NON-FICTION

Notes

Bargain Poetry. One may now buy a pocketful of poets for less than the cost of a novel. Carl Sandburg, Elinor Wylie, Poe, Whitman, Nathalia Crane, H. D.-- these are ready, more are coming, prepared in essence on strong paper as a Pamphlet Poet at 25c the pamphlet. Now one may have an anthology piecemeal, buy it on the installment plan and include only his own favorites. The pocketful of U. S. Pamphlet Poets is published by Simon & Schuster. F. A. Stokes has published a British pocketful, including Keats, Shelley, Laureate Bridges.

Dollar Dreadfuls. Still another class of readers will rejoice over a new departure of Little Brown & Co. Shorter than a novel; longer than a short-story; cost, a dollar the volume, are the E. Phillips Oppenheim "pocket thrillers." The stories are not new. England has known them in her magazines or as "shilling shockers". The Terrible Hobby of Sir Joseph Londe, Bart.; The Adventures of Mr. Joseph P. Cray; Madame and Her Twelve Virgins; The Channay Syndicate. Trash as good as Mr. Op- penheim's has its place in the world.

NON-FICTION

Grandson

ESSAYS IN POPULAR SCIENCE-- Julian S. Huxley--Knopf ($4). "There is a danger," says the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley (Evolution), "in these days of manifold information and broadcast amusement, that the world will become divided into those who have to think for their living and those who never think at all." Hence--and because the layman, while he is knowing and kindly towards an atom or electron when he meets one, is embarrassed by sperms and ova and benighted as to chromosomes--hence another volume of popular biology.

It it true that a drunkard's son will drink badly (that acquired characteristics are inheritable) ? Not demonstrably. Why is it that more male babies die than females? Because: 1) their inheritance contains more recessive (weak) characteristics; 2) semi-lethal characteristics are of the recessive type. Is death a necessary consequence of life? Immortality has been achieved for certain flatworms, is observable in certain trees. Is sex predeterminate? Not yet, but soon perhaps; meantime, no man is not latently female, and functional sex reversal has actually been wrought upon frogs, chickens, owls.

For folk to whom such marvels are stale pudding, there are more specialized technical expositions out of Professor Huxley's own researches, notably a tadpole study in developmental physiology. All is eminently clear reading, and there is the grandson's explanation of his famed grandfather's attitude toward religion, graceful, convincing and rather fine.

Yet as a contribution to society this book is less commendable than the same author's Essays of a Biologist. Therein the long view was more sustained--the implications of biology in the future, the sanity of birth control, the purpose of evolution and kindred philosophical speculations upon the findings of science--speculations for which Professor Huxley appears to be strongly equipped, perhaps (laws of heredity notwithstanding) by one of his great-grandfathers, Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, father of Matthew ("Sweetness and Light") Arnold.

Cattle

CATTLE OP THE WORLD--Alvin Howard Sanders, D. Agr.--National Geographic Society ($3). The National Geographic Society has added to its "Who's Who of Woods, Water, Wind,"* another color-illus- trated volume of obvious merit. The author is editor of the Breeder's Gazette. The Society's own notice at once reviews and recommends the book with great accuracy: "To any one, young or old, interested in cattle--whether as a business or hobby, or because of the charm they add to the land-scape--this authoritative and richly illustrated book will prove a lasting delight and a constantly used reference work. . . . The author ... in delightful narrative sketches the origin, history and economic place of our modern cattle. Pictures and brief descriptions bring to us the Gaur, Yak, Zebu, Banteng, Urus, Water Buffalo, Bison and other strange wild varieties as well as domesticated cattle and enable even the layman to recognize the 40 significant breeds, whether seen on farm or ranch or in the wilds of India and Thibet."

FICTION

Illinois Caesar

The Story./- A huge dummy steamship rolls in mid-Atlantic. Aboard her a caricature of a U. S. highbrow playwright is very seasick. His convalescence is not aided by the loud, burlesque antics, all. over the boat and in the contiguous stateroom, of a caricature Midwesterner who calls his nagging wife ''Honey," his bitter daughter, "Babe." The playwright, Laurence Ogle, fresh from acclaim by Manhattan's "few," writhes with two kindred caricatures in a corner of the smoking saloon, worrying lest other passengers will take as typical of U. S. culture the flushed, raucous squad of industrial captains who are playing poker, singing:

Old Aunt Mariar A-sitting by the fire

She wants a drink o' gin. . . . Dirty old Auntie Mariar!

and whanging the back of their leader, Ogle's cabin-neighbor. The latter is our hero, Earl Tinker, Illinois paperman, plutocrat, barbarian, super-Babbitt, child.

The burlesque is intensified, and the book brought within reason's reach, by the introduction of one of those enchanting creatures of fiction and perhaps of life, a cosmopolitan widow of fabulous poise, beauty, wisdom and pathos, Aurelie Momoro. With her suave son, Hyacinthe, and two French gentlewomen, she plays bridge imperturbed through Mr. Tinker's hullabaloo.

Laurence Ogle is promptly, tragically in love with her. She causes him agonies, now of joy when she talks of the sea and life; now of jealous, incredulous despair when she finds the vociferous Tinker not "grotesque" but very amusing, harmless, generous, and "real." She, a "gold-enhelmed Diana" to Ogle, spends hours with Tinker on the boat-deck hearing about his home town, his 6,000 employes, his wife and daughter, who are ashamed of him.

They view Gibraltar. "What an ad!" cries Tinker. Ogle groans. Mme. Momoro smiles. After a noisy inspection of the Arab quarter in Algiers, Tinker blurts: "The United States Army ought to come over here and clean it up! If we had a sink of iniquity and disease and dirt and crime like that in my town it'd last just about 15 minutes!" Ogle shudders. Mme. Momoro explains the difference between shallow cosmopolitanism and sophisticated provincialism.

Ancient, exotic Africa works changes on all the travelers except Mme. Momoro. She has been there before. Ogle feels himself shrinking into a bitter, puny ineffectual as he drives with her over multicolored mountains and desert in the wake of the barbarian Tinker, whose progress, strewn with coin and prodigious solecisms, looms more arid more like that of a conquering potentate, a latter-day Hamilcar, a boisterous Caesar of a new Rome. His is an army of dollars; his retinue at home is 6,000 slaves. He scoffs at the native backwardness, ladens his wife with curios, silks, jewelry brought to him by fawning mer- chants. The tremendous arches, waterworks and sewers at ruined Timgad earn an indulgent wave of his hand but at St. Augustine's tomb he says: "Plumb out of date, the whole business . . . I'm talkabout the whole possetucky-- the whole kit-an'-boodle. . . . The human race has got to make progress. . . . The Almighty doesn't care a nickel about anything except our makin' that progress. . . . The kind He patronizes are the boys that got the plans, all ready for a bigger and better city the morning after the earthquake."

On the last page he is standing up, waving back with his high hat, shouting, "I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way," in a motor sent to fetch him into audience with the Bey of Tunis, who probably wants, as everyone else does, some of his power, his money. Little Ogle, spared only by a check for vulgar cinema rights from the humiliation of hav-ing to borrow like the rest, abjures highbrow writing and is grateful for Olivia Tinker's hand in marriage. Mme. Momoro, hav-ing acquired what a devoted mother-of-the-world could for her son, departs in gratitude for Paris.

The Significance. You can, if you like, read Earl Tinker as Pen rod grown up. Laurence Ogle might be Willie Baxter, twice Seventeen. Or you can regard The Plutocrat as simply a new Tarkington vehicle full of up-to-date types, sent out parading to show people how they look. The balloon tires of burlesque protect anyone it runs over from being injured. Mme. Momoro is the chauffeuse, adroit aloof, intelligent, guiding the satire until it is time for her to step out of it a human being like the rest. Mr. Tarkington has written books of more uniform merit but never one with more admirable and colorful combinations of his prime characteristic, good humor, with his serious aim, social enlightenment.

The Author. It is 28 years since The Gentleman from Indiana was published. Newton Booth Tarkington was then a young Princeton graduate living in Indianapolis. He is still living in Indianapolis, on a street with the glorious name of Meridian, and never was Princeton more conscious of him as her leading literatus. His position in national letters is analogous to what Princeton feels. The Henry van Dykes, ever revered, belong to an age gone by. The Scott Fitzgeralds, ever provocative, may belong to an age to come. The Tarkingtons, craftsmen and satirists whose conscience and good manners are not disturbed by the heady elixir of "modernism," belong certainly to the present and may be depended on.

Psychaleidoscope

GOODBYE, STRANGER--Stella Ben-son--Macmillan ($2). Stella Benson, liveliest of travelers, is a little too fanciful in her new novel to make good sense. Her general proposition is .that there are too many "soulless" people in the world. Corollary: U. S. civiliza- tion is largely to blame. Somewhere in China a childlike Briton, Clifford Cotton, with a witchlike mother and Daley, his healthy-animal wife from California, perceives Wisdom in the dull eyes, lean frame and tired voice of a thirtyish English girl, Lena, an itinerant musician who stops in his house to have a touch of pleurisy. In addition to being childlike, Clifford is some kind of fairy changeling. Lena's dose of Wisdom, combined with an effect of moonlight on mountains, subjects him to an experience that is meant to be beautiful if not religious-- hearing voices in the jungle, tearing his shirt off, having an ecstasy --but it only comes out confusing and a bit absurd. Back again from the jungle, Clifford is himself again and everyone is happy; except, of course, Lena. The book confuses not only the mind but the emotions too, mixing so much to condemn with much to admire. The characters are presented in subjective flashes, bright, sensitive but jumbled; a psychological kaleidoscope. Speaking all their half-thoughts out loud, and many more of the author's, the mother coughs and booms, Daley sings, puppies whine, Clifford grumbles, Lena moans, a Chinaman squeaks, the doctor quacks . . . the reader de- spairs.

Author Benson, British, is married to an Irishman and lives in Manchuria. She raises hounds, plays the guitar.

Jew Book

The Story is not laid in Abe-deen* but in Vienna. It begins with a speech: "In whose hands is the press and therefore public opinion? In the hands of the Jew! Who has piled billions upon billions . . . ? The Jew! Who controls the tremendous circulation of our money, who sits at the director's desk in the great banks, who is the head of practically all industries? The Jew! Who owns our theatres? The Jew! Who writes the plays that are produced? The Jew! Who rides about in automobiles, who revels in the night resorts, who crowds the cafes and fashionable restaurants, who covers himself and his wife with pearls and precious stones? The Jew!

"Ladies and gentlemen! I have said, and still maintain, that essentially, when considered objectively, the Jew is an excellent individual. But is not the rose-beetle with its iridescent wings essentially also an excellent creature? ... Is not the tiger . . . and do we not hunt it ... ?"

Dr. Karl Schwertfeger, Chancellor of Austria, brought his oration to a powerful close. The pro-Jewish minority protested and was ejected. The deputies unanimously passed the law. The state would reimburse all for their property as valued in their tax returns; for certain classes there was an extension of time; but eventually, within six months, every Jew and son-of-a-Jew must leave Austria. The months passed. Austria was Jewless. The decadent Aryans had saved themselves from the facile Semites.

A few people had seen how it would be, but the actuality sur- passed prognostication. The Chancellor's oratorical census took on a new significance. Capital left Austria in billions, legally and by the connivance of avaricious Christians. For a time Christian gold flowed in from the outer world but soon it was all lost by the charming but impractical Viennese. Department stores passed into Christian hands but the aisles were vacant, management was stupid, fashion languished. The krone, dropping dizzily, turned today's newly-rich bourgeois into tomorrow's bankrupt. Theatres closed or gave dull plays with inept actors. Tens of thousands of Viennese apartments stood vacant. Viennese husbands moped; without the competition of smart Jewesses, their wives wore Scotch tweeds, Alpine woollens, no cosmetics. The tearful partings of polyracial relatives only faintly reflected the hardships suffered later by ladies of joy, jewelers, restaurateurs, bartenders. The newspapers became colorless. Gone even from politics was the zest, the vivifying friction of the Aryans' perfect complements in life, the Semites. Poverty and gloom filled Vienna.

So it was no great work, after the first year, for Leo Strakosch, clever artist, to return to Vienna disguised as a Frenchman, ignite the discontent of land-poor landlords, disseminate the idea that with the Jews happiness had been exiled, overthrow the Government, get the ban repealed, regain his Christian fiancee and be hailed by the populace and mayor of Vienna as "beloved Jew."

The Significance of this swift fantasy may be partly understood from the fact that it quickly sold into 58 editions last summer abroad. Only one side of a tremendous issue is represented, and that in light journalistic burlesque. As literature the book is only the skeleton for a monster social satire with a few lines of horseplay, suggestions for ironic masterstrokes, sketched in. As the Finance Minister is explaining his aspect of the law, his tongue gets caught in his false teeth. When the law is passed, Christian deputies rush, to make market speculations through their brokers, named Cohn, Kuhn, Kohen, Rosenstrauch, Butterfrass. A high dignitary's wife pulls his hair for exiling their son-in-law.

Yet some of the gunpowder that underlies the Jew-v.-Gentile question, at least in Vienna, was to be touched off by sparks as mild as these.

The Author, a Christian, son of an old merchant family, a journalist and essayist of high and cosmopolitan reputation, received as his first royalty on The City Without Jews a bullet which killed him, fired in cold blood by a 20-year-old Nordic caller, who later said he was proud to have struck such a blow for Kultur.

*Which already includes: The Book of Fishes--John Oliver La Gorce ($4).

The Book of Birds--Henry W. Henshaw ($3).

Wild Flowers of America--William Joseph Showalter, et al. ($4).

Horses of the World--Major-Gen. William Harding Carter ($3).

The Book of Dogs--Paintings by Louis Agassiz Fuertes ($2).

Wild Animals of North America--Edward W. Nelson ($3).

/-THE PLUTOCRAT--Booth Tarkington-- Doubleday, Page ($2)

*THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS--Hugo Bettauer--Bloch (12).