iS 
LAINU & VvAiHK 
jauuaiy j, 
191S 
Books of the Week 
A^Fraudulent Standard. Being an exposure of the fraudu- 
lent character of our monetary standard witli suggestions 
for the establishment of an invariable xmit of value. 
By Arthir Kitso.v. P. S. King and. Son, Westminster. 
^s. ()d. net. 
Madame Roland, a Biography. By Mrs. Pope-Hknnessy 
(Lna Birch). Nisbet and Co. i()s. net. 
Stealthy Terror. By John Fkkguso.v. John. I^Tue. f)s. 
Debrett's Peerage, Baronetage, Knightage and Com- 
panionage for 1918. Edited by Ahtuur G. II. 
HiisiLKK.ii. Dean and Son. 45s. net. 
Till'- writings of Mr. .Arthur Kitson on financial 
subjects, are well-known to readers of L.A.xi) & W.'VTER. 
That his views are not orthodo.x it is unnecessary 
to state here ; indeed, in the preface to his new 
volume, A Fraudulent Standard, he admits that he is a heretic. 
But these are times in which heresy may prevail, or to be 
more accurate, when thoughtful people are not prepared to 
accept things as they are, merely because they rejoice in the 
halo of orthodo.xy. Religion, social ethics, economics are all 
undergoing a severe test ; they are scrutinised and examined 
from top to bottom in a manner unknown before, and it 
would be nothing short of a miracle were finance to escape. 
It does not escape, for though .Mr. Kitson writes for himself, 
there is behind him a great body of commercial opinion, and he 
would not have been in \ited (as he has been invited) to address 
the leaders of the commercial communities of such various im- 
portant industrial centres as the cities of Birmingham, Bristol 
and Belfast unless it was realised that his opinions, right 
or wrong, \\'cre those of a trader of wide experience who had 
given very careful thought and study to his subject. 
* « « » * 
It is no part of the functions of L.-\.nd iS: \V.\ter to commit 
itself to any particular views of any particular school of 
thought. Its columns are always thrown open ec|ually to 
conventional and unconventional writers on the leading 
topics of the hour. To this new work from the pen of Mr. 
Kitson we draw very special attention in that lie attacks 
courageously two of the greatest strongliolds of British com- 
mercial life — the gold currency and the Bank Charter. Both 
he denounces as " fraudulent " in the sense that they do not 
fulfil the purposes for which they were created. " Gold 
money," he declares, " is the Hun imiong commodities. It 
is the barbarian that has broken all its treaties and promises, 
and undertaken the conquest of the world by force and fraud." 
And in another place he speaks of legal tender being ''as 
much an invention— a mere contrivance for effecting certain 
ends— as the telephone or sewing machine." This is the 
right spirit in which to attack conventions of 'all sorts and 
conditions, and whether one agrees or disagrees with the con- 
clusions, one has to admit that they are advanced honestly, 
sincerely, and with force and conviction, 
* >•: >•> * i|: 
This slim volume of 227 pages (with an excellent index) 
is cert^n to be read carefully by the merchants and traders of 
the kingdom. It is uncompromising, with the result that it 
will end rapidly in some instances in the wastepaper basket, 
and in other instances will find the most honoured place among 
invaluable books of reference. From a literary point of view 
it is an advance on Mr. Kitson's previous writings ; his weak- 
ness has hitherto been to branch off into side-issues ; here he 
keeps himself strictly to the main subject, nor has he ridden his 
arguments too far, thus giving the enemy a chance to 
smite him on the flanks. Its publication is opportune for 
finance, national commercial and private, is greatly to the 
fore and the author has the rare power of being able to write 
on this most complicated of all complicated subjects simply 
and straightforwardly. We wish it the success it deserves. 
What that success may be we shall know better, say, five 
years hence. All we are aware of now is that new forces are 
at work, which may result in strange upheavals. 
* * * * * 
In reading a biography " we should be made to feel some- 
thing of the years that held no vista of new chances, something 
of the joys and sorrows, something of what went to the slow 
building up of character ... of all the preparation 
that went to the splendid action, the heroic leading, tlie good 
end." So says Mrs. Pope-Hcnncssy (Una Birch) in the 
iritroduction^ of her biography of Madame. Roland, tiiat 
notable woman of the French Revolution. But Mrs. Popc- 
Hennes.s\' lias not made these things visible : she has made 
the figure, certainly, but it is not alive. One distrusts, rather, 
certain conclusions which she bases on somewhat slight 
premises, notably as to how far Madame Roland actually 
inspired her husband and Buzot, and other's. One feels at 
the end of the book that certain part:^^ of it are not bad 
transcripts of history, for the author h<is been very carefid 
with regard to her authorities for the most part, and to a 
certain extent is biassed by them ; but the central character 
of the book is very often ])ushed on one side, with the result 
that although the story of tlie time is fairly clear, so far as it 
concerns the Girondin element of the Re\olution, the object 
of the biography is not. 
TJie author has brought out certain things very clearly 
indeed, and therein has done good service. She has shown 
how, after Varennes, the end of Louis and of his consort was 
utterly inevitable ; however little the revolutionaries might 
like the idea, Louis had to die ; she has brought out the 
strength and fitness for his time of the great Danton. She 
has, on the other hand, rather obscured Roland, or it might 
be better to say that she has belittled him for the sake of 
setting his wife forward. \vt, at the end one feels that 
Madame Roland's is an unsatisfying portrait. The biblio- 
graphy at the end of the work is good, and one feels that 
Mrs. Pope-Hennessy has done her work conscientiously — per- 
haps too conscientiously, thus showing a politician rather 
than a woman, and defeating her own end by too close an 
attention to detail. , 
* H: >H * 3H 
There is much in Stealthy Terror, by John Ferguson, to 
remind the reader of ICrskine Childers' Riddle of the Sands, 
though this is no story of the sea, but a real spy story starting 
in Berlin and ending in the open country of east Kent. It 
is the story of a sillv-looking little drawing for which, in 
Berlin, one man was killed, and another man — Abercromby, 
the hero of the story — underwent a series of adventures, of 
which the reading takes one on and on to the \'ery last page, 
interested all the lime. It is, apparently, a first no\'el, but 
the author has discovered a sense of humour, more especially 
when he conjectures that an Abcrdonian Scot may borrow 
his book to read, but will never buy it. There are a few little 
asides like this which compel a smile ; for the rest, the story 
needs no dressing, being sufficient in itself to hold all one's 
attention. 
The pre-war slovenliness in high places in dealing 
with the German menace, the bewildering efficiency of the 
British secret service, the half-astute, half-childish way in 
which German plans were made and hidden — these arc 
points that are well brought out. With no pretensions to 
literary style — in fact, with an absolute disregard for that 
quality, the author has told a rattling good story in such 
fashion that one who reads the first chapter is certain to read 
the rest, and that, as a rule, is all that one demands of a novel. 
And the " stealthy terror " of the title is well conveyed ; there 
are enough thrills in the book to satisfy the most captious. 
^ ^ i*: ](£ Ht 
Those who deliglit in dabbling in pedigrees and family 
histories will find a fund of interesting facts in the preface to 
Debrett, 191S. It comes from the pen of the editor, Mr. 
Arthur Hesilrige. 1917 has been a record in the matter of 
honours ; 18 new peerages were created and 32 new 
baronetcies ; knighthoods number 277, while the companion- 
ships to the various Orders reach tlie phenornenal figure of 
3,472. As regards the peerage, it is rather interesting to 
notice that during the last 25 years 200 new peers have been 
created, while 106 titles have become extinct. This docs not 
point to any dwindling in public interest in the hereditary 
chamber, and it will ])c interesting to discover wdien the legis- 
lative powers of that body arc revised whether titles and 
dignities will have their same attraction in th« future as they 
obviously have up to now. 
A most interesting paragraph in this i)reface deals with 
the honours conferred on members of the Royal Family at a 
time when the King assumed the dynastic name of Windsor. 
It appears that nearly every title had been formerly borne 
by a member of the Hanoverian House ; Athlone was a 
subsidiary title of the late Duke of Clarence, while George II., 
when Duke of Cambridge, was also Marcjuis of Milford- 
haven ; only Carisbrookc and Medina (and both from the Isle 
of Wight) are new peerage dignities. 
GOGGLES 
WIND-SCREENS 
A WINDOWS 
<i^^ ^ 
'^ THE ONUY ^ 
SAFETY CLASS 
