IT

T is said that this generation of novel readers devours everything but remembers nothing. There is a vast crowd of mediocre stories that sink quickly into oblivion. The competition among writers seems to be for a merry life and a short one for their literary progeny. All the more credit, then, to those who do not manufacture stories just to get a laugh or a thrill, but exercise their art as the older dramatists and poets did-to deal nobly and seriously with the raw material of human nature: passion, character and conduct, motive and action, not forgetting the spice of humor and the stress of situation.

Three recent novels may be here pointed out with appreciation and thankfulness as examples that belong to literature, that repay careful reading because they bear the marks of careful thinking and careful writing. They are not the only ones of the season to merit this praise, but they are fine and welcome specimens of a class by

no means too numerous.

First in order and first in ability comes Mrs. Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence." The species of "innocence" prevailing in New York's fashionable society in a period now nearly half a century ago was the innocence of an artificial, conventional, and dull society. It was a little before the "Four Hundred" phrase invented by Ward McAllister obtained vogue, but there was already the idea of an exclusiveness the lines of which were those of wealth, family connection, stiff social entertainments, and patronage of the opera,, rather than those having relation to the world of art, literature, brilliant talk, or intellectual impulses. What was outside of this New York self-constituted circle was considered by it as dubious; life and culture "abroad" were practically unknown quantities. This time and the people and setting for the story are described with painstaking art, from Brown of Grace Church to the few great moguls whose smile or frown made or unmade "social standing." As a picture of the upper classes

in our metropolis as it stolidly solidified itself in the decade or so after the Civil War, the novel is curiously captivating; no one but Mrs. Wharton could have rendered the description so delicately exact. There is irony behind it all, but not the bitterness of scorn or contempt. It is an etching, not a cari

cature.

Into this self-satisfied and self-centered group comes a Polish countess, an American girl who has made an unhappy marriage abroad. She is regarded with suspicion, and is received only when the one family whose social supremacy is almost imperial takes her up. She is accustomed to free social interchange with writers, painters, and diplomats, to witty talk, to freedom from dulling conventionality. Contrasted with her is a charming young society girl who is loving and sweet

The Age of Innocence. By Edith Wharton. D. Appleton & Co., New York.

In Chancery. By John Galsworthy. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

Blind: A Story of These Times. By Ernest Poole. The Macmillan Company, New York.

natured, but who simply does not conceive that "what they do " and " what they say -"they" meaning "society "-can be disregarded. Between them hesitates the young New Yorker, Archer; he is bound by commitments to the girl of restricted nature, but longs for the woman of deeper and stronger character. In the end the bonds of convention and pledged honor prevail, but the struggle is a passionate one and leaves Archer disappointed and disillusionized.

The play of social forces and individual striving is subtle and strong. Mrs. Wharton's new novel is in workmanship equal to her very best previous work. Indeed, one is strongly inclined to declare this the best piece of American fiction of the present season. Its qualities are not superficial; its situation is led up to with admirable skill, so that the intensity of interest gradually tightens and strengthens. In its restrained art as well as its clear-sightedness the book is finely wrought. In the give and take of dialogue between the many minor characters there is ample entertainment. In its adequate dealing with a large motif this is a book of far more than ephemeral value.

"Possession" is the controlling passion of Mr. Galsworthy's novel. It controls, dominates, and dully obsesses the minds and action of most of the members of his

Forsyte family. Not alone possession of money and solidly invested property, but of art works for their property value, of families as something appertaining to each Forsyte personage, of wives as personal belongings. The hardest-headed Forsyte of them all, Soames, the author tells us, "collected" his second wife as he did pictures. And Mr. Galsworthy, with a touch of genius, shows us this same Forsyte at the end of the story trying to conceal very his disappointment because this wife has borne him a daughter instead of the son that he had longed for as the most important of his personal possessions (he knew she would have no other child), but as he looked at the child suddenly "the sense of triumph and renewed possession welled within him. By God, this, this thing was his!”

So, too, Soames felt toward his first wife. He cared nothing for her after marriage except as an appendage to his pride of possession. Revolted, she left him for a man who did love her. Years after he decided to institute the divorce proceedings which his pride had so far forbidden. It was solely that he might make another loveless marriage and add a son and heir to his possessions. But, when he saw again this woman who despised him, there sprang up in him the sense of frustrated ownership, and in a mad passion he tried in vain to regain possession. And so with other Forsytes; whether heavily or wildly, they clung to what they had and built up a family tradition of wealth, power, and selfish mastership.

These Forsytes are descended from or survivors of those we met in Mr. Galsworthy's "Man of Property." It is a serious drawback that the first dozen pages or so of this book are a regular barbed-wire obstruction because of their

intricate tangle of genealogy and relationships. The reader who perseveres, however, will be rewarded by as fine and penetrating a study of temperament and heredity as is often written-not "highbrow or philosophical, but dramatic, tense, and vivid. As with at least one other English novel of this season, the British divorce law, for the broadening of which there is now a strong agitation, suggests the situations. It is an amusing and curious turn that its provision which requires an applicant for divorce to prove that he or she has begged the recreant spouse to return and condone, almost blocks one divorce, while in another case it brings a repentant husband back from South America, much to the disgust of his wife, who, despite her formal demand for restoration, had hoped never to see him again.

Mr. Ernest Poole's "Blind" is by its plan debarred from a centralized situation and unity of construction. It is truly "a story of these times," but in the sense that the publishers indicate when they describe its narrator, Larry Hart, as one who "sits in the darkness that is his heritage from the Great War, who lives over again a truly American career, covering forty years of National growth and change, and peers adventurously into a future of tremendous unborn forces, both good and evil.” Larry is naturally more or less of a reflex of Mr. Poole's own experience as observer of social service and industrial wrongs, writer of correspondence from Russia, Germany, and elsewhere abroad, ardent longer for the coming of justice and fairness. Larry is blinded in the Great War, but the book's title is of moral rather than physical intent. Hope and faith in the future are shown in his words: "In all the peoples of the earth there is a reserve of idealism, courage, devotion, and endurance, the presence of which we barely suspect, we who are so tragically blind. A Russian engineer once said: We are beggars sitting on bags of gold.' That is true of all humanity. And through the years that are coming the gold will appear to our opening eyes.'

It must not be thought that the novel is one of social propaganda alone. It has fictional vitality because of the variety and realism of its shifting scenes, the good and bad human qualities of its actors, its rapid movement, and its precision in descripR. D. TOWNSEND.

tion.

THE NEW BOOKS

HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

Socialism in Thought and Action. By Harry W. Laidler, Ph.D. The Macmillan Company, New York.

Why does Socialism exist? Because of economic and human waste and because of the inequality of wealth. Radical Socialists aim at the breakdown of capitalism, at class struggle, at collectivism. The very extreme radical effort in Russia has resulted simply in a dictatorship by the proletariat, a régime characterized by conservative Socialists as devoid of any redeeming feature. In the present volume the author shows what has taken place in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Great Britain, France, Italy, and other countries, including our own. He discusses the Socialist criticism of

Courtesy of Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. (C) C. B, C.

ROBINSON CRUSOE READING THE BIBLE-A DRAWING BY N. C. WYETH From a new edition of "Robinson Crusoe," with pictures in color by N. C. Wyeth present-day society, the Socialist theory of economic development, the Socialist conception of a future social state, and the achievements and present status of the organized Socialist movement.

Spanish America: Its Romance, Reality,
and Future. By C. R. Enock, C.E., F.R.G.S.
Illustrated. 2 vols. Charles Scribner's Sons,
New York.

Mr. Enock's two volumes on Spanish
America might well have been three vol-
umes, so entertaining, interesting, and in-
structive are they. The text is not clogged
by an overweight of historical or economic
information. It gives to the
reader
average
just the kind of information he wants and
needs concerning Central and South Amer-
ica-that is to say, South America without
Brazil, regrettably excluded because of the
limitations of the title of the work.

half a century been compelled to live under a Government not of their own choosing. With the sympathy born of first-hand experience, Mrs. O'Shaughnessy tells about them in the war and in the happier days for them since the war.

Great Fire of London in 1666 (The). By Walter George Bell, F.R.A.S. Illustrated. The John Lane Company, New York. An exhaustive history of London's greatest tragedy. One doubts whether Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco one hundred years hence will find historians of their great conflagrations to write as complete and interesting a book as this. Will Americans ever love their cities as Englishmen love London? Many quaint pictures and curious plans help to bring the London of old days near to the reader and to elucidate the book's ample descriptive matter. Seeing the Far West. By John T. Faris, Illustrated. The J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia.

A comprehensive book, profusely illustrated, about the scenic attractions of the Far West. Even for old travelers in the regions described it whets the appetite for more sightseeing. The style is entertaining, and the book will take its place as one

of the best of the "boosters" for seeing the great West.

Wild Turkeys and Tallow Candles. By Ellen Hayes. The Four Seas Company, Boston. An intensive study of the beginnings of a small town in central Ohio, this book will interest primarily the residents of Granville, the town described, but it presents a typical picture of the settlement and growth of a village of the Middle West, and as such will be valued.

BOOKS FOR YOUNG FOLKS

Robinson Crusoe. By Daniel De Foe. Illustrated. Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, New York.

Fortunate is the boy who has not yet read his "Robinson Crusoe " and who receives this edition, with its excellent type and its beautiful pictures in color, as his first introduction to good old Robinson. A glimpse of the book will make any lover of De Foe wish he were a boy again.

WAR BOOKS

France and Ourselves. By Herbert Adams Gibbons. The Century Company, New York. This is a good book. It shows us how we can help France and how France can help us. The general soundness of the author's opinions is evident when we consider what has taken place since his chapters were written. They are all published just as written when the fighting was in progress. Not all will regard one of the author's opinions, however, as sound-that concerning the despatch to Europe of a volunteer army led by Theodore Roosevelt, no matter what the greater satisfaction in France later was at the arrival of an official army led by General Pershing.

History of American Field Service in France. Edited by James Norman Hall and Charles Bernard Nordhoff. 3 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

Lafayette Flying Corps (The). Edited by James Norman Hall and Charles Bernard Nordhoff. Associate Editor, Edgar G. Hamilton. Illustrated. 2 vols. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.

Of the various histories of individual units and organizations which saw service in the war, we have seen none to compare in form and completeness with these records of the work and personnel of the Lafayette Flying Corps and the American Field Service in France. These volumes form a record of achievement, sacrifice, and devotion to duty of which every American may be proud. The men who formed the backbone of these two organizations may be regarded as having been among the leaders of those who not only saw America's duty early and clearly, but who also bore more than their share of the burden of translating that ideal of duty into the reality of achievement.

MISCELLANEOUS

Romance of Madame Tussaud (The). By John Theodore Tussaud. Introduction by Hilaire Belloc. Illustrated. The George H. Doran Company, New York.

People who think of Madame Tussaud's Exhibition in London as a thing of the past, displaced by the movies, will be surprised to learn from this book that the attendance at the show has during the past few years mounted into the millions. The book tells in entertaining and anecdotal fashion the history of the Exhibition; there are many good illustrations, including some showing subjects in the Chamber of Horrors, the most famous feature of the " wax works."