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BRIEFER MENTION
The Child at Home, by Cynthia Asquith (12mo, 278 pages; Scribner: $1.75) might be described as a conservative manual for mothers who have no need to consider the economic aspects of their maternal relations; it indicates—with not too much condescension—how they can "get on" with their children, maintain the proper social and intellectual contacts, and that sort of thing. Lady Asquith recommends reading a Shakespeare play aloud as "an excellent family occupation"; also, in having the little one's picture taken for the precious album, it is a "waste of money to go to a cheap photographer."
As I Like It, by William Lyon Phelps (12mo, 236 pages; Scribner: $2). In this volume of random opinions gathered up from Scribner's Magazine, we see Mr Phelps discuss very patiently whether or not This Freedom is a greater book than If Winter Comes; we learn of his delight in reading Christopher Morley; and we watch while, with simple impregnability, he informs us that he is both a Puritan and a Rotarian. One is always a bit disarmed by Mr Phelps, he writes with such tolerance and good nature, indeed he possesses any number of sterling qualities—even has them printed, as it were, on his business cards like a telephone number. In this volume Mr Phelps' opinions range anywhere from the bluntly wrong to the bluntly right, it doesn't much matter which.
Race and National Solidarity, by Charles Conant Josey (12mo, 227 pages; Scribner: $2.50) is an argument for the intensification of group consciousness on the part of the white race and for a policy of deliberate exploitation designed to insure its world dominance. This thesis is theoretically more rational than the ideal of internationalism inveighed against; but it is even less empirical. The author successfully deflates illusory ethical values sanctified by democracy. He is less sound in his reasoning about politics and economics, and does not take the possibly very active development of the subject-races into consideration. The book lacks the trenchant dryness that makes for clarity and force in an argument; too much of it is in the form of a pedagogical peroration.
Building the American Nation, by Nicholas Murray Butler (12mo, 374 pages; Scribner: $2.50). In this series of lectures, written to be delivered in England, Mr Butler sketches in strictly orthodox fashion an outline of American history from the beginnings of colonial federation up to the present. The author succeeds in implicating his facts very smoothly with the portraits and policies of leading American statesmen. On reading the pages on the revolution, we see how admirably fitted Mr Butler was for his diplomatic task of interpreting America to England, for he insists that all the faculties which the colonies possessed for revolution were in the direct line of English tradition. The somewhat difficult problem of Jefferson is handled with equal ingenuity. If the book adds nothing to American history, at any rate the review of the facts is clearly and earnestly performed.
