i3 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
June 14, 1917 
THOUGH I am quite disposed and even anxious to 
ieani the national lessons that the great European 
catastrophe has to teaeh us, I must confess that 1 
come away from reading most " after the war " 
books in a state of bewildered agnosticism. Have we really 
been, as a nation, such incompL'tent muddlers as many of 
them make out ? Have none ot our pre-war institutions and 
customs been of any value ? Has it been merely a lucky 
accident that the present emergency has l^een met in so line a 
spirit and with s<j much success ? 1 must confess that 1 should 
really like for a change to stumble on a book which traced 
the reasons for such part of our national endeavour as has not 
been a failure and which jKiinted out what, in conse<iuence, 
was worth preserving instead of merely what should be 
destroyed ,or what sliould be created. In addition to the 
assumption so usual in such books that all is wrong, or has 
till recently been wrong, with lingland, there is an ama/.ing 
variety in the panaceas suggested for putting her right. 
It sometimes seems as if the family doctor, having pro- 
nounced sentence, every tpiack in the land had been sum- 
moned by despairing relatives to the patient's death-bed. 1 
can even see the latter creeping away from the heated dis- 
putants around him and becoming cured by the innate 
vigour (if his constitution, or, as the Scotsmen had to do. 
'When there was no doctor within scores of miles. " jist deoing 
a natural death." Such- generalisations as the.se. however, 
do not do justice to the vast aniount of really useful work 
which IS Ix'ihg done by way of taking stock of the nation's 
resources, material, spiritual and intellectual, wth a \i'\v to 
a useful national development after the war. 
' » * » * * 
Granted (as it too seldom is just now) that England has in 
her the seeds of a sj^eedy regeneration, it is well that the soil 
should be rendered fertile for their reception. Such a book, 
for exam])le, as After-War I'rohlems ((icorge Allen and 
Unwin, Ltd., 7s. bd. net), cannot fail to clarify and stimulate 
thought on the various subjects' treated therein by acknow- 
ledged experts. ' To show its value it is only necessary to 
give some indication of what it ('ontains. In it, for example. 
Lord Haldane deals in a characteristically thorough fashion 
with National Education, showing us what we niay learn 
(if it be only to avoid similar mistakes) from the experiences 
of Germany, the late Lord Cromer deals broadly with 
Imperial Ju'deration, and Ldrd Meath with The Cultivation 
of Palriotiam. There are articles on the Relations between 
Capital and Labour, the standpoint of the former being ably 
presented by Sir Benjamin Browne, and that of the latter by 
Mr. G. H. Roberts. Then Mrs. Fawcett writes on The 
Position of Women in Economic Life, Professor Mar.-;hall on 
National Taxation after the War, Sir William Chance on 
Unsolved Prnblcms of the English Poor Law, and Mr. Arthur 
Sherwell <m National Thrift. And still some of the most 
useful and readable articles remain unmentioned. Mr. \V. 
H. JJawson has been responsible for editing this work. 
Much of the value of such a book as After-War Problems 
naturally lies in its variety. It is, on the other hand, unity of 
thought that particularly makes interesting Mr. W. C. 
Dampier W'hctliam's book on The War and the Nation (John 
Murray, 6s. net). This is perhaps the most suggestive book 
that has yet been written for the benefit of those who really 
believe, as most men profess to do, that they have cast off 
the trammels of pre-war politics. Mr. Whetham offers to 
such people a new jiolitical creed, that of Tory Socialism, and 
might have found a stronger historical justification than he 
does find for his position in George IIl.'s tentative experi- 
ments in this direction. Mr. Whetham smites the old parties 
hip and thigh. He taunts the I'arty for which he has most 
predilection with " the sordid details of Tariff Reform." 
■' Conservatives became Unionists ; but the Union for which 
they strove was formulated too much by the unmovable 
Drangeman and the manufacturer seeking, perhaps un- 
consciously, protection for his own industry under the guise 
of Colonial preference." The Liberal Party fares even worse 
at his hands. "The Liberals, too, came more and more 
under the control of grou])-; of doctrinaires and faddists ; 
and these Liberal Scril)es and Pharisees were more offensive 
to good taste, and probably did more harm, than the Unionist 
Publicans and Sinners." 
* ♦ * » * 
Mr, Whetham is, however, something more than a critic 
of the recent regime in England. He outlines a con.structive 
policy in which tlie main planks are the protection of key- 
industries for the benefit of the State and not of the in- 
dividual, certain measures of nationalisation, a more equable 
system of taxation,' favourable to the increase of the race 
and the wider distribution of wealth and a system of agri- 
cultural wage boards. Mr. Whetham treats these subjects 
with thoroughness, peisuasiveness and above all with an 
independence of attitude that is in itself attractive. There 
is much to be leanit from his book, e\en by those who Cannot 
accept his ])r«gramme en bloc. This is more especiallj' the 
case when he deals with such problems as those of racial 
loss, which arise directly out of the war. He is not one of 
the writers on after-war problems who think the war can be 
ignored in any future policy of reconstruction. 
* » * • • 
e 
It is interesting to turn from Mr. Whetham's book to hi 
wife's treatise on The Upbringing of Daughters (Longmans, 
(ireen and Co.. 5s. mi). Mrs. Whetham slian's wath her 
hu'^band in tiie adoption of a general attitude which movt 
people would call paradoxical together with a capacity for 
elaborating it with witty common sense. Mr. Whetharii, as 
I have jiointed out, is that rare, but by no means illogical 
bird, the Tory Socialist ; Mrs. Whetham (I know nothing of 
her personal habits) is an early Victorian with a cigarette. 
1 had not read much of her book before I found my.self recalling 
verses from the poems of Anne and Jane Taylor, and was 
pleased, later on, to find the author recommending their 
admirable work for the nursery library. The different 
subjects of Mr. and Mrs. Whetham's books is symbolical. 
The standpoint of The Upbringing of Daughters is that of the 
jnother and the keeper of the home. Mrs. Whetham never 
loses sight of the fact that as she puts it, the position of 
women " relative to the future generation, has an entinly 
different index number " from that of men. Her book is a 
useful corrective to the tendency of the feminists to ignore, 
probably from exasperation at its obviousness, tliis funda- 
mental position. Eor the rest, though it 'does not entirely 
escape the sententiousness almost unavoidable in such works, 
it is full of good practical advice on such subjects as dress, 
scholastic instruction, money matters and the like, and of a 
broad sympathy that is particularly attractive. It represents 
the constructive Toryism of the home. ' 
* * * * « 
A book written by a wounded officer to relieve the tedium 
of convalescence, promises also to be a relaxation for a mind 
weary with war and after-war problems. Moreover, In the 
Night (Longmans, Green and Co., 4s. bd. net), is a detective 
story, the best of all anodynes, and Mr. R. Gorell Banies has 
adopted the most satisfactory plan for such a story, namely 
that of taking his reader into full confidence throughout. 
As we investigate the violent death of the dnpopular Sir 
Roger Penterton, we learn all that the local police, the Scot- 
land Yard detective and the investigating amateurs discover 
as soon as they do. We can form our own conclusions from 
their discoveries — and we shall be wrong ! That is the 
triumph of the tale. Of course, Mr. Gorell Banies cannot 
actually take us over the site of the crime, if crime it were, 
in person, or we should probably have noticed — but I must 
not give away the suqirisc of an exciting novel. 
, * • » » ♦ 
Here is 'another quite readable yarn, something after the 
style of the late Jack London. Mr. James Oliver Curwood 
in The Girl Beyond the Trail, dwells on the curative influence, 
especially on a mind diseased, of the frozen wilds of the 
extreme north of Canada. It is not perhaps every heart- 
broken man that would have had the good luck of David Raine 
in meeting so much distracting adventure and romance in 
so desolate a district, but tliat he does do so is all to the 
advantage of the reader who will follow the frozen trail with 
an absorption only disturbed, if he chances on a copy similar 
to that which came my way. by an unfortunate error in 
setting up tlie f)o(j]c which results at an exciting period of llio 
tale in onlv being able to reac^ every other pace. 
The new comedy at the St. James's Theatre, Sheila, is deliglit- 
fiil. It is very light, and the aspect of life it deals with not by 
any means new, but it is played admirably, Miss Fay ("omptoii 
being wonderful as the foolish wife. Mr. Aubrey Smith as the 
kind-hearted husband also rejoices the unsophisticated who 
fmd real i)leasure in a comedy of errors, in which charm of 
ni,T,nner and good-humour compensate for foolishness and irri- 
tating faults. Sheila received an excellent reception, and though 
it is never wi.se to prophecy the future of a play, especially with 
the temperature at summer heat, it had all the promise of a bic 
anil en (hiring success. May it prove so. 
