and help to clear charlatan Fourth-ofJuly-spread-eagle shadows and to show the ballot is as useless a peace weapon in the hands of the uninformed citizen as a gun in the hands of an untrained marksman in battle. It holds, too, as many dangers; for he may easily turn it upon himself through ignorance. The author of Woman's Part in Government gives such specific and definite suggestions toward efficient citizenship that, if the book is as widely read as it should be, he will contribute much to his purpose.

Contrary to general opinion, the author sees most problems of government are sexless and thus the book keeps its wide appeal; but, as the title indicates, the emphasis is placed more specifically on still further heightening woman's civic efficiency without as well as with the universal suffrage which he believes inevitable. To him woman's relation to government depends on her sphere of activity whether as mother, sister, wageearner, wage-payer or purchaser. This is supplemented by whatever part she plays in non-official organisations such as clubs, settlements, trade-unions, educational boards, and private charities. There is a further possibility, too, for potent influence through organising public opinion and by official action. Mr. Allen argues in this respect that her influence is limited or increased by what she wants throughout the whole year and that the most urgent need is to insure methods of straight seeing, thinking, and acting.

To get rid of false distinctions between adequate public relief and adequate private relief is one of woman's civic opportunities. . . . There will never come a time when the most direct means of promoting health, education and opportunity will not be through government. . . . Wherever any considerable amount of graft exists the chief culprit, the steadiest, most trustworthy accomplice is the chief victim of the graft, namely, the general public. . . . An open public eye rather than an aroused public conscience is essential to the elimination of graft. . . . Balloting does not offer opportunity for continuous services or continuous educational work.

To illustrate these civic problems con

fronting women and the manner of efficiently meeting them Mr. Allen has gathered together a large number of current social issues. His treatment of these is unique in that while he forces the reader constantly to question the accepted and habitual mismanagement of civic institutions, instead of leaving one with a helpless sense of the futility of all combined action he constructively substitutes specific scientific and statistical means of improving or replacing the old method. The book will thus have a practical value for those who are interested in civic questions, and also for workers, in that it gives definite reference as to the sources of recent information on current movements. This material is difficult to locate readily through the ordinary library, as so much of it is in pamphlet form and not generally well classified.

Practically within the year we have had The American Woman in Business, The Progress of Woman's Rights, Woman and Labor, Love and Marriage, and What Eight Million Women Want. That there should now come also this book on Woman's Part in Government is a significant touchstone of the rapid progress of this "Woman Movement"which some historians consider the most striking manifestation of the Twentieth Century. Whatever our convictions as to the good or evil results of this to the world we must recognise, with Mr. Allen, that "Women everywhere are waking up, thinking, judging, longing for activity. . . . Wake they will. Shall their waking create or solve problems?" Fola La Follette.

VI

THEODORE DREISER'S "JENNIE GerHARDT"

Readers familiar with modern Italian fiction are aware that several years ago Giovanni Verga, author of Cavalleria Rusticana, planned a series of five novels which, while unrelated in theme, social environment or caste of characters, were nevertheless grouped under one comprehensive title, The Vanquished, and had in common this basic idea, that in all the

*Jennie Gerhardt. By Theodore Dreiser. New York: Harper and Brothers,

different social strata there seem to be certain individuals and certain families that, while apparently as well fitted as the others for survival, are nevertheless doomed in advance to failure, destined to suffer a slow and inevitable disintegration. Mr. Theodore Dreiser has nowhere specifically expressed any similar social or artistic creed; and yet, in reading his Jennie Gerhardt, one's thoughts inevitably go back to Verga's doctrine of The Vanquished; in following the slow breaking up of the Gerhardt family, we see again in memory the dissolution as a social unit of Verga's I Malavoglia, and realise that, however far apart these two authors may be in the theory and practice of their art, they have a rather curious mental kinship in their outlook upon life.

Jennie Gerhardt is a novel possessing an interest outside and beyond the specific story it has to tell; it contains an answer to the not unimportant question raised by Mr. Dreiser's earlier volume, Sister Carrie, "What are the mental and moral measurements of this author? Has he reached the limits of his powers, or is he destined to go further, much further, into the higher altitudes of fiction?" The question is an interesting one because there can be little doubt that if the world at large had discovered promptly, instead of after a delay of nearly seven years, that Sister Carrie was a volume of some importance, we should not only have had Jennie Gerhardt a decade sooner, but other volumes besides of similar substance and intent.

A careful reading of Jennie Gerhardt is consoling to this extent: it does away with the illusion that Mr. Dreiser has or ever had much greater altitudes to scale; it shows more fully than his earlier book the whole gamut of his powers and his limitations; it is, of the two, a more ambitious effort, a more complex picture drawn on a wider canvas,-and its defects are proportionately more numerous and more apparent. Both books are stamped with a certain crudity, both in literary style and in the specific things which certain characters say and do: over and over again the reader finds himself involuntarily echoing Assessor Brack's familiar expostulation, "But people don't

do such things!" And because Jennie Gerhardt has a more crowded canvas than Sister Carrie; because also, in a measure, certain characters are higher up in the social scale, the things that people do not do stand out rather more frequently and more obviously.

Nevertheless, Jennie Gerhardt is a rather big book,-not a great book, not a book worthy to stand,-as an enthusiastic English reviewer once said of its predecessor, on a shelf between Madame Bovary and Nana; but a big book, undeniably, full of a rugged sincerity, a fearless devotion to the truth, and undisguised pity for the impotence of human nature under its double handicap of heredity and environment.

Jennie Gerhardt is one of those novels of which it is extremely hard to give the right sort of impression in a review, without letting the review run to altogether disproportionate length, because the specific story that it has to tell is one which necessitates a possession of all the facts before one may judge it fairly. In this respect it resembles life, and the judgment of the hasty reader, who merely skims its pages, will also resemble the hasty judgments which in real life. are passed upon the human derelicts that from time to time pass for a moment under our notice. Full knowledge means" full sympathy, Mr. Dreiser would seem to say, and to this end he multiplies little details unweariedly, endlessly, until there is at least one character in the story whom we know with something approaching the intimacy with which we know ourselves. And since this particular character is one foredoomed to be swept under in the current of life, the pervading atmosphere of the book is, as in Arnold Bennett's Clayhanger, a wonderfully sustained sense of greyness, a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitability of human tragedy.

Mr. Dreiser himself has defined his new volume as "the life story of a woman who craved affection." Jennie and Carrie, in the opening chapters of the respective volumes, are sisters in misfortune and in weakness; both have been born to a life of toil and temptation; both of them hunger for something different; and both of them, when temptation

comes, succumb to it. But from this point onward the two stories are a whole world apart. And the difference lies in the characters of the two heroines who, if all womankind could for the sake of convenience be divided into two groups, would stand as representatives of these opposite types, the woman whose pleasure lies in receiving, and the woman whose joy it is to give. Carrie Meeber lived for herself alone. She yielded to temptation, not through love, or gratitude, or because it was a means toward helping others, but simply because she craved a winter coat, new shoes, gloves and ribbons, the petty vanities of a young woman who has awakened to a realisation that she is good to look upon. Jennie Gerhardt has the inborn instinct of motherhood; she must have, always, something or somebody to whom she may make sacrifice. In her case, it is no vulgar, flashy drummer who brings temptation through appeal to her sex or her vanity, but a man of importance, a mature and dignified United States Senator, whose attentions mean the lifting of a cloud of despair from the shoulders of an overworked mother and a sick father, food and clothing for half a dozen needy brothers and sisters. The senator has been attracted by the girl's beauty while staying at a hotel in which she is employed; and at first his interest in her is, or at least he cheats himself into thinking that it is, merely paternal. It is Jennie's own gratitude, when the senator crowns his many kindnesses by saving her brother from prison, that brings about the initial tragedy of her life. And when, shortly afterward, the senator dies, and Jennie finds herself facing the world single-handed, with the added burden of a nameless child, she is still unchanged, still the woman who will always pay in full for the privilege of a kind word, always sacrifice herself to the uttermost for the sake of those who are dear to her.

The main substance of Jennie's story, however, deals with that part of her life which follows upon the death of the senator, and after another man comes into her life, to whom she is able to give not merely gratitude but a mature woman's love, the one and only love of

her life. That a girl like Jennie could throughout a series of years live more or less openly with a man of such social and financial prominence as Lester Kane, travel with him as his wife, visit fashionable summer resorts in his company, and finally take a house in one of the city suburbs and be for a time on terms of intimacy with the neighbours, to whom she is known as Mrs. Kane,—all of this without exciting gossip, or arousing suspicions, or disturbing the tranquillity of her austere old father, who at this time lives with her,—is almost too much of a tax upon the reader's credulity. But, if we accept the situation, then the underlying tragedy of it, the abiding sense that it was foredoomed not to last, the daily lengthening shadow of the inevitable sacrifice she must sooner or later make for the best good of the man she loves, all this is given to us with an assured touch, showing with quite wonderful insight how relentlessly the conse quences of human errors tread on one another's heels. Over and over the story of Jennie makes the reader's heart ache with the helpless pity of it all. Yet at the same time, and this is perhaps the highest tribute that can be paid to Mr. Dreiser, and in a measure offsets the strictures and reservations of an earlier paragraph, it never occurs to the reader to ask, "Oh, why did he do it? Why was he so needlessly cruel?" One feels, on the contrary, that the cruelty in this✔ book is not of Mr. Dreiser's making; it is the cruelty of life.

VII

Calvin Winter.

HENRY JAMES'S "THE OUTCRY"*

More than once in these later days Mr. James must have been prompted by the ironic spirit which has so often dominated him to reflect on the revenges which time brings. Remembering the outburst of abuse and ridicule which but a few years ago greeted the appearance of each successive book-the climax came, perhaps, with The Golden Bowlone may fairly confess astonishment at the calm assurance with which he now

*The Outcry. By Henry James. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

holds his place secure, if apart, among the masters of fiction. In those days his admirers found themselves called upon to display some courage in his defence, and it is not strange that those who possessed the courage were led by their ardour into excesses of devotion. Now the burden of proof is thrown upon those who still blindly deny his patent if limited genius. Particularly since the publication of the collected edition of his works. with those so admirable prefaces in which he expounded his attitude toward the art he has practised, our understanding of the possibilities of fiction has grown along with our comprehension of the special intentions by which he has been actuated. Even the most ardent disciple may be embarrassed to justify faults which the master himself practically concedes. Mr. James cheerfully grants his special preoccupation with issues to be sought only through the medium of a highly sophisticated outlook, a richly mannered style. His social comedy is an artificial creation in exactly the sense that Wycherly's is, or Sheridan's. His favourite involutions are no more to be defended--and no less-than Shakespeare's gongorisms and euphuisms. His manner, which has of late slightly hardened into mannerism, is the inevitable. accompaniment of his real accomplishment, which is to bring to light myriads of the sub-conscious or semi-conscious motives and emotions which underlie the thought of the most highly strung, the most finely organised society the present day knows.

Judged on this basis, The Outcry is not one of his great works, though it may well serve to extend his influence to some who have not been able to read him since the days of Daisy Miller. Simplicity, perspicuity are not the prime virtues for the hard task Mr. James once set himself. In this small, compressed story there is not the intensity, the mordant irony which have marked his biggest books. Its comedy is mellower, cheerier, than that of, for instance, The Spoils of Poynton, with which it at once ranges itself as to subject. It is, in the cant phrase of the crass realist, more "human." There are even critics who can see something a trifle journalistically vul

gar in his utilising for a theme a "topic" so present to the public eye. But Mr. James has remained throughout his career amazingly contemporaneous, and his justification in the present instance lies in the refinement he has been able to impart to a theme of such obvious appeal. The newspapers have recognised dramatic values even for their purposes in the outcry raised in old countries at the rifling of their art treasures by rich Americans. Mr. James figures it in one of its acutest phases, and then gives the fable a characteristically subtle turn through the markedly personal elements he brings on the stage. Nothing could be more individual than the little group of characters—the finely drawn English peer, his daughter, her young lover and the American millionaire-who play the drama through to its surprising conclusion. It is capital social comedy, with its "point" explicit enough for the dullest comprehension. Above all it is representative, as Mr. James always is, by very reason of its definite individualisation in the concrete instance. It does not go deep into the personal life nor the social life; but it plays charmingly on the surface, not with flashes of brilliant wit, but with the glow of a genial humour. If it reminds us by its lessening of the spiritual tension that Mr. James is no longer young, it offers the recompense of showing him in the pleasantest mood of a ripened age. Perhaps, after all, its chief solicitation of our interest will prove to lie in the intimation that even this most inflexible artist has come in the end to the concession of a more "human" contact with his readers.

genius that has thus far produced one masterpiece and two or three novels of questionable merit. Nobody nowadays questions the splendid vigour and life of Bob, Son of Battle; its position is secure as a sort of minor classic, and on it rests its author's claim to fame. There are those who profess to understand and enjoy the amazing allegory of Redcoat Captain; to most it is sheer gibberish. The Gentleman is three-fourths a great, stirring tale of the sea, worthy to stand on the same shelf with Treasure Island. The other fourth is banal sentimentality and drivel. But even in his most abysmal banalities Mr. Ollivant's courage inspires respect. He does not attempt trivial things, and he is not afraid to unbare himself in attitudes that would bring the blush of shame to any person with the least touch of self-consciousness.

Consequently there is always a certain. excitement in looking into a new book of his, the awareness of a possible impending discovery. Perhaps he has done it this time, at last! is your thought. And this excitement is usually fostered by the arresting quality of the first few pages. It is so with his new book, The Taming of John Blunt. The rough outline of the principal character and his situation is set before you with clear certainty. Here is the germ of a capital story, none the less workable that it is based on a fallacy as old as the hills-the fallacy that the rough, plain speaking fellow who wears. seedy clothes and has bad manners is in some way a finer, better man than the one who is decent and respectable. He is more "elemental," in the accepted phrase. John Blunt, "the Unspeakable Blunt," as he is called, fifty odd, grey and rugged, a man of the people in spite of his good birth, with a profound scorn and contempt for the ways of aristocracy and a singularly rude way of expressing his sentiments, is about the most elemental thing this side of the South Sea Islands. Lady Florence Brackenhurst, the stern old aristocrat, characterises him aptly.

"He's nobody-and never will be, as I told him. Absolutely unpresentable. Not a pretence-not a pretence, my dear boy." Lord Hilliard dropped his eyelids. "He is not one of us then."

Lord Hilliard, you see, was wiser than he looked. It is this simple unswerving outspoken honesty that makes John Blunt the hero of a novel-though he lies on occasion, insults his friends, and vents. his jealousy by booting his rival in love. And, being a primitive man, he can uncover primitive depths of sentiment. The reader comes upon him at the deathbed of his mother, who has been his constant and only companion all his life. The scene is genuinely touching, for it is vividly etched, and the sentiment rings true. But sentiment has its limits, beyond which it becomes mush. When the Unspeakable Blunt, the most hated and feared radical in England, having put an end to the sufferings of a wounded hare, proceeds to bury it to an accompaniment of the same profound sentiment he had shed over his mother's grave, the thing has gone too far. And when John Blunt falls in love-but that deserves another paragraph.

Mr. Ollivant has an idea at the back of his hero's love-making: nothing less than that the really great natures are those that have in them most of the straight simplicity of the child. And his characters are all to be great natures— Blunt and his mate, the Lady Rachel Carmelite, even Lady Florence and Lord Hilliard, who had been lovers in youth and had never quite recovered from it. So they are all to be children at heart. Unluckily, he knows no way of showing them as children save to make them talk baby-talk. Their emotions are remarkably adult; they all sing the joys of parenthood, and are reminded of it by every feature of the landscape. But their talk-that of all of them at times, and of the younger lovers constantly, once they are in for it is an exhibition of elaborate infantile inanity such as no thoroughly healthy-minded person could read, much less write, without a blush compounded of shame and disgust. Such enlightening and frequently repeated remarks as "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" from the girl, and "Diddle, diddle, diddle," from the man, are among the least offensive of these love passages. The great, strong man and the beautiful young woman turn before your eyes into horrible, gross, grinning caricatures of childhood. And