Pushkin, by Prince D. S. Mirsky. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 266 pages. $2.50. Gogol, by Janko Lavrin. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company. 263 pages. $2.50. The Republic of Letters series, under the editorship of Dr. William Rose, was recently inaugurated with Mr. Aldington’s admirable study of the life and genius of Voltaire.
Joan of Arc, by Joseph Delteil. Translated from the French by Malcolm Cowley. New York: Minton, Batch and Company. 268 pages. $3. There are many kinds of biography in these days of its vogue: one might almost say that Joan of Arc has been subjected to them all. There is the factual volume of Michelet from whose “excellent formula there is lacking the obscure part of God”; there is the sturdy attack of Anatole France and the glowing defense of Andrew Lang. There is Mark Twain’s imaginative romance based on twelve years’ accumulation of facts; there is Mr.
New England in the Republic, 1776-1850, by James Truslow Adams. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. 438 pages. $5. With this volume Mr. Adams completes his trilogy on the destiny of that corner of our country in which physiographical, psychological, political and moral influences combined to produce and to perpetuate for two ‘and a half centuries the most pronounced, self-conscious example of sectionalism in our history. I use the word trilogy in a more specific sense than the designation of a three-volume work merely, for there is in Mr.
Rough Justice, by C. E. Montague. New York: Doubleday. Page and Company. $2.50. In no respect has the change in attitude toward human experience reflected by fiction been so marked as in regard to war. The last century knew the military novel as a specialty similar to the political novel, the ecclesiastical novel, the novel of education or industry or the sea. The profession of arms was like other professions, an affair of a class. It lent itself to fiction because of its opportunities of adventure, humorous in camp, glorious in the field.
I am afraid to make any prediction about the adjournment of Congress. Some weeks ago along with everybody else I felt convinced the session would not be prolonged beyond the middle of June. Here it is close to the end of the month and there is just as much uncertainty about the final date as there was. It may have ended by the time this is in print and it may continue on to the last of July.
Complete figures dealing with automobile accidents in 1925 have recently been made public. They reveal that safety on the highway, or the present lack of it, may now fairly be reckoned as one of the major problems of the day. Last year more than 22,000 persons were killed in or by automobiles, and something like three quarters of a million injured. The number of dead is almost half as large as the list of fatalities during the nineteen months of America’s participation in the Great War. In 60 percent of the cases, the person killed was a pedestrian struck by a car.
The corn belt has lost its Haugen bill, and will not have the Fess amendment. The latter, although it proposes to lend government funds to producers’ cooperatives with small security, will not serve, because it provides no way for the cooperatives to repay such loans as may be incurred for the purpose of meeting any loss on surplus crops sold abroad.
After leaving Pennsylvania, the next stop is Illinois! The searchlight of investigation is now to be turned on expenditures in the recent Senatorial primary in that state. The Senatorial committee which has been looking into the Pennsylvania orgy decided some time ago that as soon as Congress adjourns it will move to Chicago and continue its activities there. Since then Senator Caraway has made charges on the floor of the Senate which if confirmed will make the stigma attached to Illinois politicians quite as serious as that now clings to the Pennsylvanians.
To Llewellyn Powys I.
The Plight of the British Miners Sir: We are enclosing an appeal which has just come to us from the five men whose names are signed to it, with the request that we ask you if you will not give it prominent place in your pages. We gladly ask this of you, first of all because of our confidence in the men whose names are appended to the appeal. Miss Evelyn Preston, who has just come to this country to represent the British Committee of Women for Relief of the Miners’ Wives and Children, was also asked to try to bring this appeal before the churches of the country.
