i8 
L A .N JJ t\: W A T K R 
May II, 1916 
Vivid Scenes and Striking Thoughts 
THE war is chanf,'ing tlu' values of all tilings ^Toat 
and small ; among the lesser ones is the significance 
attaching in the public mind to certain professions 
and vocations of life. Take for instance the title, 
Professor. A Professor has been always popularly 
supposed to have an air of antiqueness, to use a polite 
word, clinging to him ; he has been regarded as a being 
(some would even say a thing) entirely detached and remote 
from the daily occurrences and ideas of life. Now we 
fmd we owe to a Professor one of the most \'ivid repre- 
sentations of the facts of war in Belgium and in France 
and to another Professor what is certainly the most 
acute description of the state of feeling which this war 
has created at home. Thus once again does war destroy 
the artificialities of peace, and serve to re-establish reality 
in our minds. 
It is now some little time since Messrs. Macmillan 
published Leaves from a Field Xotc Book, by Professor 
Morgan (5s. net). It still shares with Hoyd Cable's 
Between the Lines the distinction of being the most %ivid 
description of this war as it actually is across the 
Channel. Professor Morgan has the power of making a 
scene live with a very few words ; sometimes he is in- 
clined to strain this power, which is the only ad\"erse 
criticism one can make, the result being a certain loss of 
spontaneity, .\part from that each picture stands out 
tlirobbing with life, and alas, at times, with agony. 
But there is ever a fine reticence in the more terrible 
jmssages, which is as effective and as awe-inspiring as the 
murders off the stage in a C^reek tragedy. " Bobs 
Bahadur," the opening story, is a little bit of history that 
will li\e ; it tells of the visit of Lord Roberts to a hospital 
for Indian troops on board a ship in a French harbour 
on his last visit to France. " Stokes's Act " is a fragment 
of military history ; indeed it may be said that all these 
stories deserve to endure because of the underlying 
fact, as well for their high literary achievement. They 
will doubtless in years to come form the basis of many 
tales, and the story-writer will turn to them for local 
colour when he writes about the Great ^Var. Professor 
Morgan's book has the quality of a classic. 
My Brother's Keeper. 
■ The other Professor to whom we have referred, is 
Professor Jacks. Messrs. \\'illiam3 and Norgate have 
just published a collection of two and twenty essays 
from his pen, entitled From the Human End, 2s. 6d. net. 
These essays reflect in. a wonderful way the perple.vities, 
worries and disturbances which have been caused in the 
minds of so many of as by the war and by those changes 
in our attitude towards life which unprecedented circum- 
stances have compelled. Singularly exquisite is the 
chapter on " the p^acefulness of being at war. " " I 
believe," he writes, " that the war has brought to Eng- 
land a peace of mind such as she has not possessed for 
generations." Is not this a true belief, and realising it 
is it not as it were balm for one's own sore heart or 
wounded spirit ? 
A finer study in irony has surely never been pennel 
than the essay "Organisation in Tartarus," but there is 
one pa.ssagc in the previous essay, " Am I my brother's 
keeper," for which Professor Jacks will win the gratitude 
of every thoughtful person in the country. As we all 
know there is a considerable school of sentimentalists 
who have constituted themselves into the keepers of their 
brothers ; their ad\'ice has filled columns upon columns 
in the newspapers, ever since August, 1914 ; it has 
latterly slopped over on to the hoardings. We ask these 
good people to inscribe on the tablets of the memory 
this passage ; for it is an honest and true report of the 
evil which is so often wrought in other men s lives by 
well intentioned but impertinent interference : 
Is there anything in this world wliich so rouses the indigna- 
tion of a self-respecting man as the discovery that another 
man is presuming " to do him good," not from love, not 
from personal affection, but from a cold-blooded sense 
of duty ? Put yourself in the position, not of the keeper, 
but of the brother who is being kept on these terms. 
Would you like it ? Would you accept it ? Would 
vou not say. " The position is 'luitc intolerable — humihut- 
ing disgusting ! Tiiis fellow dislikes inc, hates mc would 
l)e glad if 1 were mit of existence, and yet forces himself 
in the name of iiis iluty to look after my interests — to do 
me good ! What does he know of my interests ? What 
can he know, hating me as he does ? The prig ! The 
monster ! Let him go to the devil ! " This is wiiat you 
would answer. .\nd, looking at the matter from the 
human end, I cannot see that you would be wrong. A 
syco])hant, a toady, a sj^nge, knowing on wliich side his 
bread was buttered, would answer dillerently. 
Some Novels of the Day 
Dolores Fane, the last descendant of a race of dissolute 
gentlemen, forms tlie central figure in Oranges and Lemons, 
by D. C. F. Harding (Cassell and Co., 6s.) The book is, in 
fact, her life history, and it is also a very clever study in 
feminine psychftlogy, though the reader will find it a little 
difficult to understand Doroles' uncanny devotion to Amadis, 
the .Argentine scoundrel who fouled all that he touched. 
We begin by disliking Dolores, but gradually the fineness of 
her wayward character is made manifest, and long before the 
end of the book is reached we are in full sympathy with her. 
The novel is one of unusual merit, and, if a first book, is of 
the highest promise and no small measure of achievement. 
Xo Craven Image, by Hilda P. Cuiniiigs (John Murray, 5s. 
net) is a study in renunciation. Dick Evcrard, whu is intro- 
duced to the reader at the close of his Cambridge career, is 
made by liis convictions to renounce first his aspirations as a 
writer, and then the woman he loves, and all the time he is so 
self-analytic and introspective that we are not quite sure 
whether the writer is consciously or unconsciously endea- 
vouring to show what a small soul he jjosseiscs. He lives by 
the beatitude, " Blessed are the meek," and turns the other 
cheek with the greatest pleasure. To a large extent the man 
is sacrificed to the plot — but it makes a very readable story. 
It is always refreshing in a novel to meet with a character 
who can command the reader's whole-hearted admiration, and 
such a one is Felicity in Felicity Crofton, by Marguerite Bryant. 
(Hcinemann Os. net.) Fehcity is no young girl, but a matron 
with a gnjwn-up daughter, and her charm lies in her perpetual 
youth and a quaUty that forms an ennobling influence on 
those with whom she comes in contact. She understood 
and carried into daily life the true spirit of self-sacrifice under 
circumstances that tried her to the utmost. An excellent 
foil to Felicity's strength is her friend .Stella Preston, through 
whose weakness the greater part of Felicity's troubles arise. 
Brownie, by Agnes Gordon Lennox. (John I,ane, 6s.), is 
the story of a capricious httle woman of .\ngIo-Italian parent- 
age, who married with no more than niere affection for her 
husband, and came to regret it when the one man for her came 
into her life. The story would have been mucii more effective 
without the addition of a most impossible villain, Kudolf de 
Moro to wit, who says " Ha, ha ! " in the approved style 
of melodrama and utterly fails to convince. He is necessary, 
however, for the working out of the rather machine-madj 
plot, in which the really live figure is Brownie herself, a clever 
study of an unusual and attractive type of woman. 
Mr. Eric Leadbitter has a way of taking small lives ami 
small happenings and miking them extremely interesting, a 
talent he evinces to the full in The Road to Nowhere (George 
.\llen and Unwin, 6s.) Joe Pcaping. the greengrocer's son, 
determined to rise in life, and the fortunate accidents and 
little meannesses by which he achieved his aim debase rather 
than refine the man himself, in spite of his surface jwlish. 
(3ne cannot ([uiti^ avoid the impression that the author has, 
to a certain extent, sacrificed an excellent psychological stuily 
— to wit, Joe— to the making of his story, for Joe's failure in 
learning the deeper lessons of life is carried almost too far for 
credence. In spite of this, the story never fails in " grip," 
but carries the reader along to the " Nowhere " of its end, 
minus the proverbial dull page. 
There is a good deal in The, Winds oj the World, by Talbot 
Mundy (Cassell and Co., 6s.) to remind the reader of Kipling's 
Kim. His fascinating, exasperating Jasmini, in spite of the 
])ower with which he endows her, will appeal to those 
who know the East, and the German intrigue, on which 
the whole story is based, is real enough to interest even a 
captious critic of the work. The story is a good ono 
