i8 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
October 19, 1916 
A MONG the best signs of our nation's wcU-beini., 
/% in the present struggle are the eagerness ^\ith 
/ % whicli it is attempting to learn " the lessons 
JL jLof the war," and thf spirit in which on the 
whole this is being done. It is the spirit of one who 
. taki's advantage of a catastrophe for which he is not 
responsible to take stock of his previous shortcomings 
in order that he may emerge stronger and titter than 
ever, as a wise shop-keeper (Napoleon has made the 
simile inevitable) may profit by a fire which has destroyed 
his old-fashioned premises. There is a danger in the 
present case, that with our national habit of self-deprecia- 
tion we may be tempted to give the predominant ten- 
dency to destructiveness too free a play on national assets 
that we cannot easily replace. However, thanks probably 
to that comfortable doctrine of vicarious fault-finding 
which is enshrined in ourconstitution as the Responsibility 
of Ministers, our self-depreciation is not so real as it is 
apparent. In any case, as with our shop-keeper, this is 
not only a suitable but an enforced opportunity for taking 
stock both of the past and of the future. 
* * * * * 
The above reflection was suggested by several 
reports of Societies and Committees ^nd by several books 
I have read lately, but by nothing so much as an admir- 
able little book called Eclipse or Empire ? (Messrs. Nisbet 
and Co., 2s. and 3s. 6d. net.) 
This is a book that will be widely read and widely dis- 
cussed, for in it Dr. H. B. Gray, so well known for many 
years as Headmaster of Bradfield College, collaborates 
with Mr. Samuel Turner in an attempt to indicate the 
lines on which Great Britain should recover what the 
authors hold, with a mass of evidence to support them, 
to be her lost supremacy as the workshop of the world. 
The most valuable jiart of the book is its comprehensive 
glossary in which " Cireat Britain's industrial inetficiency " 
is brought home by a detailed examination of the com- 
parative positions of every branch of business and in- 
dustry. The chief point we gather from this is that while 
Englishmen either at home or in America have usually 
led the way in invention and discovery they have, at any 
rate at home, usually failed in the commercial applica- 
tion of their ideas. As we should e.xpect from a book in 
which Dr. Gray takes a leading part, the authors find the 
remedy for the defect in a reformed system of education. 
This will naturally give rise to considerable controversy 
in which I fancy the general tendency of the moment 
will be to support the authors of Eclipse or Empire ? 
***** 
The reform of education is too big a subject to tackle 
here, and I would only suggest a fear that in turning us 
all into Americans, which appears to be the tendency of 
most of the authors' suggestions (though there is an 
attempt that may be overlooked to counteract it), we 
might lose something of the spirit, which some of us 
cherish, that has not made us too proud to fight. 
Again, surely too much may be made of the matter of 
teaching business as a profession. Both the man of 
business, through a natural self-esteem, and the man of 
learning, through ignorance, are inclined to magnify the 
mysteries of a business career, the fundamental principles 
of which (though, of course, not the capacity for applying 
them) might quickly be acquired in an up-to-date course 
of di^diictivc logic, notoriously one of the easiest subjects 
to master. This mystery-making about business methods 
seems to have infected Dr. Gray and Mr. Turner. In 
justice to whom, however, it should be added that, in 
their undoubtedly stimulating book, they do not claim 
finality for their suggested remedies. " Our main 
object," they say, " is to create the consciousness of a 
need rather than to dogmatise on the methods to be 
applied." They have certainly produced a book that no 
one interested in the problems of reconstruction after the 
war can afford to neglect. 
* * * * * 
Hero is a refreshing book that recalls pre-xvar problems 
and pre-war faces and friendships. Mr. Edward Clodd, 
till last year secretary of the London Joint Stock Bank. 
and author of the Childhood of the World, and many other 
books has great talent in many directions, but he seems 
to have a genius for making friends. In reference to his 
memories of Huxley, Grant Allen, and Henry Walter 
Bates, George Meredith once hailed him in good- 
natured chaff as " Conductor of the Biographical 
Bus along the Necrologic Tram." His Memories (Chap- 
man and Hall, los. 6d. net.) may well be called the 
" Agnostics Who's Who." .It is a notable collection of 
anecdotes and pen-portraits of a great group of well- 
known persons of the later Victorian period, full blooded 
men and women, great livers, and for the most part great 
laughers, whom only to name is to awaken stirring 
thoughts, and for many of us the parigs of severed friend- 
ships. Here are besides those named above, Cotter 
Morrison, Mary Kingsley, York Powell, Andrew Lang, Mrs. 
Lynn Linton and George Gissing, to select some of the best 
among a score or two of notable studies. Here is also 
much interesting information about curious little Clubs 
and the scientific coteries of London during the past half 
century. One is tempted to swap anecdotes with the 
author, the best test of the success of such a book as this. 
One is tempted above all to quote Mr. Clodd's own anec- 
dotes, and I only refrain because I do not know where to 
begin and I certainly should not know where to stop. 
Nor would I have anyone believe that if I filled this page 
with extracts, he would have sampled one tithe of the 
banquet of good things that await him in the Memories. 
***** 
There arc not many novels of outstanding merit being 
published just now. In this week's batch the one that 
is pre-eminent for distinction of style and matter is The 
Wave, by Mr. Algernon Blackwood (Macmillan and Co., 
5s. net). Mr. Blackwood calls his story " An Egyptian 
Aftermath," and in it treats the now familiar theme of 
re-inearnation in his own delicate and subtle manner. 
It has been said that the foundation of all comedy is " a 
man, a woman and a screen." For the screen Mr. Black- 
wood seems to substitute innumerable veils which are 
removed one by one with a deliberation that sometimes 
renders the reader impatient. Perhaps in view of the 
subject of the book these veils may be said to represent 
a mummy's wrappings which, as they are unrolled, seem 
every now and then on the point of revealing the human 
body within, only to become the next moment a shapeless 
mass again. Mr. Blackwood, however, just manages to 
retain our curosity and interest to the end, and that end 
is worth while, though we have misgivings about the 
rather crude symbolism of the yellow cotton gloves that 
finally revealed the character of the heroine's unworthy 
lover. Lettice herself is one of the most fascinating, as she 
is one of the most elusive, of recent heroines ; and both 
she and Tom Kelverdon are better sustained bits of 
characterisation than Mr. Blackwood has yet given us. 
***** 
The Bathing Man, by Miss Agnes Gwynne (John Lane, 
6s.), is a first novel of more than usual promise. In story 
.it is a variant of the familiar theme of the wrongfully 
accused hero, with an historical parallel in the hero's 
family that adds to the romantic interest of the plot. 
But in its setting, which is chiefly in a sea-side resort on 
the Adriatic, there is both originality and charm. It may 
be regarded in one aspect as a no^cl of the Anglo-Italian 
alliance and, if it induces anyone to follow the example 
of one of its characters and " give up looking at Italy as 
a country starred all overbyHerr Baedeker," it will not 
have been written in vain. In any case it is a quite 
entertaining story and will make one look out with interest 
for its author's next venture. 
Miss Netta Syrett's new novel Rose Coitingham Married 
(T. Fisher Unwin, 6s.) is a sequel which need not be 
condemned out of hand on that account. Indeed many 
readers of the previous volume will be interested to learn 
what happened to the Cottinghams. This story brings 
their married life up to the war. It is an ambitious and 
not wholly successful study in unsuitably matched couples. 
Fortunately for tlie tender-hearted reader Miss Syrett 
has pity on one of the couples — after twenty years. 
