December 14, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
17 
THERE is no serious kind of war book in more 
constant demand at the present time than that 
which deals with first principles and the causes 
of things — war in particular. We know that any 
contemporary history of the war must of many neces- 
sities be incomplete, but while our old world is breaking 
about our ears, we listen eagerly for the voice that shall 
re-state old theories of politics and ethics or set forth 
newer ones that help us to understand the causes, and 
particularly to be prepared for the results, of the present 
war. What was wrong with a \vorld that allo\\ed the 
mad-dog of Prussian militarism to break loose in Europe ? 
How is.it going to be chained up again, and how will the 
nations feel after the effort of catching it ? These are 
subjects about which, to judge from the publishers' 
catalogues, many books from many points of view are 
being \\rittcn and also being read, if not like Kitchener's 
Army in himdred thousands, at least in second and third 
editions of respectable extent. This is as it should be. 
Our intellectual, no less thaii our physical, weapons 
need, in this struggle, to be looked over, refurbished 
and, if necessary, replenished. The harder the thinking 
imposed the more satisfactory will be the result. 
There is much hard thinking demanded in AiUlwrity, 
Liberty and Fjinciion in the Light of the Way (George 
Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 4s. 6d. net). This work by an 
author, Mr. Ramiro de Maetzu, with whose previous 
writings, if any, I am totally unacquainted, is certainly 
one of the most stimulating and interesting essays in 
political science that the war has produced. It is also, 
be it said for the benefit of those whom the title may 
dishearten, written with a livehness of style, often crystal- 
lising into real wit, that relieves its necessary employ- 
ment of philosophical jargon of much of its deprcssiiig 
effect on the style and readability of the book. But 
the important thing is what it has to say. That may be 
briefly summarised as follows : The principle of Authority 
and the principle of IJberty which declared war on one 
another at the Renaissance and are no'Cv in open battle 
again, are neither of them acceptable as foundations of 
tlie modern State. The one is the mere glcrirtcation of 
power, the " The German heresy " ; the other sets up 
the end of happiness — that is, the satisfaction of our 
lust and our pride, and has no validity to bind man in 
society. If Might, pure and simple, the negation of all 
growth and variety in human existence, is not to triumph 
as a result of this war, something, and that something 
not merely the individualistic ideal of Liberty, must be 
put in its place. What is that something to be ? 
-^ -f> ^ 'jC wfi 
Here let me digress for a moment to glance at the 
book of a friend of mine, Mr. E. S. P. Haynes, w-ho is a 
notable champion of the ideal of Libert}-. He has w ritten 
a book called The Decline of Liberty in England (Grant 
Richards, 6s. net). In this book, though I have always 
deemed myself a lover of liberty, I find I am in full agree- 
ment with little else than these sentences: "It was 
Horace who pointed out to the Romans that Greece, 
when defeated by Rome, captured the Roman mind, 
and this was undoubtedly a gain to Rome ; but the idea 
of the same process occurring at the end of the present 
war has been to- me, and no doubt to many otiiers, a 
nightmare ever since the war began. That this country 
should sacrifice her best and youngest citizens to torture 
and death and then worship a German Moloch, is 
the most horrible disaster that the huiiian imagination 
can conceive." True, so far we all are agreed ; " the 
German Heres}'," with its sterile worship of the State 
as a good in itself and of jDOwer as an end must not 
prevail. But if we only have to set up against this the 
principle of Liberty as expounded by Mr. Haynes, I 
fear Mr. de Maetzu is right. The ideals of Hedonism 
tend, equally with those of power, to sterility and have 
by their very nature a Constant tendency to disintegrate 
society. The Decline of Liberty in England might almost 
have been written to illustrate that section of Mr. de 
Maetzu's book in which he tries to show that Liberty is 
not a practical princijjlc of association. - 
* . *' * * * 
Mr. de Maetzu's' solution of the problem which ho 
analyses so well is naturally the most interesting part of 
his book. He finds his solution in what he calls the 
principle of function, which is merely an extension of the 
idea underlying Syndicalism, or, in more attractive 
language, the Revival of the Guild. It is no new- idea, 
having found expression not merely as the author points 
out in the Guild system of the Middle ages, but also in 
the caste system of the East. It seems to be the solution 
tor which the Greek political philosophers, to whom 
Mr. de Maetzu's book owes much, were groping, for it is 
an expansion and application of Aristotle's frag- 
mentary development of the theory of distributive 
justice. A.ccording to this theory of society, men are to 
organise themselves almost automatically according to 
their functions and will find an objective law- which 
governs the exercise of those functions. Shoemakers 
shall thus control the shoe-making world, lawyers the 
legal, and so on. Nor does it follow that a man need be 
confined to one function only. I have no space here to 
follo-\v this idea further, or indeed to do more than 
adumbrate w-hat Mr. de Maetzu himself does not fully 
work out. I have only endeavoured to suggest that his 
book is of some real importance. 
.-;; * * * * 
Australia in Arms, (T. Fisher Unwin, 12s. 6d. net), is 
a book that every member of the Australian Expeditionary 
Force will hke to possess. Its sub-title indicates its 
scope. It is "a narrative of the Australasian Imperial 
Force and their achievements at Anzac." The narrative 
full, thorough and well-illustrated with maps, plans and 
photographs, is by Mr. Philip Schuler, the war corre- 
spondent of The Melbourne Age. Every page of the book 
from the first which describes the immediate response of 
Australia when war was declared to the last which des-- 
cribes the evacuation of the Peninsula is a soberly- 
written record of fact, but it must vibrate with memories 
for those who took part in what is described. Even for 
those who did not the book tells an immortal tale in a 
comprehensive manner.. It is an important contributiou 
to the historical literature of the war. 
***** 
Let us take a moment's relaxation and be frivolous 
awhile ! Mrs. John Lane's War Phases according to 
Maria (John Lane, 2s. Gd. net), enables us to do this 
without, you observe, forgetting that there is a war. 
Aided by some really entertaining pictures by3Iiss Fish, 
this book allows us to enjoy for a space a superior smile 
at the foibles of a vulgar woman in war time. Maria , 
dressing to " do her bit," seeking socially advantageous 
ways of doing it, practising with shame, inevitable war 
economies and, most laughable of all. going in for hens, 
Plymouth Rocks, that turn out to be " Pilgrim Fathers," 
provides a bright little revue at which w-e smile a moment 
and then pass on. 
I do not know how far In the Fire of the Furnace (Smith. 
Elder and Co., 6s.), which is by a Sergeant in the French 
Army, is a record of real experience. It describes, at 
any rate, a process of individual regeneration which 
many men have experienced since the war began, and has 
the interest of describing it from a foreign point of 
view. Consequently, it is worth reading, even in the 
present rather inadequate translation. 
The December number of Colour contains reproductions- ot 
the work of .'\ugustus John, Albert Baertsoon (R.A. of Bel- 
gium), Maurice Blieck, G. L. Brockhurst, and others, as well 
as reprodtictions of works in the National Gallery of Modern 
Art at Rome. Brockhurst 's " Diamond Hill," and John's 
" Portrait," are exceptionally interesting pages, while the 
number as a whole maintains the standard of reproduction 
thus has made Colour noteworthy — and justly so — as an 
example of what production and reproduction should be. 
