Leonard Wood: Conservator of Americanism, by Eric Fisher Wood (12mo, 351 pages; Doran), discloses a pedigree which could not help ennobling the Presidency were the elective qualification for office removed—for the sake of 100% Americanism—in favor of hereditary title. A descendant of the Mayflower, an athlete, an Episcopalian, an opponent of Bolshevists, pacifists, pro-Germans, and their like, General Wood is, according to his biographer, a flawless candidate.
The Enemy Within: Hitherto Unpublished Details of the Great Conspiracy to Corrupt and Destroy France, by Severance Johnson (12mo, 297 pages; McCann, New York), bears strong internal evidence of having been put together in order to foment incarnadine spook-hunting in America and shows a mind searching in its own turbid depths for American parallels to Bolo and Caillaux. It suffers from a spiritual epilepsy which must pain the sensitive spectator almost as much as it tortures its victim.
National Evolution, by George R. Davies (16mo, 159 pages; McClurg, Chicago), surveys the development of human societies in the past and endeavours to chart the drift in present-day affairs. In the attention Dr. Davies pays to geographic and economic backgrounds his little work is in line with the best contemporary sociological research. National Evolution.is a distinct contribution to the National Social Science Series, whose last three volumes—of which this is one—have raised its standards to a level where the scholar can share the interest of the "busy man" for whom it has been planned.
Outspoken Essays, by William Ralph Inge (12mo, 281 pages; Longmans, Green), gives the Dean of Saint Paul's an opportunity to speak with devout animosity about Our Present Discontents in religion and society. His tone is that of the acerbic Hilaire Belloc, but on the subjects of Patriotism, the Birth Rate, and The Future of the English Race probably no two minds could be farther apart. There is so much excellent modern rationalism in Dean Inge's commerce with facts and tendencies that one cannot well forgive him for living emotionally in the dingy atmosphere of the century-old Malthus.
