Tuy Sty. By Upton Sinclair, (T. W.
Laurie 3s. 6d. net).
In is many years now since Charles Reade following the example Charles Dickens turned to propa ganda under the guise of fiction—very powerful propaganda, as well readable stories, are such books as "Hard Cash" and "It Is Never Too Late to Mend." Since Reade's days the novel has frequent. ly been used in the same way; but never with quite his success. Mr. Sinclair has never written a story which had a purely artistic motive; but he has never, hitherto, not even in "The Jungle," reached Reade's level. and in some of his books, such the novels on marriage, he rik beneath any sort of serious deration. "The Spy" is the more welcome, It is a_ restrained, careful, and sober indictment of ithe methods of the American police "and business interests in their attack on th "Reds." How far the is accurate cannot be used here; but Mr. Sinclair some facts in his appendix for some of the chief horrors of his for No humane or statesmanlike tson needy to be persuaded that the use of agents provocateurs is spicabl: und disastrous. Peter Gudge is a feeble, cunning, sneak-criminal, who becomes a police-spy through his accidental intervention at a dynamite outrage. Mr. Sinclair writes well, and from evident knowledge, of the activities of the I.W.W. and of the lives of individuals workers; he keeps very tw his case, and presents it with force and persuasiveness. One is sickened by the maze of lies and counter-lies, spying and couner-which one is led into; and clair does not make the mis-ake of allowing a just retribution to overcome Peter Gudge. He succeeds in just the vulgar, miserable way that unscrupulous people with no passion but greed too often do.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.