WHERE IT ALL COMES TRUE. By Clara E. Laughlin. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. 1928. $2.00.

Subtitle: In Italy and Switzerland (apparently promising further appearances of Miss Laughlin under this new serial title). The Experiences and Observations of Betty and Mary as Related by Their Aunt. A travel book for children, in words of one syllable and the first person plural, it is the best of its kind yet published. It seems especially good in comparison with others of like scope and intent.

CHINESE ART. By R. L. Hobson. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1927. $12.50.

This is an ideal book. Study of it will reward any reader with real insight into China, and cannot fail to give joy in the process. It is a perfectly made book: one hundred plates, all in full colors, six pages of introduction, and a short bibliography. Here is Chinese art, not some author's opinions of it, but just the art, which all may look at and enjoy and understand. Here are pottery, porcelains, bronzes, paintings, lacquers, rugs, wood carvings. A study of the volume will show at least this much: that China is and has been a much diversified land; that Chinese taste was highly ornate only in its decadence; that the loveliest of Chinese works of art excel in their simplicity and are as fine as any creations of human genius and handicraft. To learn this much is to be on the road to understanding the Chinese people. Mr. Hobson, of the British Museum, has chosen the plates with great skill. He has condensed into a few paragraphs of introduction all that one must know of the history of Chinese art. Macmillan's has done itself proud in the illustrations, which are as good as 'four-color process' can be.

POETRY OF THE ORIENT. Edited by Eunice Tietjens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1928. $5.00.

An anthology of the poetry of Arabia, Persia, Japan, China, and India, assembled chronologically and by countries, omitting the great body of Oriental religious poetry, the selections being entirely secular. Mrs. Tietjens states in the introduction that in choosing translations she has been 'governed in every case by one consideration, that the translation shall be poetry in its English dress.' In cases where no translation seemed to her 'poetry,' she omitted the original, preferring to let it wait for its presentation till some later time when it shall have been adequately rendered.' The reader will not be disappointed in the selections which are the result of this demanding standard. Among the distinguished translators included are John Paine, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lafcadio Hearn, Edward FitzGerald, Arthur Waley, L. Cramner-Byng, Edward Powys Mathers, James Legge, Paul Elmer More, Ezra Pound, and the editor herself. Mrs. Tietjens has prefaced each section with a lucid consideration of the main characteristics of the poetry it contains. There is a very complete bibliography of volumes of English translations of Oriental poetry, the earliest of which was published in 1765, the latest in 1927.

THE TRAGEDY OF GREECE. By S. P. P. Cometatos. New York: Brentano's. 1928. $4.50.

M. Cometatos's strenuous indictment of Allied policy in Greece during the World War was published in France two years past under the title, L'Entente de la Grèce Pendant la Grande Guerre, and now appears in an intelligently condensed and slightly revised version

translated by E. W. and A. Dickes. It is interesting to note that a considerable proportion of the most important material is derived from the original diplomatic documents preserved in the archives of the French and Greek Foreign Offices and that the author has made valuable use of the Russian White Book, published by the Bolsheviks in 1922, but hitherto untranslated. Since the British Foreign Office documents relating to the events in Greece dealt with in this work (i.e., August, 1914, to June 26th, 1917) have not yet been published, documents of British origin occasionally appear in retranslation from official French translations. One is humorously tempted to wonder just how much of the formal official savor is lost (or possibly gained) by this process.

The attraction of The Tragedy of Greece for the lay reader is in the dramatic interest of the story itself and in the not too chauvinistic fashion in which the author offers his accusations against the propagandist methods employed by both the Germans and the French to break down the neutrality of Greece. It is only fair to say that the status of these apparently justifiable accusations, as serious contributions to the history of the War, still remains to be determined, together with the great controversial mass of problems of international policy.

GENTLEMEN UNAFRAID. By Barrett Willoughby. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1928. $3.50.

The subjects of the six sketches which make up Miss Willoughby's generously illustrated and enlivening volume are six pioneers of Alaska, whose achievements are for the first time presented in book form. The three, perhaps most fascinating, biographies of the collection tell of the discoveries of Dr. C. C. Georgeson, one of the world's great experts on cross-breeding, who has given most of his life to evolving plants and cattle suitable to conditions in Alaska; of the exploits of George Watkins Evans, consulting engineer of the U. S. Bureau of Mines, who 'has made the commercial history of nearly every virgin coal field in Alaska'; and of the adventures of the author's father, 'one of those Irishmen, debonair, fearless, and gay,' who early in life outfitted a small vessel 'for a trip to Alaska. then considered the jumping-off place of the world.' Not an important book, Gentlemen Unafraid will none the less delight readers who are seeking a realistic picture of life in Alaska that national territory regrettably unknown to most citizens of the United States save through the vivid pages of 'gold-rush' ballads and the frigid films produced beneath a blazing California sun.

THE POLAR REGIONS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. By A. W. Greely. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1928. $4.00.

The publishers' claim that this history of discoveries in polar regions takes its place as 'the most comprehensive and up-to-date book on the subject' is not a false one. Since 1884, when Major General Greely returned from a three-year polar expedition, the names of Peary, Amundsen, Shackleton, and Byrd citing only a few-have become prominent throughout the civilized world for their Arctic achievements; while such men MacMillan, Mawson, and Davis have made important contributions to scientific knowledge through their field work in the northern territories. In addition to his historical summaries, the author provides a convenient record of the industrial evolution of the north, arising from the increased utilization of

as

the immense material resources of the polar regions. In making his survey, he received the coöperation of the several Bureaus of the Canadian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Russian, and Swedish Governments as well as that of the National Geographic Society, which, incidentally, is responsible for the splendid folding map at the end of the volume. Twentythree illustrations are helpful to the comprehension of the text. Though valuable as a compendium on Arctic discovery and industrial evolution, this book has forfeited a merited right to popular esteem through the uninspired method of its presentation.

TRAILS OF THE HUNTED. By James L. Clark. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 1928. $4.50.

The handsome format and fine photographic reproductions immediately prejudice one in favor of this volume, nor is one disappointed in the contents. Mr. Clark, for long a member of the staff of the American Museum of Natural History, writes with the authority of a trained and intelligent observer about his field experiences in North America, Africa, and Asia. Kermit Roosevelt has contributed an appreciative introduction.

SPEARS IN THE SUN. By James E. Bam. Chicago: Reilly and Lee Company. 1928. $2.00.

The author went to Abyssinia as member of a Field Museum expedition. Assuredly he would have acquitted himself better in a direct account of his journey than he does in this weak, tedious novel of three American men and a girl pursuing one another for idiotic reasons at the head waters of the Nile and through the hinterlands of Abyssinia.

THE NEARING NORTH. By Lewis R. Freeman. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1928. $3.50.

A personal record of a journey up and down the great Canadian rivers which flow toward the Arctic the Peace, the Athabaska, the Slave, the Mackenzie-followed by a thousand-mile canoe trip down the Saskatchewan. Mr. Freeman's account does not serve precisely as either guide book or adventure story, but travelers already acquainted with the territory traversed may experience a reminiscent pleasure in checking up on his lengthy and courageous journey. Half a hundred photographic reproductions add interest to the volume.

THOSE ANCIENT LANDS. By Louis Golding. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1928. $4.50.

Modern pilgrims to Palestine will not care to overlook Mr. Golding's tranquil prose poem of those ancient lands whose citadel is Zion.' His literary vignettes of the life, manners, and customs of the pioneers in modern Zion form a sympathetic estimate of their ideal, and are recorded in prose that is an opulent contribution to contemporary belles-lettres.

FROM ROME TO FLORENCE. By Hubbard Hutchinson. Illustrated. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1928. $2.75.

Now and then a sentimentalist writes a really good travel book. Mr. Hutchinson, whose several novels and Saturday Evening Post stories have been successes, does it in this case. Whether one covers the historically rich strip of country from Rome to Florence by train or motor, one will find the present volume invaluable. Viterbo, Orvieto, Spoleto, Assisi, Perugia, Siena, and twice as many smaller towns are described with sympathy

SICILY PRESENT AND PAST. By Ashley Brown. Illustrated. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1928. $2.00.

One-half the book is descriptive of existing Sicily; the other half is historical. First of all, the traveler is reassured about brigandage and the Mefia (Sicilian 'black hand' society). Fascism and outlawry, it seems, do not flourish side by side. Long-cloaked carabinieri pop up in the most out of the way places, and invariably when they are needed most which is not often. Sicily is safer for the tourist than Chicago.

Nowhere else in the world, probably, is so much beauty and romance found within an equal area. Syracuse has its Fountain of Arethusa, temples of Athena and Apollo and Olympian Zeus, Roman amphitheatre, catacombs of St. Giovanni. Taormina is Sicily's most beautiful spot. Nothing here becomes insipid, neither the bays and sands and blue Ionian Sea nor the site of Naxos, the first Greek settlement. Taormina and Palermo divide honors as tourist headquarters. At the latter, city bathing, shopping, and visits to her incomparable antiquities may well hold one for a month or longer. Incidentally, Mr. Ashley Brown's delightful matter-of-factness puts Sax Rohmer to shame at times. Here is a description of the Convento dei Cappuccini at Palermo: 'The [mummified] bodies of the Cappuccini resemble nothing with which we have any fellowship . . . Each corpse was clothed in garments peculiar to its status in life-priests in their cowls, virgins in bridal garb, crown upon the head, soldiers in uniform, old women in black, babies . . . In the course of time the gloomy subterranean corridors filled up and recourse was had to the walls. . . Time rotted the cords, laid his hand upon the silk dress of the virgin and the cowl of the monk and spread over the galleries a cloak of horror and decay . . . Behind glass, cracked or broken, many of the dead still lie in moldering finery But from the walls

...

others, through the failure of the cords that held them, lean forward in every attitude of ghastly invocation, their features distorted into a semblance of malignity almost human.'

Artists, architects, and archæologists must ever be grateful for the fullness of Mr. Brown's historical notes and his detailed examination of visible remains. Here is an exhaustive work that reads like a novel, written straightforwardly and without rhetorical or poetic tricks. LET'S DO THE MEDITERRANEAN. By Carveth Wells. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co. 1928. $2.50.

This is a light book dashed off on the way home, and of very little consequence. Now and again Mr. Wells forgets his companions Mrs. Grabbit, the doctor, the professor and the Vassar girl - to interpolate some bald facts lifted from the encyclopædia or the ancient histories. All in all, probably a fair account of the average Mediterranean cruise

one day in Rome, two-mile excursion into the desert by camel for a handsome supplementary payment, tittering at the mild

drunkenness of Mr. 'Texas' Jones, interminable lectures on the ancient religious rites of the Carthaginians, etc. etc.

THE FJORDS AND FOLK OF NORWAY. By Samuel J. Beckett. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1928. $3.00.

NORWAY. BY S. A. Hammer, M.A. 32 illustrations in color by A. Heaton Cooper. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1928. $2.50.

Mr. Beckett's volume is a fairly thick handbook and reference work. The Macmillan publication, one of Black's Popular Series of Colour Books, has 190 pages of large type and is written for the tourist' in the proper sense of the term. Yet those who have already visited Norway or who plan to go there should read the first book. The second is better adapted to the stayat-homes who like pictures and an easyrunning text. One suspects that Messrs. Black first found the artist, who is very good, and then chose the London Times correspondent in Oslo, Mr. Hammer, to write the text.

The Fjords and Folk of Norway cannot be too highly praised, especially in view of the antiquity and sketchiness of the previously existing works on the subject. Mr. Beckett loves Norway and its people, yet his chapter on "The People' lacks that sentimentality that mars many another volume. He is at his best here, with a clear, dispassionate, orderly survey. The many complex elements in Norwegian civilization are threaded together in scholarly but thoroughly understandable fashion. Norse mythology, too lightly treated in most other works on the country, is here given the space it deserves. In the Norwegian Index' are listed all important towns, with descriptive notes. In this section Baedeker, Bradshaw, and the Satchel Guide are all eclipsed.

One is delighted by a complete index at the end of the book - but preceding it are invaluable appendixes. The best stanzas of the Havamal the moral code of the Vikings are translated. Of especial point is this:

Thou must never
Mock or laugh at

A guest or a wayfarer.

The ancient Slav churches, built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries in a strangely Eastern, Chinese-pagoda style, are the subject of Appendix II. Only twenty-four of these churches have survived. Finally (Appendix III), there is a detailed examination of the Lapps, called Finns in Norway, whose domain stretches across Sweden, Finland itself, and into part of Russia.

The Black volume is really an attempt to make Norway and the Norwegians 'known among the educated classes in England.' Mr. Hammer devotes his first chapter to showing that the credit for 'discovering' Norway as a tourist country belongs to England and is no small credit to the Homeland. He treats Norway as a journalist would, in broad divisions of the country and striking generalities applied to each. No fault can be found with his facts, except that there are not enough of them. He does, however, ascribe the origins of Norwegian art and literature to purely Teutonic influences. Mr. Beckett, on the other hand, successfully demonstrates the Teutonic influence as secondary, tracing the early Norwegian artistic impulses back to Roman and Byzantine origins.

The Guide Post
(Continued from page 402)

is the distinguished authority on in-
ternational affairs, Dr. Herbert Adams
Gibbons, who writes that he had at first
feared the new LIVING AGE would be less
attractive or less useful than the old.
'But I made a mistake,' he says frankly.
'I have examined two issues of the new
magazine and I find it just as helpful and
carefully edited as the old, which is
saying a great deal — and much more
attractive in form and scope.'

The magazine has in the last six months, however, done much more than hold most of its old friends. It has made itself many new ones. 'The magazine is splendid, writes Miss Florence Reed, now starring in Macbeth. I am sorry to display my ignorance,' writes a new friend who had by accident seen a copy of the December number, by saying it is the first copy I have ever seen. At the same time I cannot refrain from telling you that as an interesting magazine it has no equal.'

The chorus of praise is, to be sure, not unanimous. There are still old friends of the magazine who find it difficult to reconcile themselves to any change

as,

for example, the Cambridge subscriber who a week or two ago wrote: 'I consider the new form a tragic outrage.' But many of those who originally held unfavorable opinions are being transformed into enthusiastic supporters.

That THE LIVING AGE's new course has the approval of its contemporaries is best proved by the fact that a few months after this magazine announced its new format, four other leading American magazines made similar changes.

The fidelity with which the editors of THE LIVING AGE are adhering to the magazine's original purpose of bringing the world to America is illustrated this month by such an article as M. Stéphane Lauzanne's interview with Marshal Foch.

Although the great leader of the Allies has frequently told his story to personal friends, this is the first time that he has ever allowed it to be told in print. Its authenticity is vouched for by the high reputation of the interviewer. M. Lauzanne is editor of Le Matin in Paris and one of the two or three French journalists best known beyond the frontiers of their own country. If further evidence of the authenticity of the interview were required, it would be provided by the confirmation contained in M. Clemenceau's official report of the Armistice meeting which Colonel House has just made public in the third and fourth volumes of his Intimate Papers, reviewed on page 467 of this month's LIVING AGE.