"Tae Mrppre or tue Roan." By Philip Gibbs. (Hutchinson. 7s. 6d.)
It is difficult to judge this book as one judges an ordinary novel. Its issues are too great, too cosmic, its descriptions too intimately topical and actual, too much the fruit of knowledge and disillusion, for that. It takes you into all the dark places of civilization, and drowns you in the tears of the world. But for the certainty that some of the scenes described have changed, and that others are changing, it would be an unbearable in-dietment of the modern: conscience.
Sir Philip's hero is a man of warm hearb and cool judgment. "The middle of the road" attracts his feet, which shrink from the extremes of quiescence and revolt. The natural result is that he is dubbed ''traitor' by his friends of either side. He goes to post-war France; and under the very shadow of ten thousand English graves he finds suspicion, resentment, and wounded affection. He goes to Ireland, and we all know what he found—in 1921. He goes to Russia, and here no literary notice can say much of what he finds. It is safe to say that no mere reader or reviewer will forget it. What the impression must have been on one who saw it all passes realization.
Such a book would be terrible in the extreme but for the existence of men like its author, whose hearts and brains will comfort themselves with no opiate while they can plead for the world, and so fight our chill and cruel indifference to its agony.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.