REVIEWS OF BOOKS.

THE ORIENT PEARLS.-By Shovona Devi. Macmillan & Co.

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"The idea of writing these tales," says the authoress, occurred to me while reading a volume of short stories by my uncle, Sir Rabindranath Tagore, but as I have none of his inventive genius, I set about collecting folk-tales and putting them into an English garb.' This little book of fairy-tales was well worth making. They were gathered by the authoress from various illiterate villagers and from a blind man in her service. It is delightful to find India adding to the world's store of stories of men who change into snakes, of princesses rescued from ogres, and giant killers who kill evil hags and magicians. Our only criticism, in the midst of appreciation, shall be that the "English garb " lies a little too heavily upon these tales, some of them scarcely smack peculiarly of the Orient at all, while the mention of a "football" in old world tales of this sort (p. 154) is as incongruous to the ear as would be a golf-club in the hand of Jack the Giant Killer.

E. F. O.

THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT.-By H. G. Wells. Macmillan's Empire Library.

Benham was a man with perhaps more than the ordinary weaknesses of the ordinary man who was dominated throughout life by the idea that he must live the "aristocratic life," that is, he must live nobly and thoroughly. Lifted by fortune above economic needs, he was able to engage all his life in the "research magnificent" for the noble life. His belief in his duty to be "aristocratic," to rise superior to the crowd in the true art of living, enables him to conquer the vein of cowardice in himself, to place domesticity in its proper place in relation to the "noble " life, and to achieve some astonishing feats of aristocratic heroism; from the initial standpoint of "Richesse oblige he passes on to the ultimate standpoint of of "Noblesse

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oblige," using nobility or aristocracy to mean the noble best, the best by nature; in other words, the capacity of all who have it in them to be at all superior to the herd. One should aim at becoming the superior person. "Call me a neo-Confucian," he says. There are kings and tyrannies and imperialisms, simply because of the unkingliness of men. Obedience, universal docility, they are instincts in man. All the muddle of the world is due to human dirigibility, which those inferiors, earthly kings and governments, exploit." Poor Benham, obsessed with this idea that somehow, someway, he must live nobly, seeks all over the world for the noble life. He dies in Johannesburg, shot in a strikers' riot, with little to show of noble living, but leaving behind him a vast mass of papers, his diary, in which he has written his perplexed musings upon his search. These papers, his friend White, in whose arms he dies, edits on his behalf. Such is the idea of "The Research Magnificent.' The book aims at two objects, to be a study in egotistic psychology and at the same time to be a ranging criticism upon the life of our day. Mr. Wells has employed all his customary exactitude of expression to show us very clearly the innermost recesses of a very remarkable mentality, and if we put down the book feeling rather muddled, it is because Benham himself never completed his research. He steadily became less muddled, but he was muddled all the time. The criticism of contemporary life is spasmodic and roving, but the gist and essence of it is summed up in three sentences,-three sentences which also unify the two aspects of the book : "One cannot be noble at large; one must be noble to an end. To make human life

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collectively, and in detail, a thing more comprehensive, more beautiful, more generous and coherent than it is today seemed to him the fundamental intention of all nobility." This, the gospel according to Wells, comes nearest to a definition of what Benham found the noble life to be. And for lack of aristocrats able to lead the noble life, the world is simply mess, mistake and muddle, says Benham. Benham in India may for a moment claim the attention of readers of this Review. Caste infuriated him. "I came to see India, and there is no India. There is a great number of Indias, and each goes about with its chin in the air quietly scorning everybody else." He had a row with a civil servant who turns an Indian out of his first class carriage; while he got into a fracas at Benares by his behaviour when a "brown holiness"

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upon whose dinner Benham's shadow had fallen, threw it aside. 'You unendurable snob!" said Benham. "By Heaven, you shall eat it!" Also, we are told, 66 a whole drawer " (of Benham's MSS.) 66 was devoted to a comparatively finished and very thorough enquiry into human dissensions in lower Bengal. Perhaps some day Mr. Wells will publish that drawer. But we hope he will visit us first!

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E. F. O.

RECENT WAR LITERATURE.-Sixty American Opinions on the War. The American versus the German View of the War. (By Morton Prince, M.D.) The Truth about the War. (By A. A. Galiano. Translated from the Spanish.) The British Empire and the War. (By E. A. Benians.) How do We stand To-day? (By the Right Hon. H. H. Asquith.) Speech of His Excellency Signor Antonio Salandra, 2nd June 1915. Alsace under German Rule. (By P. A. Helmer.) Sir Edward Grey's Reply to Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg.

There are some-perhaps many-who have begun to say to themselves: Is it worth while reading anything more about the war? Of making many pamphlets there is no end, and much study of them is a weariness of both flesh and spirit. When one has made up one's mind as to what happened in the months of July and August 1914, is it not waste of time to read again in skilfully varied phrases the old tale of fruitless negotiations and pitiless deeds? Is it not better for those who would be intelligent students of the greatest war in human history to turn from the impassioned ephemeral literature of to-day to the great historical and literary classics in which the thought of Europe is most truly expressed?

But can we "make up our minds" as to what happened in those months? Can we arrive at definite final conclusions with regard to those great questions which the present war has brought home to us? Sixteen months ago men were troubled by three questions :

1. Is war ever justifiable?

2. Who is responsible for the present war?

3. Is it true, as our newspapers allege, that one of the belligerents has conducted its military activities in such a way as to put itself outside the pale of civilization?

The

Since that time a mass of evidence has been accumulated but these questions are still discussed. They are so vast in their scope and so vital in their import that we cannot yet regard them as closed. We may have reached solutions approaching sufficiently near to certainty_to justify our actions-all action is based on probability. But the human mind can never be satisfied by approximations. Time modifies all our judgments. New facts emerge; points of views are disclosed differing from our own. outbreak of war changed many carefully-formed opinions. Men of wide experience found it necessary to revise their views even in those matters about which ample evidence had been accessible. "We now discovered," says J. J. Chapman, one of the sixty American writers, "that the literature of Pan-Teutonism which up to this time we had taken to be a bad joke was a very serious matter.' "What," asks Sir Edward Grey, "is the German programme as we gather it from the speech of the Chancellor and public utterances in Germany now?-Germany to control the destiny of all other nations." If the outbreak of war caused men's opinions to change in such a way, is it not reasonable to suppose that the course of the war will have a similar effect?

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At first sight the first of the questions which I have tried to formulate would seem to fall outside such a category of time-conditioned questions. If war was an utterly unjustifiable thing in 1913, it is an utterly unjustifiable thing in 1916. If Pacifism was the true view before the war, it is the true view now. Might we not have decided the question in the moral philosophy classroom and lived happily ever after? The answer is that moral philosophy gets its material from history and history is still in the making.

Some months ago an article in favour of Pacifism by one of our greatest living logicians appeared in a leading philosophical journal. The writer contended that the German domination of the British Empire would be a lesser evil than a European war. To many such a question will seem too ridiculous for discussion. But if it is to be discussed, the discussion ought not to be a priori. Surely the only logical basis for a prophecy of Germany's future action is Germany's past action. And how has Germany treated non-German nations under her rule? We have more evidence now than we had before the war, for public-minded Alsatians are now for the first time free to speak. What do they tell us?

Maître Paul Albert Helmer, whose life has been one of fearlessly patriotic activity, reminds us that though Alsace had protested against the alienation of the province from France, Germany immediately exacted military service from its people. Completely failing to understand the "lack of patriotism" in Alsace, Germany came to the conclusion that Alsace must be terrorized by France and decided that the proper course of action was to terrorize her more. The result was a Reign of Terror. These are the words of a Doctor of Laws of long practical experience in difficult posts, not of an irresponsible young journalist. In view of that testimony does it not seem likely that Pacifism would give the world "not peace but a sword"?

With regard to the second question, the information published by Government early in the war was so extensive that little doubt could remain as to the ethics of the situation. Yet here again the question is so vital that we welcome any confirmation of our attitude. Sir Edward Grey tells us that the conversation between Belgian and British officers which has roused the eloquence of German statesmen referred explicitly to the contingency of Belgium being attacked by Germany and that the neutrality of Belgium was emphasized in the statement of April 1913. The Anglo-German negotiations of 1912 were brought to a point from which advance involved our promising absolute neutrality while Germany was free to make war. And he emphasizes the significance of the fact that even Italy, which had sources of information not open to us (here again Time is the Revealer), regarded Germany's war as aggressive. The spirited speech of Signor Salandra makes it quite clear that this was Italy's view from the very first. On 25th July the Marquis of San Guiliano telegraphed to the Duke of Avarna to the effect that in a conversation held that day with the Austrian Ambassador the Italian representatives insisted that Austria could have no right to act as she had done at Belgrade without a previous understanding with her allies.

The third question is perhaps more complicated. We have of course undeniable facts like the sinking of the Lusitania. But in many matters we are obviously in danger of getting a one-sided statement. And we must allow for our own national prejudices and point of view. It is impossible for the average person to take a detached view of events about which he feels so strongly as we do