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Ask him for the booklet on wills and trusts entitled "Safeguarding Your Family's Future," or write to the address below for a copy. TRUST COMPANY DIVISION AMERICAN BANKERS ASSOCIATION FIVE NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK parlor Socialists; they are Little Groups of Serious Thinkers, who pride themselves on being open-minded, not having discovered the inconvenience of having minds open at both ends. The Imaginary Invalid to-day is a morbid student of psychoanalysis making a Freudulent collection of his own complexes. And Tartuffe? Well, our Tartuffes do not masquerade as religious bigots; rather are they moral reformers, damning the sins they have no mind to, reformers for revenue only, as dangerous to the public welfare to-day as was Tartuffe in his time. What is Scapin but a "proof before letters" of the chief figure in our crook plays? What is the unscrupulous valet who befools Monsieur de Pourceaugnac but the first edition of our confidence operator, our bunco-steerer-if I may venture to employ these unsavory neologisms? My sole excuse for this lapse from linguistic propriety is that I want to emphasize the fact that Molière is our contemporary, after all-that he is quite up to date two centuries and a half after his death. Molière is important to us here in America, not only because of the pleasure and the profit we can find in the performance of his plays and in their perusal if we are denied the benefit of seeing them acted, he is important to us not only because he is the master of modern comedy, but also because he is the chief figure in French literature, because he united in himself certain of the chief characteristics of that literature, its dramatic ingenuity and its abhorrence of affectation, its relish for the concrete and its social instinct. It is good for us to see these characteristics in action; and the lesson Molière has for us transcends the limitations of literature. While there may be a more soaring imagination, a more easily released energy, in English literature in both its branches, British and American, than there is in French literature, there is a far less persistent application of the reasoning powers, a less free play of the intelligence, less sobriety and less sanity, more extravagance and more exuberance. The French inherited from the classics a sense of form, a desire for unity of tone, for harmony of color, for logic in structure, and for lucidity in style. If Carlyle and Ruskin and Whitman had sat at the feet of the masters of French literature, they would have been less impatient of authority, less flagrantly individualistic, less rhetorically riotous. Though they might have lost a little, they would have gained much. Nisard knew his countrymen when he asserted that in France "reason, which is the common bond of all men, is more highly esteemed than imagination, which disperses them and isolates them." Here in America we are not likely ever to forget the indebtedness we are under to France for coming to our rescue in our hour of need nearly a century and a half ago; that debt is a debt of honor, and it is not outlawed by time. Nor can we fail to remember that it FREE Mr. Dodson's fascinating booklet, "Your Bird Friends and How to Win Them. Aus meite for it (THE BOOK TABLE-Continued) was a Frenchman, Rousseau, who inspired the superb eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, and that it was another Frenchman, Montesquieu, whose political sagacity guided the makers of our Constitution. The tie that binds us to France is twisted of many strands of many colors, but we have reason to believe that it is strong enough to withstand any strain that may be put upon it. THE NEW BOOKS FICTION ORDEAL OF HONOR (AN). By Anthony Pryde. Robert M. McBride & Co., New York. $2. Not equal to Mr. Pryde's best work, but still a fairly readable plot story. TIDE RIPS. By James B. Connolly. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.75. "What Price for Fish?" ought to have a special prize as the best tale of Gloucester fishermen since Kipling wrote "Captains Courageous." Others of these sea tales are almost as good. Mr. Connolly leads among living American writers about seas, ships, and sailors. Dodd, YOLLOP. By George Barr McCutcheon. Mead & Co., New York. $1. A more amusing bit of burlesque writing has not appeared for a long time. If we are to take it as a protest against humane prison methods, it has no force, because the author does not know the facts. We prefer to take it as a piece of fun pure and simple, and as such it is irrepressible and constantly mirthprovoking. POETRY DIVINE COMEDY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI (THE). A Line-for-line Translation. By Melville Best Anderson. The World Book Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, N. Y. $20. T3 sumptuous volume is printed on hand-made paper and bound in Italian boards with vellum back. The translation is in the terza rima, the meter of the original. Marginal notes accompany the translation. WAR BOOKS THROUGH THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION. By Albert Rhys Williams. Illustrated. Boni & Liveright, New York. $2. The cover-jacket of this book is from a Soviet poster. It shows the Czar, Kornilov, Kolchak, Denikin-all those who tried to prevent or crush the Revolution-impaled on the long lance of a Red Army horseman. The jacket appropriately covers a lurid book, for the lurid story is illustrated by lurid poster reproductions in color as well as by The author went many photographs. "through the Russian Revolution" as correspondent and participant. We see the vivid drama through his wide-open eyes, though we are totally unable to agree with his pro-Soviet prejudices. It is nevertheless interesting and instructive to note his summary of the results of the Revolution; among them are the following: "It has destroyed the apparatus of Czarism. [The author omits to state that it has but replaced one Czarism by another and more terrible kind.] "It has transferred the great estates of the crown, the landlords, and the monastic orders into the hands of the people. "It has nationalized the basic industries and begun the electrification of Russia. "It has fenced off Russia from the unlimited exploitation of freebooting capitalists. "It has brought into the Soviets a million workers and peasants and given them direct experience in government. "It has organized eight million workers into trade unions. "It has taught forty million peasants to read and write." WITH THE RUSSIAN ARMY. By MajorGeneral Sir Alfred Knox. Illustrated. In two vols. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $15. These volumes are valuable to those who wish to read in detail of the recent war on the Russian front. Certainly the author enjoyed large opportunity for observation. Previous to the war he was military attaché at Petrograd, and was at the front for three and a half years. Especial interest attaches to his description of the fighting in 1916, the text containing many hitherto unpublished details of Brusilov's offensive. The author also describes the political unrest preceding the Revolution, and gives an eye-witness's account of the Revolution itself. Tested by quantitative analysis, this is a great book. It is two inches thick; it contains five hundred and seventyseven pages; and it is written, not by one, but by thirty authors. Qualitative analysis leaves a trifling residuum. These thirty writers, mostly of what Don Marquis happily calls the younger group of serious thinkers, are no doubt sincere and earnest in their opinion-that American Art, Music, Literature, Law, Education, Economics, etc., etc., etc., are hopelessly vulgar and that civilization in this country is "grotesque, starved, and spiritually povertystricken;" but is American civilization greatly in need of new opinions just now? Henry Ford is chock-full of opinions, so is Edison, so is Senator Borah, so is William Jennings Bryan. Our own notion is that what American civilization needs most to-day is, not opinions, but coal and coats, potatoes and housing. We venture to add this economic thought to the symposium of these thirty young American thinkers. Let them stop-at least temporarily-thinking up opinions to write about, and turn their attention to producing food and clothing. It will do them good to work with their hands, and will give their anxious minds a rest. Moreover, they may produce something that the public will buy. It is not likely to buy their book. Plan your vacation on Everywhere West-to America's Vacation You will like Burlington service, considerate Vacation costs are down Your vacation money this year will buy much Your local agent will tell you about Burling- |