liei-icw of lierini?. 1/9/1;':. 



NOTABLE BOOKS. 



m 



seemed at first as if it would duly de- 

 stroy all religion, so that his only course 

 was at once to leave the Church and all 

 that it involved. But he is brought into 

 contact with two people, a woman and an 

 old man, whose beauty and nobility of 

 life bring him just the help necessar\-, 

 and Hodder finds final !}• the rock which 

 underlies the Christian creeds, and 

 realises that it would be a coward's part 

 to leave the Church ; that instead he is 

 to stay there, face the op]")osition and 

 scorn of his vestry, tear the veil from the 

 hidden sins of some of his prominent 



supporters, and preach the truth as it is 

 in Christ. 



Words almost fail to give the sense of 

 reality, ]iower and elevation inspired by 

 a no\el, in which the characters are so 

 eminentl)- human, so splendidly drawn, 

 the millionaire especially, and threaded 

 through with such charming stories of 

 human love Hodder marries the mil- 

 lionaire's daughter, and they face life 

 with a magnificent church without en- 

 dowment, almost emptied of its rich 

 congregation, but crowdecJ with the poor 

 of Dalton Street and its neighbourhood. 



GERMANY'S STRONG MEN. 



Ml' II AroiiiiiJ the Kniscr. IW KroiU-rif ^\'. 

 Wile. (Heinemann, 6I-.) 



Mr. Wile gives us here, m rac)- and 

 piquant words, a description of the en- 

 tonrage of the " Managing Director of 

 Germany " Ltd. The Kaiser has been 

 called upon to play a heavy role, and 

 has played it with eminent success. But 

 it has not been a one-man show, and in 

 this volume we have short, vigorous 

 articles descriptive of some thirty of 

 the great German personalities of the 

 day. We need to discount the author's 

 words somewhat, for Mr. Wile has the 

 militant instinct. His book is dedicated 

 to Lord Northcliffe, and the breath of 

 • war runs through it. With this proviso 

 we can give ourselves up to the delight 

 of page after page, in which we find 

 just the phrase which emphasises the in- 

 dividuality of the man of whom he is 

 speaking. For instance, Von Bethmann 

 Hollweg he describes as " a man who 

 means well feeblv," whilst a little fur- 



ther on he remarks that his tall, fine 

 ]:tersonality is in striking contrast to the 

 King of the Junkers, Von Heydebrand, 

 physically the most diminutive of the 

 great leaders. Of Herr Dernburg, who 

 gave up the managing directorship of a 

 great bank worth ;^io,000 a year for a 

 l)altry Cabinet salary of-;^i250, he says 

 that he applied business ethics to the 

 conduct of German^y's colonies ; but 

 there being no place for business capa- 

 city in a government saturated with 

 bureaucracy. Dernburg had to go. 

 Richard Strauss is described as " the 

 Bernard Shaw of music," and so, from 

 personage to personage, the story goes 

 on, leaving us wondering at the author's 

 skill in characterisation as he draws in 

 clear outline the individual qualities and 

 peculiarities of men of whom the or- 

 dinary reader knows so little that he is 

 in danger of supposing all German 

 statesmen are cast in one common 

 mould. 



WOMANHOOD. 



The Tnifli About W'oiiuiii. liy C. Clas- 

 quoine Hartley. (Eveleigli Na.sli.) 



The author of this book, who is well 

 known as Mrs. Walter Gallichan, says m 

 her preface, that it is the cnitcome of the 

 careful study for man\' years of the 

 conditions of women in this country 

 and abroad. She starts b}' endeavour- 

 ing to make clear, in the first cha|)ters ot 

 the book, the irresistible elemental power 

 of the uncurbed sexual instincts, prov- 

 ino- her poml by a (-arcful examination 



of animal love matings from the sim- 

 plest forms to the most developed. 



The next stage points out that 

 amongst the most elemental tribes of 

 men, matriarch}-, or mother-descent, was 

 fre(]uent, tlie transition to father-right 

 coming with what has been called a more 

 advanced civilisation, Init which was in 

 realit\- a backward steji. Customs in 

 I5urma, l.ipan, and China suppl\- illus- 

 trations. 



