OCR Text |
Show THE CITIZEN plied that 1 would see what I could do, and (this with his chaarcteristic chuckle) all the time I had the Japanese request In my breeches pocket! promptly hazarded whenever the hazard is warranted by the larger Interests of the great game in which we are all engaged. Mr. Roosevelt once took Issue with Mr. Abbotts father over Senator An incident which tickled Roosevelt and which will amuse his admu-er- s latter attacking, the former defending. In view of the fact is stold in relation to a comment made by Mr. Dooley (Finley Peter Dunne). On one occasion Roosevelt commented with surprise that tne children of Brooklyn had instantly recognized him when he was visiting some model tenement houses. Lodge, the that Senator Lodge has dominated events in the senate during a critical period of our history and is still the most conspicuous figure in the contest between Americanism and international imperialism the views of the former president are especially enlightening. You would be surprised to know how many men have spoken to me about the article on Lodge. Lodge has violent enemies. But he is a boss or the head or a machine only in the sense that Henry were Daniel Webster Clay and heads of political machines; that is, it is a very great inustice to couple his name wth the names of those commonly called bosses, in any article. 1 know Massachusetts politics well. I know Lodges share in them, and I know what he has done in the Senate. ' He and I differ radically on certain propositions, as for instance on the pending Bate Bill and on the arbitration treates of a couple of years ago; but 1 say delberately that during the twenty years he has been in Washington he has been on the whoi the best and most useful servant of the public to be found in either house of congress. I say also that he has during that period led politics in Massachusetts in the very way which, if it could only be adopted in all our states, would mean the elimination of graft, of bossism, and of every other of the evils which are most serious in our politics. Lodge is a man of very strong convictions, and this means that when his convictions differ from mine I am apt to substitute tne narrow word for and "obstinate a aloofness and he has certain strong; and coldness of manner that rritates people who do not live in New England. But he is an eminently fit successor of Webster and Sumner in the senatorship from Massachusetts. The attitude of so daring and resolute a man toward fear cannot fail to be of interest. He gives us wise counsel as to the best way of overcoming timidity and facing life bravely. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to mean horses and but by acting as if I was not I afraid, gradually ceased to be afraia. Most men can have the same experience if they chose. They will first learn to bear themselves well in trials which they anticipate, and which they school themselves in advance to meet. After a while the habit will grow on them, ana they will behave well In sudden and unexpected emergencies which come upon gun-fighte- rs; . them unawares. It is, of course, much pleasanter if one is naturally fearless, and I envy and respect the men who are naturally fearless. But it is a good thing to remember that the man who does not enjoy this advantage can nevertheless stand beside the man who does, and can do his duty with the like efficiency, if he chooses to. Of course, he must not let his desire take the form merely of a day dream. Let him dream about being a fearless man, and the more he dreams, the better he will be, always provided he does his best to realize the dream in practice. He can do his part honorably and well provided only he sets fearlessness before himself as an ideal, schools himself to think of danger merely as something to be faced and overcome, and regards life itself as he should regard it not as something to be thrown away, but as a pawn to be Noticing the smiles on our faces he at once added: Yes, I suppose there is in my physognomy. distinctive something I remember that when I was runnng for the vice presidency I had to speak in a western town where the crowd in the hall was so dense that the officers in charge had great difficulty in making a way for me through the packed audience to get on the stage where I was to speak. Mr. Dooelys comment was: And thin along came Teddy Bosenfeld and bit his way to the platform Roosevelt recalled ths genial caricature with evident gusto. THE TEST OF SCARLET. Dawson. By John Lane Con-ings- by Com- pany. In the Test of Scarlet Coningsby Dawson has evidently attempted something on the order of Under Fire or Men in War. His publishers announce his book as a new kind of novel. If it is a novel at all, whicn we gravely doubt, it is a smaller and weaker specimen of the species of a novel that Barbusse and the Austrian Andreas Latzko have written, and he has even attempted to follow their ironic, bitter method. Who ever would have expected the author of Carry On, Out to Win or The Glory of the Trenches, these books with their contagious enthusiasm for the higher purposes of the of inspiration as they were called to be expressing a cynwar-bo-oks ical doubt as to what the war was about, or to be picturing the fighting man, in the manner of those war weary and disillusioned Europeans, as an ignorant tool and blind automaton to the selfishness and sacrificed cruelty of his masters? Yet in The Test of Scarlet we read: We do not like the job in hand; we are not bom tobe butchers. We are very much the same as those chaps over there. . . But we cant out of it. If we tried wriggle to break away, all along the roads of France armed men are stationed to turn us back. We are impotent to express any choice in the matter. Certain people have quarreled people who do not wear khaki and who will never face death at sunrise. Probably this they muddled themselves into row; how they did it they themselves could not tell us. Theyre kings and statesmen and nobs far too high up 'for us to criticise. All we know is that we are their sacrifices. Because they say it is right, the more men we kill at dawn the more glory we shall earn. Later on, if we survive the war and kill only one man, they will tell us it is wrong and we shall end on tne scaffold! We submit that this is plainly imi 35 tative, is contrary in spirit to the authors other books, and therefore lays him open to the. charge of insincerity or, at very least, of total inconsistency. If the new book were really a novel, in which the author was not closely identified with the narrator, it would be different. But calling a book a novel, even a new kind of novel, does not make it one. The Test of Scarelt is not a novel, according ui any standard old or new. It is a series of war pictures and impressions, much like the authors other books m manner if not in morale. THE YELLOW old McGrath. TYPHOON. By HarHarper & Brothers This is one of the liveliest spy and mystery stories of the great war and as yet so artificial, so machine-mad- e to leave no very deep impression. In fact, when all the horror and puzzlement is over with, one is inclined to set down the cup that cheered and pronounce it a horses neck. All the tricks of the mystery writers art are taken out of the cupboard and placed upon the groaning table. Even the most practiced gourmand is apt to feel a bit gorged. Veiled women are deep in the mystery; a. parrot is one of the chief characters; the hardened villain finds handcuffs an asset in reducing groups of captors; the missing criminals photograph looks enough like the hero to put the latter in the hands of the police at a time when the papers are in dire need of personal protection. Murder in the first fifty pages; a United States officer is entrusted with g government papers of import and totally unprotected except by his loving friends; a good and beautiful though foxy woman; another beautiful woman who resembles the other, but is endowed with the heart and the fangs of a tigress. When John Mathison, hero, who certainly had as distressing a time of it as any one could bear to imacgine, returns after the final struggle over the papers the woman of his dreams patiently awaiting him in the hotel corridor sees that he is not what he once was. He admits that several ribs and probably a shoulder are broken. Other injuries speak for themselves. The woman, whose name we are not at liberty to mention, wishing to take him direct to her apartment, is met with a feeble protest concerning the hour. But she is the lady of his choice, his great reward for all his woes, and they are wed and live happily ever after. ous chapters in The Perfect Gentle- man are titillating temptations to laugh and they range from depicting helpless mans tragic fears in the barbers chair to the enigmas and difficulties of afternoon teas. Even the joys of lying in bed are enlarged upon. Some may clamor for the shorter work day, but no one yearns to shorten the soft Nirvanas oi lying abed, sleeping or waking, unless, of course, one is tortured by the imps of insomnia. Mr. Bergengren also offers the suggestion of a correspondence school that will teach people how not to be bores, but our own opinion is that a bore is born and not made and that correspondence schooling or any other kind of schooling will do no good. As for ourselves, we suggest the ax. Then there is the chapter on making calls. Many a perplexed and intimidated husband might read this with profit both to himself and to the charming reason that makes it imperative for him to undergo the tortures of the social call. Mr. Bergengrens advice appears to be to just sit and sit and sit and give a general effect of combed hair, ablutions behind the ears and an occasional word to show that the victim is not asleep. THE SEA BRIDE. By Ben Ames Williams. The Macmillan Company. Noll Wing was of the stuff that cave-me- n were made of long ago by d writers of romance. He was the skipper of a whaler. He attracted the youthful admiration of Faith Kilcup; it turned into what she imagined to be love by the time she Therereached young womanhood. fore, although Noll had a bald spot and was past middle age, she married him and started off on a whaling cruise in the Sally Sims. Her brother Roy went as cabin boy. Danl Tobey, a rejected suitor, was the second mate. Noll was an old fashioned realist as to discipline. A little man named Mauger was at the wheel one day. Noll noted that he had allowed the Sally to slip a point or two off of her course. Noll cuffed Mauger, who turned upon him furiously whereupon Mauger lost his eye, but Noll lost his wifes respect. Faith was a loyal sort, however, and tried to disregard the revolting traits which developed daily iu her husbands character. He began to drink heavily, grew desperately afraid of the knife he felt sure the injured sailor had for him. Danl Tobey did his best in the sly underhanded ways suitTHE PERFECT GENTLEMAN. By which are popular with rejected The Atlantic ors to turn Faith against her husband. Ralph Bergengren. It became apparent that Noll was fast Monthly Press, Boston. approaching a physical and mental Mr. Ralph Bergengren tells us that dissolution. After the Sally rounded the Horn the desire to be a perfect gentleman pleads wistfully in the back of every and reached the South Pacific she put mans mind. The author does not in at an island one day for water and for these Faith took a stroll ashore. attempt to visualize from "Upon a rock, not fifty feet aspirants the high mysteries of the flawless gentleman, but describes her, his back half turned as he paused all sorts of every day necessities in a to dive, there stood a man. A white man, for all the skin of his whole deliciously humorous vein. The vari world-compellin- two-fiste- |