NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 20168, 21 February 1931, Page 13

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A NEW PLATONIC DIALOGUE. After Two Thousand Years. A Dialogue between Plato and a Modern Young Mail, gy G. Lowes .Dickinson. Allen and Unwin, Htd. (6s net.) \ Mr Dickinson unspheres the spirit of Plato, to question and bo questioned by tho spirit of a modern young man, called "Philalethes, for-I seek the truth"; and the two explore man's in-stitutions—-his "means"— and the ends, the Goods, which he strives for or might strive. Philalethes traces for Plato two thousand years, of growth and change, a history which the Greek receives with calm, ironio interest, too wise to be unbalanced by such surprise as he feels. Since his enquiries and comments and Philalethes answers turn description into discussion and estimation, in this way we hear old problems analysed again m their new forms, the problems of property, of government, Socialism, population, war, and education, the transition from subject to subject being managed with exquisite skill. In the second part of the book the nature of ideal (or real) Good is examined, and the hope of achieving it in Truth, Art, and Love., Tho faith of Philalethes in secure and eternal Good is weak, or dead. He can only say "that there are good things which good men can pursue so as physical conditions permit, whatever be the latter end of their pursuit"—a belief so limited that Plato tells him ho spoaks "like a man leading a forlorn hope." If tho modern "will not make • •. • • • life and conduct depend upon hope or faith," still, says Plato, •how can any man rest except upon faith, oven if it be given him.by the evidenco of his senses? But lie only pauses on that, in order to give his assent to the modern faith in ascertained values: "I would not shake it."" This, to be firm, need not bo all:

Having fixed those, having tounted the cost, having sot your course over' seas eo stormy, amid currents so strong, in a "vessel So frail, why may you not, as you look up at the sky that is always above you, now at the moon amid driving clouds, dipping iu and out, now at a sudden star, or it may be, at the whole spread of constellations shining tindis-' turbedr-why may you not admit the idea of » life larger than your own or than that of all mankind, and more deeply significant? Philalethcs resists the myth because it is untrue, tho dream because it is dangerous, but yields at last to the Platonic vision; Tho world is full of gods, ascending tho golden stairs, although your feeble vision cannot ; see them. Rising out of tho deep abyss, the long accent of life reaches up into tho heaven of heavens; and of that chain you, on your little step, aro but one small link. For the whole universe groans and travails to accomplish a purpose moro august than you divine; and of that, your guesses at Good and Evil are but wavering symbols. Yet dark though your night bo and Btumbling your steps, your hand is upon the clue. Nourish then your imagination, strengthen your will and purify, your lovo. For what imagination anticipates shall bo achieved, what will puri sues shall be'done, and what love seeks shall be revealed; ' The lucidity of Mr Dickinson's mind and style make him in such dialogues an almost perfect exponent of ideas; but he adds musical charm to lucidity without qualifying it. Nobody could havo written this book but the author of "A Modern Symposium."

. THE WEAVER-SCHOLAR. K Basketful of Memories. An Autobiographical Sketch. By Thomas Okey. 3. U. D«nt r «ad { Sons, Xtd. (6s noil Of the two English scholars of our day whoso careers are most remarkable for obstacles overcome and eminence achieved, one died last year, Joseph Wright tho philologist. The other is. Thomas Okey, Emeritus Professor of Italian at Cambridge. His sketch of his life leaves*it uncertain which is more to be admired, tho story he tells or the ehergy, thii humour, and the ■faith unquenched and apparently unquenchable after', nearly eighty years of demand upon them. Okey was a Spitalfields ■ Dasket-maker's son, a I slum boy, whose day schooling wad I short but supplemented, while he ; learned his father's trade, by stildy i at night classes. (Many v yeats afterwards, as he records in soine amusing pages on the pestology of Italian lodgings, he turned his skill to uss by malting a wicker bug-tratt for. ex£ h'ibition in the Cambhdge Mtiseiim of Archaeology and Ethnology 1) He devoted himself to languages, and at forty was .teaching Italian at Toynbee Hall; in Whitechdpel. There appears the two-sideduesS df Okay's fcareer, which belongs as. much to social service as to scholarsbip. B&th sides-give him delightful reminiscences—-siibh as that of Shaw's suffering for tHe faitn of vegetarianism ahd that of the battle (in the i Literary Supplement ttf 'The Times") over the meaning of thfe line, Georgics I», &S6l a Jbatllo in Okey's victory was the more honourable because he : outside his ovtijL linguistic field, while. Mackail and Sandys, Wliom he overthrew; were on theirs. But theh Okey knefr that brambles were.of no more use wf making baskets in Virgil's time than in ours 1 Perhaps of all his books he values most, and has the deepest reasons for valuing, his "Art of Basketmaking" ; and if a comparative estimate of a different kind may be added to that, then it is that the characteristic virtue, of this b°°k l ® the winning modesty which pervades it and todchtv* evory other quality.

THEODORE- ROOSEVELT, Roosevelt; Hla MUicl in Action. .By Einstein. John MurrAy. (LOs 6d net.) It would have been better if this book had been announced clearly as thfe study o£ an American politician. ■lt is a good enough book so far as it goes, andMr Mnfitein. is perhaps right in assuming that what Americans chiefly want to, know about Eoosovelt is how he found his way to White Souse. It is an interesting, story, and ho tolls it without the > romantio extravagancies by which such recitals are usually embroidered. JEtoosevelt was not selfm&de; he was only half/ a democrat; his courage was real, but his physical prowess was greatly over-rated (though not- by himself); his cufining was as real as his strength; he was impetuous and warm-hearted, but he knew how to bo '"deaf to inconvenient calls; ho was high-Blinded, and yet a Shrewd tactician; if ho dhObk his fist ii the face of Pieirpont Morgan he gaVe a balancing shake, in tho face of Samuel Gompjers; he was a truo American, but if he had dared to say publicly of America what he said.and wrote privately he would have been pursued by wolves into the wilderness. All this, and a good deal more, Mr Einstein makes; clear; and if he leases RoosovoU at 'ast on a peak beside Washington and Lincoln that is not because hp sees no faults. TJie weakness in his book is rather that ho sees Roosevelt too continuously as a man thinking wistfully of White House. A careerist he certainly was; but only •in a .limited and honourablo sense; and the something else is not sufficiently revealed. An interesting appendix t\th6 volume id El hitherto unpublished fetter (to Mr Einstein himself) in which Roosevelt criticises the various peace plans discussed at the end of the war, and proposes, a Couifc of Arbitration to which ,tt& TJnitod States/ -ha could *\ U ' , A

ARMY INTELLIGENCE. Secret Service. By Sir George Aston, X.0.8. Paber and Faber. (18s net.) Sir George Aston's book is crammed with, what lias to bo called "interesting information," though that always sounds bo dull and is here so lively, and with what have to bo called "revelations," though instead of the little bits of gossip and scandal or the absurd exaggerations and inventions, generally so described, here a really momentous story is unfolded. Its central theme is the working of the Secret Service during the Great War, but an account of its development during the fifty years befoVe is hardly less interesting: Two parts of the book perhaps stdnd out above the rest in importance: the chapter which explains how von Kluck was kept ignorant of the movement of the British Expeditionary Force and how the weakness of the French "Plan 17" was thereby covered; and the chapter in defence of General Gough and the Fifth Army. Even case-hardened readers of thrillers will be stirred here by the story of the tiny newspaper clue to the whereabouts of the German com-, rnander. von Hutier, a clue sufficient to warn Gough of the real object of the coming German offensive and to enable liim to prepare a defence sufficiently strong and elastic to avoid irreparable disaster. Other On tHe climax in the West and on the final stages of the war there, bring out the scarcely realised value of intelligence Work in preventing defeat at a most critical period and in hastening victory when the danger had passed; but Sir George Aston roves far beyond Flanders' —to the United States, to the Dardanelles, and to the Propagandist School in Moscow; while one of his beßt stories is that of Allenby's "artificial dust" in Palestine. This 1 is a thoroughly enjoyable book, which it is impossible to read without increased admiration for the "thick-headed and John-Bullish stupidity" which marked so many of the enemy's trumps and filled the Allies' hand with bettr ones. '

SEVEN WITNESSES. More Points of View. A Second Series of Broadcast Addresses. By the Archbishop of York, Viscount Grey of FaUodon, Sir James Jeans, Dame BthalSinj U Sir Joslah Stamp, Sir Henry Newboltj Hllalre Belloe Allen and Unwln. (4s 6d net.)

• In this excellent second volume of "Points of View" the seven speakers are in tho main less systematic, less deliberately constructive and • oomprehensive than the six who preceded them. The Archbishop of York builds Up with great force liis argument for the need of "a unifying principle" in life, and for the Christian faith as its ; and Mr Belloc describes what, he sees as the growing conflict between the "new paganism," expressed more and more coherently in the modern social fabric, and "that opposing institution whereby alone, as I conceive, can man: fulfil his being." But the others speak more generally from their point of view, though: they leave nobody uncertain of what it is; Lord Grey, for example, speaks as & moral idealist, very simply and ' practically that when he begins to talk about the electric light and the pushbicycle with the pneumatic tyre there is no lapse to earth at all: he has never left it. These two alone, in modern times, he thinks "entirely good, > not liable to be abused," as the telephone and the, motor-car are, for instance, when they "cut' up time into fragments r instead i of giving tis spaces with leisure." Sir James Jeans speaks as an astronptoer* but as a biological, a social, a and a moral astronomer, and perhfcpSnot with, equal cogeilcy in each chaise? ter. , Dame Eth# Smyth Sptelffl its, a feminist and an 'with', all the wit and vigour tjiat animate tor-, books; but wheil 1 the ttittsitildn absorbs bbtii Ahe la of in her buffetink of condtietdra hautltea bv "the hideoU? ideSfii of 'felitikfi&s and " JaatfH. Stamp'i admirable economic sirvey easily extends'itseliF to rsions 'beyond mea--1 sui-tttion: "I see no satisfying jsoiifclusibn to ecbnbfaiio and scientific pro'gress without 'a moral fcliji relfku>us background,'' and snovfe Hinisfelf as ar ijelieious pragmatist. Sir'HElentx. Newbmt's is a thougßtful estintite tf post-war fedr andt'lwp&: hope for a greater riatiotial littity atid—ih the best .sense of, tlhe wßi-d—fafeilldfity, dnd fear of in the of freedom? Tlierf? are a good many contacts ner tween these feflven addresses, ,so that they redd yei-y well tbgether. LITERARY PARTNERS. ' The Inky Way.'. fey AUtffe H■fWmtw Chapman tmll Hsll, litd. (Ms t Alice Livingsloii cattle 1 ttf England from America frit# little money, ffltr iodfl of introduction... Otfe was to CJ. "N. Williamson. On, sight 1 she deci&dj if encouraged, to break* her . vow Uisyer- to marry an Englishman whilp thete w&b an American above ground; and the encouragement being ample, the jyoiyj wab broken and the [long partnership:. N. and A. Ml - Williamson 1 began,, aft happy arid suce&sfiil oil -thg- matrimonial ad to tire literary sldfv M*s Williamson founded its material prosperity by writiiffe Bii serials at once,, when tie travel notes whlbh 0; beefc cbmmissibndd to write wofo thrown back on his harids, raised tb let, them be wasted and knocked 'them uftb Shape as "The fjightning Conductor/' She Waß a rapid and- successful' builder, But there were- setbacks, of, various,-kinds, none of whicli she to or to defeat her« Sirs Bianlt) > for instance, who for a time threatened' to tuiti 0. Ni's head, was 'completely, out : generailed, and Mrs resource, wit;' eOolnbs'Bj dsshj aild.grip are amusingly illustrated again-* and again. The partners .travelled mufeh, meetihg many interesting pebple, Indeed they met (it seeihs) • everybody thWe tfraa to meet. When Mrs' Williamson met Israel Zangwill firßt, she stared: "Well." Sai'eTMr Zaa&will, .'"I Initio I'ri considered th& rigiiest min. in London, if not in England. Many people believe ttiat I ought to have been bom centuries easier, | to inspire gargoyles* . ... Am I better, or i \vorbo thah you expected'* { I When she met the melancholy Mr "Han* nen Swaffer—he was Statihg iritd a teacup—'BMr "BWaffer/' she" veiittirtd *at last, "do you—do you—ever smile?" He turned, regarded ime, as' it.l were a thiitg beneath the- notje'tt of a wrecked ,?hip'(J - tat after a week on a ratless island, And murmured, "Madam, lam not as actor.';, , Pron*. Lord Kitchener's dinner-table in Cairo she brought away an admlrkble, picture of him, as he &it listening tb a gushing woman —"with a fixed exprossion, like lockjaw coming.on." Anß. since it is pleasant to find that Lord Brentford cam be witty as well ai k cause of wit in other meii, what' he. said' about a Channel crossing ought to be quoted. "I was afraid SOtrieftfle would speak to me, 1 ' he said, "so I slumped in my .chair and pretended 'to 'be a rug. 1 ' feeaders wto enjoy rapid change of scene tfn'A event and a multiplicity of eminent .harness and fiicfes will erijoy this record of'tWo' busy, cheerftll lives.

'freshing to have tho solf-solomn medical profession good-naturedly debunked. No doi{H, too, those : Who lik«- to hear the nose to as a' "naSjjlogieai ohiatrieflt" 4*iil find it fnunjr. ArJyhow, the<aWthW (lje ia tae, "Journal of sooiatfoiit' i >"'hae 'iff t