book,' for it is hard to reconcile this with Herr Scheffauer's statement that 30,000 are being published every year. The publishers hardly pour out their capital at that rate unless there is some chance of finding purchasers. The prices of books, like the prices of everything else in Germany, are fabulous, and yet books are the cheapest necessities in Germany. They are far They are far cheaper than butter, milk, or meat. The publishers, weary of trying to fix their prices in a currency which is constantly changing, have hit upon the simple plan of publishing what they call the 'peace' price of each new book. Thus a new book is listed at five marks SO near to nothing in American currency that it could hardly be calculated. But this does not mean that the German book-buyer gets it for any such price. He must multiply the price by a figure announced every week at the official book-exchange. He may have to multiply by as much as 2000, making the price of an ostensibly fivemark book 10,000 marks. The average novel of to-day costs from 16,000 to 20,000 marks, and the publishers who in 1914 would have accepted 3500 marks in an edition must to-day receive 6,250,000 marks. More over, to cover the cost of production the publisher to-day must sell 2470 copies of each book, whereas in 1914 he would have had to sell only about 1900. This situation bears hardest of all upon the students, who, though not quite so plentiful as once they were, are still very strong in numbers. University libraries are able to offer but one copy of many modern books, and students unable to buy for themselves descend in throngs upon each volume with the result that the libraries' reserves are speedily exhausted. Foreign books are practically unpurchasable, and the only hope of most German universities lies in the gifts of foreign friends who are unwilling to extend national hatred to the pure realms of scholarship. German translations of contemporary foreign writers are very full, however. Among the English writers who have been translated recently are D. H. Lawrence, Arnold Bennett, and G. K. Chesterton; and among the Americans are Upton Sinclair, who is more widely esteemed as a novelist in Europe than in America, H. L. Mencken, who has never been anywise hostile to anything made in Germany, and John Dos Passos, whose novel, The Three Soldiers, is appearing serially in a German Socialist newspaper. A DANISH ACTOR IN PARIS FOUR years after the war, Gémier, the great French actor who became manager of the Odéon in February 1922, extended an invitation to the German producer Max Reinhardt to come to Paris and stage several productions. In his devotion to his art Gémier was willing to forget the frontier. Not so however the Parisian public, in whose mind bitter memories of the war still rankled — as is perhaps understandable. There was an outburst of public indignation and the minister of fine arts was finally compelled to forbid the proposed visit an ungracious act which must have caused the French manager a greater pang than it caused its German victim. Now, however, Gémier has sponsored a similar visit of a foreign producer, this time being careful to see that he picked a neutral. Reumert of the Theatre Royal, Copenhagen, has come to Paris and presented a very curious Danish play by Madame Karen Bramson. The play is called Professor Klenow, and describes the life of an old man crushed with illness over whose head hangs the threat of blindness. He takes under his protection an unfortunate girl who has been condemned to degradation through the folly of her spendthrift father. The old professor falls in love with his ward. The girl admires him, but has given her heart to a younger man. Tortured by jealousy the old man makes sure that his young protégée will not desert him, by tricking her into a marriage. Two whole acts are given over to portraying the long martyrdom which is all that such a marriage can mean. In the end the unwilling wife, driven to desperation, commits suicide. M. Reumert plays the principal part. He speaks French perfectly, and, unlike the recent Russian and French visitors to our American stage, can therefore play in the language of his audience. His voice is magnificent in timbre and his articulation very clear. Even the Parisian publicthere is none more critical — is willing to admire. The part of the young wife was taken by Mlle. Madeleine Clervanne, who until recently was a pupil at the Paris Conservatoire. CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH WEEKLIES Two of the English weeklies have just undergone decided changes. With the issue of April 28 the company of journalists, with Mr. H. W. Massingham at their head, who founded the Nation sixteen years ago, left their desks and handed over their paper to a new staff, prominent among whom is Mr. J. M. Keynes. With Mr. Massingham goes his brilliant young assistanteditor, Mr. H. M. Tomlinson, who through his books is perhaps better known to the American public than Mr. Massingham himself. In the English periodical world there has been a good deal of indignation over the treat ment accorded Mr. Massingham, one of the most able and honest of all the able and honest writers who make the English weeklies. The magazine was practically sold over his head to its new possessors. It is a tribute to Mr. Massingham that his associates to a man chose to go with him. The new editors opened their first issue with an 'Editorial Foreword' in which they paid tribute to him. Mr. Massingham has edited the Nation since its foundation in 1907. It is he who has made the paper and has won for it its reputation for distinction and integrity. Few men have done more to keep the true spirit of Liberalism alive and its essential principles clear, in days of adversity and amid the temptations of electoral success. He never forgot that Liberalism was, in his own phrase, 'a larger and more fruitfuli thing' than the formularies of a political party; and no concession to mere expediency or to personalities has ever been countenanced by the Nation. We deeply regret the termination of his long connection with the paper. At the same time the ChestertonBelloc New Witness disappears, to be reincarnated - if that word can be applied to so orthodox a journal — as G. K. C.'s Weekly. The sum of £10,000, which is regarded as a necessary guaranty before founding a paper, does not appear to be quite all subscribed, but adequate funds are in sight and there seems no doubt that the New Witness group will be able to continue their paper in more ambitious form. Among the numerous messages received by the Weekly on the occasion of its last issue is one from Mr. H. G. Wells, who says: I sit by your bedside, the Phoenix deathbed from which G. K. C.'s Weekly is to be born, with very mingled feelings. You have been a decent wrong-headed old paper, full of good writing. If Catholicism is still to run about the world giving tongue it can have no better spokesman than G. K. C. Un Homme Fini, by Giovanni Papini, translated [Benjamin Cremieux in La Nouvelle Revue Française] THE success won by Papini's Life of Christ has made the French public familiarize itself with his other characteristic works. Mlle. Juliette Bertrand has just given us Le Crépuscule des Philosophes, M. Chazel Un Homme Fini, and a new selection of extracts from Pilote Aveugle and Tragique Quotidien will soon appear in a translation by Paul Henri Michel. Un Homme Fini is undoubtedly Papini's masterpiece, and it is the most significant book published in Italy between 1908 and 1915. It is an autobiography; it is a picture of Italy between 1900 and 1912; and it is a revelation of a very curious intellectual development. The best of Papini, which is his cerebral torment and his yearning toward the absolute, is expressed in this book with an ardor, a spontaneity, a sincerity, even a nakedness, - and a sense of balance that he has never displayed so happily elsewhere. You see his return to Catholicism already outlining itself. -- Le Crépuscule des Philosophes is Papini's first work. Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Spencer are scourged with a youthful hand. It is a rare pleasure to read such lively, alert, and amusing exposés of history. The translations of these two books are faithful but not remarkable. A History of Engraving and Etching from the Fifteenth Century to the Year 1914, by Arthur M. Hind. London: Constable, 1923. 428. Etching and Other Graphic Arts, by George T. Plowman. London: John Lane; New York: Dodd Mead, 1923. [Sunday Times] MR. A. M. HIND's history of engraving and etching is already known as the standard work on this subject in the English language. This third and revised edition includes one new and very useful feature in the Classified List of Engravers; the bibliography has been augmented and brought up to date, and considerable additions have been made to the chapter on Modern Etching. The author admits the difficulty of knowing where to stop when one begins to deal with contemporary etchers, but in drawing the line at 1914 he has been able to include practically all the eminent etchers whose reputations were established before the outbreak of war. Mr. Plowman's book is more popular in character, and is primarily designed for the amateur. The first part deals with the subjects necessary to a complete understanding of etching, and rightly begins by laying emphasis on drawing as the first essential. The second part of the book is practical and technical, dealing with the methods and materials of etching. The volume may be commended to students as a useful guide in their preliminary work. L'Oublie, by Pierre Benoit. Paris: Albin Michel, 1922. 3fr. 75. [Le Livre des Livres] WHEN Pierre Benoit's heroes start to tell us their own adventures with their own lips, they never stop reeling off extraordinary encounters. Here the brigadier Pinderes, whose squadron is operating in Armenia against the Turks, is all the less troubled by possibilities because he is taking us through a dream. It is a very pretty dream and a very amusing one, which carries us through the Bolshevist Republic of Ossipluria, in which, however, the oligarchy do not make a practice of carrying knives between their teeth. The despot, a colleague of Lenin, is a lady named Mandane, whose charm and beauty does not yield a bit, even to Antinea. Pierre Benoit has put his new novel together with his usual humorous and fantastic touch. Two well-made short stories end the book. Memories of Later Years, by Oscar Browning. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923. 10s. 6d. [Westminster Gazette] MR. OSCAR BROWNING has lived a great many years, including six months in the reign of William IV; he has traveled widely, observed keenly, and known almost everyone worth knowing; and his interest in Mr. Oscar Browning is infectious. These memories, which, despite their title, go back sixty years, are mainly impressions of travel. But their author is much more concerned with people than places, and though he finds comfort from the reflection that when he was in India he almost certainly saw Mount Everest, he admits that he did as little sightseeing as possible. He was the guest of Lord Curzon, and 'no one,' he says, 'who has lived in India as the Viceroy's guest could live happily in any other way.' Except, of course, in Italy, where he 'has never spent a dull hour.' A Liberal, a pro-Boer when it was easier to be a pro-Boer in England than abroad, and a Christian Scientist, Mr. Oscar Browning does not leave us in this book to detect his heroes by implication. Cecil Rhodes, Campbell-Bannerman, Curzon, and Lloyd George compel his admiration, and he was the friend of three of them. He leaves no doubts, either, about his aversions. Chief of these, perhaps, was Metternich, to whose policy he traces the disruption of Austria, while he makes some forcible comments about the type of swaggering Englishmen produced by Waterloo, who were lords and masters of the Eternal City itself, and incurred the dislike of half the capitals of Europe. It is not quite fair to say that this dates the book. In fact, its chief interest is that its reference is mainly to the European society of the last century. Its wit and vivacity belong to that society; and at the age of eighty-six they are remarkable. And so, also, is the fact that Mr. Oscar Browning is still writing books, and still rises at six o'clock. The Irish Guards in the Great War, edited and compiled from their diaries and papers by Rudyard Kipling. Two vols. London: Macmillan, 1923. 40s. [John Buchan in the Times] THE Irish Guards have been so fortunate as to find their historian in the greatest living master of narrative. No other book can ever be written exactly like this, and it seems likely to endure as the fullest document of the war-life of a British regiment, compiled by a man of genius who brings to his task, not only a quick eye to observe and a sure hand to portray, but a rare spirit of reverence and understanding. Mr. Kipling's point of view is the battalions'; he is not concerned with the larger issues of the campaign, but with the narrow horizon which bounded the battalions' gaze. He has limited himself to 'matters which directly touch the men's lives and fortunes'; and he has recaptured, though he will scarcely admit it, 'the brilliance, squalor, unreason, and heaped boredom' of the mad world which was these men's inheritance. From regimental diaries and private letters he has told again the story of battles which now seem to many as far away as the fights in Homer. [Manchester Guardian] IN Mr. Kipling's faithful eyes, the Regula alone had all the virtues. It is typical that tanke are scarcely mentioned, and then coldly, thoug he describes with special detail and real powe the first of all tank-battles, one in which it is really difficult to describe the full measure of their prominence both in the landscape and in the minds of our troops. The reader who knew the war at first hand must be prepared for other surprises, and not mind them. It is surprising to find anyone, whe has had a chance to learn the dislike and con tempt of our troops for atrocity-mongering, writ ing now in a book that in October 1914 'it was necessary to warn the companies that the enemy might attack behind a screen of Belgian women and children.' Nor will English airmen thank Mr. Kipling for saying that during the German advance in 1918 'the enemy's swarms of aeroplanes harried the Amiens hospitals, driving the civilians into the broadside of the country behind. where the moonlight nights betrayed them to fresh hosts in the air.' The present writer inhabited at the moment a billet almost overhanging the railway through Amiens, and can testify to the professional assiduity and skill with which the German bombers concentrated on the doublej line of metals, though they did not always hit it. Again, it is startling to find the lightness with which Mr. Kipling, intent on his heroes, imputes downright failures in resolution to other troops. No one who had ever been with any one unit through the war would throw that stone. Guarded beforehand against these and a few other shocks, any old infantryman can read the book through with constant pleasure and admiration for the sympathetic vision that has figured so well the fatigue and grime of the war, its blank voidness of stirring pomp and pleasant circumstance, its excess of muddiness over even bloodiness, and of stench over martial romance, and also the indefeasibly gay and elastic vitality of the human mind, which never wholly failed to conjure something of humor or beauty out of the incidents of its passage through so many dreary miseries of mind and body. BOOKS MENTIONED IKEDA, S. Weltbetrachtungen eines Japaners. Stuttgart: Neues Schloss Verlag, 1923. |