wonderful range of phenomena now included in the subject is clearly brought out, and the pictures of Liesegang rings and the ultramicroscopic photograph of a setting cement are beautiful. The treatment of gels, the jelly-like form into which certain colloidal solutions pass, is particularly good, and gives much valuable information not hitherto available in popular form. The last two chapters, or lectures, on scientific applications and technical applications of colloid chemistry are of surpassing interest, as indicating the practical importance which this young science has attained. All life processes take place in a colloid system, and the necessity to physiologists of the study of colloids is forcibly emphasised. Rubber milk, or later, is a colloid, so that all the problems of coagulation of rubber and its subsequent vulcanisation are included in the subject. The setting of cements is a colloidal problem. These, and many other questions, are briefly but clearly discussed. The experiments which accompanied the lectures are described, and are most suggestive.

Professor Zsigmondy's book is more technical, and deals mainly with "hydrosols" and "hydrogels." The author's reputation in this field vouches for the excellence of the treatment of the many expert problems discussed. Naturally the subjects of ultramicroscopy and protective colloids are discussed in detail--the author originated the "gold figure" used to express the protective effect of a colloid. The theoretical discussions are particularly valuable, and physiologists will read with interest the long discussion of protein bodies. There is an appendix on industrial colloid chemistry by the translator, Dr. Ellwood Spear, in which the problems of rubber manufacture, tanning, and other industrial processes are very briefly treated. There is in this section a chapter on smoke abatement, but the methods mentioned scarcely fall within the province of colloid chemistry as generally understood. A final chapter, by Dr. J. F. Norton, deals with the application of colloid chemistry to sanitation.

MODERN SCIENCE AND MATERIALISM. By HUGH ELLIOT. Longmans. Green & Co. 7_s._ 6_d._ net.

This book is an exposition of monism, the philosophic theory that asserts the identical nature of mind and matter, as distinct from the dualistic "superstition"--as our author terms it--of matter and spirit. Sir Oliver Lodge, in a recent article, claims that three fundamental things are required to explain our universe: viz., Mind, with its rudiment Life; Matter, with its element the electric charge; and Ether, with its fundamental properties equivalent to elasticity and inertia. Mr. Elliot will have none of this. For him there is no reason to postulate other things than those capable of investigation by physical science--the ether and matter are essentially of the same kind, while all the phenomena of life are, if not at present explained on a physico-chemical basis, yet ultimately explicable in terms of the exact sciences. Life is a name for certain properties of protoplasm, and the chemical reactions of life are more complicated, but not more mysterious, than those of the laboratory. As for "ghosts, gods, souls, _et hoc genus omne_," our author holds that "these have long been rejected from the belief of most advanced thinkers." He traverses the assertion of Professors Mach and Karl Pearson, that while science can explain "how" things occur it cannot explain "why" (the point under discussion depends, of course, on Mr. Elliot's interpretations of the words), he pours scorn upon Herbert Spencer, Bergson, and all the vitalists. Altogether the book is one of the most pugnacious defences of monism which we have read, and will delight the bitter opponents of all spiritualistic philosophies. At the same time the author maintains that his philosophy is not materialistic, in the ordinary sense, but a form of idealism, and this, of course, is true, in a way, of any form of monism, it being possible either to say that the atom of matter is as full of mystery as life, or that life is as full of mechanism as the atom. It is obviously impossible in the limited space at our disposal to criticise the arguments put forward on a subject so complicated and controversial, but we think that nobody will admit Mr. Elliot to be as unbiassed as he appears to consider himself, judging by his remarks on the bias of the vitalists. His claim for the support of the physiologists reminds us that Dr. J. S. Haldane recently opened a discussion on the question, "Are Physical, Biological and Physiological Categories Irreducible?" by a pronouncement in the affirmative; the physicists also are not all monists. The question is more two-sided than our author will admit. His science is unfortunately by no means beyond reproach: to say that the charge on the electron is "inconceivably immense" is either extraordinary inaccuracy of phrase or extraordinary error, while to state that the electron has weight is to assert something of which we have no experimental evidence. That light is a vibrating motion of the same character as sound is incorrect, and such instances can be multiplied. These things are not of fundamental importance to Mr. Elliot's argument, but they show, to say the least, a deplorable looseness of expression. Nevertheless, the book is worth reading to all interested, either as friends or enemies, in the monistic philosophy, and may lead some of those who talk so freely of souls and mind to be a little more precise as to what they mean by these terms.

ACCOUNTS RENDERED OF WORK DONE AND THINGS SEEN. By J. Y. BUCHANAN. Cambridge University Press. 21_s._ net.

Selections from the papers of the author have already appeared under the titles of _Scientific Papers (Oceanographical)_ and _Comptes Rendus of Observation and Reasoning_. This third volume, with an English modification of the title of the latter work, continues the plan of that book. The papers are very varied in character, including chemical studies, accounts of physical determinations, addresses on geography and oceanography, more technical geographical writings, and short articles on topics of general interest, reprinted from _Nature_, the _Times_, and other periodicals. Many of the latter recall events of our generation important, but already half forgotten, such as the stranding of the _Sultan_ and the wreck of _Santos Dumont 6_. An excellent feature of the author's _Comptes Rendus_ was the detailed summary, with page references, provided for every article, and the same plan is followed in this work. The author's work on oceanography is too well known to need commendation--he was chemist and physicist to the _Challenger_ expedition. His "Retrospect," the second article in the book, gives a fascinating summary of the work done on that expedition, and the other papers on oceanographical subjects are of great general interest, and incidentally recall the great services of the Prince of Monaco to that science. His general outlook, which lends such freshness to all his writings, cannot be better expressed than in his own words in a former book: "It was conveyed to me through an old friend and former colleague that this contribution ... had done much to retard the standardisation of research. I took it as a compliment. To standardise research is to limit its freedom and to impede discovery. Originality and independence are the characteristics of genuine research, and it is stultified by the acceptance of standards and by the recognition of authority."

It throws much light on the recent increase in the expenses of publishing that, whereas the _Comptes Rendus_ was published in 1917 at 7_s._ 6_d._, the present volume of similar size and form is published at 21_s._

BOOK-PRODUCTION NOTES

By J. H. MASON

The _Studio_ special number, "Modern Woodcuts and Lithographs, by British and French Artists," with Commentary by M. C. Salaman, is the first collection, with any claim to comprehensiveness, of the artistic work of the present renaissance of the woodcut. The woodcut has a twofold employment: it may be used for pictorial broadsides or for book illustration. It concerns us here as a means--I wonder if I ought not to write the means?--of book illustration. Notwithstanding the great technical advances made in line and half-tone photo-process engraving, there is a tendency to return to the use of the woodcut for certain kinds of catalogue illustrations, and, to a still greater extent, for book illustration and decoration.

The half-tone process involves the use of so-called "art" paper, _i.e._, a wood pulp or grass pulp paper as a centre, coated over with kaolin or china clay, with a high finish, the glazed polish of which reflects the light very unpleasantly. This objectionable paper, apart from the incongruity of wash drawings or photographs with typography, relegates this method of book illustration to utilitarian ends. The line process is far preferable for book illustration, but in itself it has no pleasant quality, usually very much the reverse, and pen drawings are no more directly suitable for book illustration than pen lettering is for use with type. The woodcut modifies the character of the drawing with a discipline which produces a character more in sympathy with that which type has acquired at the hands of the punch-cutter and type-founder in its passage from writing; and the same discipline modifies the artist's vision as well as the drawing. Material, too, has its own character, and when the user is not too clever this character becomes active in the work, not merely passive. The wood block itself can contribute a valuable quality, and either the knife or the graver is a responsive tool. The corresponding elements in line process work are the zinc plate and etching acid, and they do contribute something of their quality to the work; but it is not an attractive quality.

The rediscovered qualities of the wood block have attracted many artists to its use. They are producing work of great variety of interest, but it is rather in the pictorial direction than as book illustration. The work of Valloton elsewhere, and of Jane Bouquet and Brangwyn, of Sydney Lee and Verpilleux in this _Studio_ special number are examples of this. The work of Lucien Pissaro, of Charles Shannon, and Charles Ricketts shows the right use of the woodcut as decorative illustration, but their work belongs to the early days of this revival. Dürer, Holbein, and the Polyphilus printed by Aldus are the great exemplars for a pre-Bewick Brotherhood of the decorative woodcut. Where work of a freer quality is desirable, Miss Jackson's on page 13 shows the texture that goes with type satisfactorily. Miss Gribble has given the right degree of formal treatment to the pastoral motives she has chosen for tail-pieces, and makes them decorative without letting them lose their interest and so become vapid conventions. Both Miss Jackson and Miss Gribble are pupils of Mr. Noel Rooke, who has done so much for the right use of the woodcut for decorative illustration.

The lithographs suffer much more than the woodcuts by reproduction. To begin with, they are very much reduced in size, and they are printed by a letterpress method (_i.e._, from a relief surface) instead of from the plain surface for which they were drawn. The loss which they suffer by these changes can only be appreciated by those who know the originals. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hartrick's fine examples suffer through the loss of the rich lithographic black.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES OF MODERN AUTHORS