wed from the French MeCord Lowes. New York, W. Norton & Ca. Me. reasonably be supposed that a book written in a language not the author's own and translated by a third person into yot another tongue might lose its distinction in transition and becom profitable. That has not done $9 is warkable freshness. autobiography which escapes most of th> pitfalls into which works of its class. generally fall. The author tells the: story of his life, as it were, second hand. It is the story of his family, and many are the charming Chine: tales sand legends, recounted by a sad-cod mother to her offspring. which increases the general appeal. Nevertheless there are sufficient Velimax ian the elution of 19LL, analogy is drawn the struggle in the bosom of the Sheng family and that whicl convulsed the country after tha Sine-Japanese war andthe humiliating Treaty of Shimonosekts The resistance? to modern progress which characterised the closing years of the Eiapress Dowager's era of power has its direct counterpart in the family in the resistance, not to say tyranny, exercised by the Sheng grandmother, The old lady, a stickler for the proprieties, ap Pears to have made no one happy except herself. Certainly the life she led the author's mother was a miserable one, and it is to be fear ed one only too typical of the life wife in the home rigours ning. Getting the sages, the works of the ancient sion proved a. youth, And the tender mercies of the tutor were. harsh, 'Those were the days when the tutor was all powerful, and the student was kept in stern' suppress sion, not, as now, being allowed almost unlimited lieanee. The result on young Sheng-Cheng was to foster a spirit of rebellion, for make him onl ggreund for the seeds of re-volition, So when the revolution broke out, our student, then at college in' Nanking, found himself? in the midst of things, only a boy but up to his neck in the fighting, carrying messages between revolutionaries besieged in the city and, Yisking his lite daily.
any other ardent. revolu-of the period, Sheng-Cheng appears to have believed that the millennium woold arrive with the overthrow of the Ching dynasty. That it did not come immediately Was a source of disappointment, and the book ends on that note." The author never loses hope that one day his country will emerge from the present chaos and take a place worthy of it in the world. "I am. certain," he writes, "that though the skin of.the fruit is mouldy, and though its flesh is unhealthy and partly spoiled, the kernel is healthy, the seed whole, the embryo sound and strong, and a new tree will arise from this seed, China will be After the revolution and various personal vicissitudes, he threw hint self wholeheartedly into the young China movement. A president of a railwaymen's union in the north he proselytised among the peasantry, fully realizing at the same tims the difficulties which he and his fellow enthusiasts would have to encoun foresaw that the splendid movement which we had begun would a smothered in the corruption of the politicians of the north and south." He wont abroad in 1919. "Rescuers of the Chinese masses, look to you selves first! To Europe!"
The story of the struggle to from themselves of the shackles of oid tradition is freely interspersed with intimate sketches of life in a hi class Chinese family—marriages, deaths, sacrifice, disputes over land. And also there is @ poignantly sad love tale, a description of life in a Buddhist' monastery, and thumb—nail pictures of characters met in fairly extensive wanderings. These things lend charm to the inter the greater story, and the ey tion is a book itis a real pleasure to read.—J.M.D.H. the soul, giving it che leisure of strength in the hard labour of life;"" but most prefer to slouch. The mind will perish with the body unless consciousness have completed tthe circle and entered in: o life everlasting. The love of God, which has set philosophers a-dream, is found by little children, who growing up likely lose it, perhaps to recapture it in "First Love."
Could he retain that enthusias would find happiness perdu Friendship is the highest express sion of Selfhood, where a man finds his ideal self in another; arid Christ, has taught us that man can have God for a friend. "In the fellowship of the friendship of Christ, God is seen as the very self-essence of Tave."
This is a thin sketch of a magnificent poem. It does not cil of its autobiographical facts to warrant the book being called an autobiography, and an extremely good one at that.
'A somewhat unusual point of view is revealed towards the close of the bock when the author makes the statement that to understand a, his own country, it is first necessary to understand Europe, It was for' this reason that ho went eventually to France to complete hi jon, and while in that country produced this autobiography so as to enable readers there to got some understanding of the viewpoint of his countrymen. This might seem to rank the book as propaganda, but. that it certainly is not. Its hist ical details may be biased, but reader should understand that history of China's relations wit foreign Powers is interpreted in the light" of these details _almost throughout the country, a cir-cam stance wich makes plain a bot
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.