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members, which may have serious consequences to that body and, politically speaking, produce much friction as soon as Parliament learns that premature action has been taken without its knowledge or consent. The Chambers of Commerce know their own business better than the Government does. They know that what they want is a Minister of Commerce -i.e., a Minister charged with the duty of developing and fostering British Commerce by legislation at home and energetic action abroad. The lines of policy, fiscal or otherwise, upon which this development should proceed from time to time have little The Saturday Review.

to do with the case. The underlying principle of management is the vital point. The Board of Trade should remain as an executive body charged with the duty of carrying out the regulations which from time to time exist and govern the administrative regulation of commerce. The Minister of Commerce should have nothing to do with this portion of the work, but should confine himself to the functions sketched out above. Under this plan clear working could be organized and overlapping and friction be avoided. This is what the Chambers of Commerce want and what the Government refuses to give them.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

To the popular "Blue Bonnet" series, Lela Horn Richards adds another attractive volume, "Blue Bonnet-Débutante," which young girls will read eagerly. Several of the characters from the earlier books reappear. Blue Bonnet herself comes into her fortune, builds an orphanage, takes a California trip in her uncle's private car, visits the Exposition, refuses one lover, accepts another, and is joyously married. The Page Co.

Hélène Cross's practical little book "Soldiers' Spoken French" (E. P. Dutton & Co.) furnishes just the short cut to a knowledge of colloquial French which American soldiers in France will need. It is compiled from an actual course of spoken lessons given to New Zealand's soldiers. Happy will be the American soldier who studies it in his hours of leisure, and who has it always within reach in the pocket of his uniform for immediate reference for the rendering and pronunciation of sentences in every-day use.

Lilian Whiting's "The Adventure Beautiful" (Little, Brown & Co.) is a sympathetic exposition of the teachings of theosophy and the fruits of psychic investigation. It takes its title from Charles Frohman's memorable question: "Why fear death? Death is the most beautiful adventure in life." Its fundamental teaching is that death is simply the withdrawal of the spiritual man, clothed in his ethereal body, from the physical body "as one would withdraw his hand from a glove"; that all intellectual and spiritual activities continue, "that love and prayer keep one closely within the divine leading; that this divine leading and help is absolutely unfailing"; and that we are entering upon an epoch in which direct and personal communication between those in the ethereal and those in the physical worlds will become recognized as a part of normal experience. This volume and others like it attest the increasing eagerness of the quest for evidence to demonstrate the reality of the life unseen.

In "The Little Gods Laugh" Louise Maunsell Field has written a readable story-less cynical than the title would imply-of fashionable life in New York. Nita Wynne, its heroine, is disillusioned at the very moment of her betrothal by learning that her lover is concerned in a successful business deal which has just ruined hundreds of small shareholders, among them two old ladies to whom she is deeply attached, and is thrown by her father's death and the selfishness of her stepmother on her own resources. Developing a talent for house furnishing, she wins distinction in that line. Self-supporting and self-reliant, she is sought in their perplexities by many of her earlier friends, and in the unhappy marriage of two of them her own happiness becomes deeply involved. The inevitable divorce problem figures in the story, but it is treated with comparative conservatism. Little, Brown & Co.

The adventures of a young Englishman who has spent ten years lumbering in Northern Canada, as he sets out on a quixotic attempt to save his partner from blackmail, make the plot of Harold Blindloss's latest story, "Carmen's Messenger." They include visiting a fine old country house in the North of England, winning the confidence of its charming daughter, encountering private detectives, wandering on Scottish heaths, foregathering with poachers, receiving mysterious warnings from attractive damsels, jumping from railroad trains and tracking suspected characters into abandoned mines, and each is described with the enthusiasm for daring and endurance which has made the writer's books popular. As usual, his tone is so wholesome that it would be ungracious to cavil because his characters are not alive. The lads who follow their fortunes so eagerly-book after book—

doubtless add the touch of imagination that makes them so. Frederick A. Stokes Co.

Margaret Widdimer has re-issued her volume, first called "Factories and Other Poems," in a larger form, with new rhymes added, and some changes in the original text. The first edition was reviewed in THE LIVING AGE, and the fresh material brings out even more emphatically the verve and force, the tremendous earnestness of the poet. Miss Widdimer is among the foremost of American versifiers when she touches the great passionate realities of life; but when she attempts the light or the tender, she is less successful. A cradle-song in this volume ill compares with the scarlet splendor of "Recompense," "A Message from Italy," and the anguished cry, which now gives its name to the book, "Factories." "The Cloak of Dreams" thrills with lines like these:

They bade me follow fleet

To my brother's work and play, But the Cloak of Dreams blew over my feet,

Tangling them from the way:

They bade me watch the skies

For a signal dark or light, But the Cloak of Dreams blew over my eyes,

Shutting them fast from sight.

Henry Holt & Co.

Modeled on a long series of religious books, but in itself ethical rather than religious, "Inspiration and Ideals," with a sub-title of "Thoughts for Every Day," gives Grenville Kleiser a chance to preach the gospel of cheerfulness three hundred and sixty-five times a year. The result is a breezy page for every morning, the main thought lettered in startling black, the rest in readable print, the whole well able to rouse ambition and cour

age for the day's encounter and mastering. One page for each sermonette, the familiar purple cover, the more familiar purple ribbon between the pages, the convenient size, all are emblematic of this type of literature, and the result is invigorating. “Think optimistically"-"Cultivate fine taste" -"He enjoys the sunlight most who walks through crisp morning air and climbs the hill-top": these are some of the black-lettered exordiums with which the preacher of joy begins. The exhortation ranges from advice to drink fresh water in abundance to pleas for meditation on God. Funk & Wagnalls Co.

A Canadian rubber factory is the scene of Alan Sullivan's uncommonly effective study of the relations between labor and capital, "The Inner Door," and its owner is a charming girl, luxuriously brought up, who is spending a year abroad before marrying. Her fiancé-his prospects suddenly altered by the failure of his father's investments-undertakes to test his practical fitness for life by going, under an assumed name, to work in the factory. Through the influence of Jacob Sohmer, a mysterious foreigner of large heart and far vision, who is really the central figure of the book, he gradually learns to see the situation from the workingman's point of view, and at the same time, becomes more and more doubtful of being able to induce his betrothed to take the same position. The appearance of an efficiency expert and the consequent "speeding up" precipitate a strike, in spite of Sohmer's counsels, and several personal problems are settled at the same time. The chapters describing Sylvia's experiences at Monte Carlo add variety to a plot which never lags; the characters are clearly individualized; the tone of the book

rings true, and it will give equal pleasure to readers who take it up for relaxation only, and to those who bring to it a more serious purpose. The Century Co.

The volume on "Science and Learning in France," which is published by the Society for American Fellowships in French Universities, is a splendid and timely tribute to the scholars of France by representative scholars of America. The Introduction is contributed by ex-President Eliot of Harvard University and George E. Hale, Foreign Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, and the general Editor is Professor John H. Wigmore of Northwestern University. The Introduction describes the general intellectual spirit of France and Paris. Following this, there are nearly one hundred special papers, each by a writer familiar with a particular field of scholarship, who reviews the notable achievements of French scholarship and describes the leaders in that field. The departments of anthropology, archæology, astronomy, botany and agriculture, chemistry, criminology, education, engineering, geography, geology, history, law, mathematics, medicine,philology-classical, Romance, Oriental, Semitic and English-philosophy, physics, political science, psychology, religion, sociology, and zoology are thus separately considered; and in an Appendix are given descriptions of educational advantages for American students in France, with a history of recent changes in its University system, a list of the organization and requirements of French institutions of higher learning and practical suggestions to the intending graduate student. The list of sponsors for the book includes more than a thousand names. Numerous portraits add to its value and personal interest.

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