and sensual Olivier falls under Passavant's spell for a time, but is saved by Eduard when on the verge of suicide. Passavant is also connected with a ring of actual counterfeiters, who set their "false money" in circulation through schoolboy accomplices whom they have corrupted. The introduction of the real counterfeiters seems almost superfluous, but perhaps heightens the symbolism of the spurious and abnormal emotionalism -the erotic "false money"-of Passavant's set.

Bernard, the most adventurous of the boys, left his home in a fine Byronic frenzy upon discovering that he was an illegitimate child, but returned to his supposed father after an encounter with -of all things-an "angel"! This would seem too quaint and incredible if one did not recall highly sophisticated Latin youths speaking in a most matterof-fact way of their "angel" when resolving some moral conflict. This chapter, coming at the end of such a tale of decadence, is a delightful revelation of boyish naïveté. It is needed to alleviate the horror of the episode of little Boris, hounded to his death by schoolboy cruelty.

Gide's exposition of infamy and agony is so dispassionate that it is only after laying the book aside that one realizes how thoroughly he has turned the screw of our feeling.

Through Eduard, Gide gives his formula for the realistic novel: "A slice of life? The great defect of that school is that it always cuts its slice in the same direction; in time, lengthwise. Why not in breadth? Or depth?"

It is a formula conscientiously and successfully observed.

They Come and Go

"Iron and Smoke," by Sheila Kaye-Smith. E. P. Dutton & Co. "Cups, Wands and Swords," by Helen Simpson. A. A. Knopf.

A little more temperance is needed in the welcome given here to new writers. It is easy to see and deplore the effects of the contract system-tl -the arrangement between publishers and writers for so many books in so much time; but its benefits to the writer probably outweigh its dangers. Even worse in effect is the over-generous criticism which every fairly good new writer and most better than mediocre new books receive.

With this for a text, two entirely dissimilar books, Sheila Kaye-Smith's "Iron and Smoke" and Helen Simpson's "Cups, Wands and Swords," may be reviewed together. Both are written by Englishwomen, but there the resemblance ends. "Joanna Godden," Sheila Kaye

Smith's first book to receive any partic

ular notice here, was a good thing, ular notice here, was a good thing, strong, full of meat, direct. In any classification on merit of contemporary fiction it would be placed well up. It found plenty of critics, reviewers, and readers to overpraise it, and probably a publisher to contract for more like it. The result is "Iron and Smoke." It may be that all her former ardor fired Sheila Kaye-Smith in the writing of this book; if so, then somehow her hand has lost its skill to reach into her heart and snatch out the hot coals to set the new book blazing before the reader. Granted that the basic theme of "Iron and Smoke," the love of the land for its own sake and the tragedy of its exploitations, is one which Americans do not understand, still the story need not lie so lukewarm. It is the story of two women, mistress and wife, loving one man in whom the love of his land passes the love of women. His early death leaves them united in a common love and a common defeat. Their friendship becomes more sustaining than their loves have been, and ing than their loves have been, and carries them through the quarrels of opposing desires, through wars, through tranquillities and unheavals, into placid age. Sheila Kaye-Smith does well with women. Jenny, the wife, "jumped up" daughter of an iron master; Isabel, the mistress, gracious and lovely woman of the world; Isabel's modern daughter, Anna Luck; the ancient nurse—all these are living. And the men, especially the apostate capitalist, are interesting. But the emotional depths of the story are more discussed than felt, and the pungent wisdom which distinguished the earlier book has become vapid. The book is disappointing.

So let us be careful what we say about "Cups, Wands and Swords," by Helen Simpson, because it is her first book to appear here, and because it is a pleasure to read. In a season of excellent light reading about twins and young intellectuals in England, this is the latest book and the best. We have no youngsters like these that wander along the Isis and the Cam and the Thames at Chelsea. Their ageless honesties, their speculative brains, their luxurious bodies, their flippant tongues, are uncommon here and would be unpopular. But, strange or not, the young foreigners please.

In the beginning of "Cups, Wands and Swords" a fortune told by gypsy cards presages a fateful story. It centers in a pair of twins, a circle, half in shadow, half in sun. Celia is the child of light whose fate the cards foretell. She marries Philip. Anthony, her twin, the half of her that the sun does not

strike, after desperate jealousy of Philip, looming large in Celia's mind and heart, dies, apparently a suicide. Dreadful months follow, through which Celia moves, half a soul in the awful life of the nearly mad, her mind filled to bursting with the thought that she has betrayed and killed her brother. Then understanding, triumph, and the renewal of life.

The device of the gypsy cards has indicated a supernatural tone for the story. But its use is easy. It pervades the book like the strange light which lies over a landscape when the heavy clouds of an afternoon storm lift at sunset, and changes commonplace figures into beings new, mysterious, and remote.

The theme of the story may be considered or dismissed at will. If it be dismissed, the story remains highly readable.

Helen Simpson's wit is more than glib cleverness, her fun is of the rare kind that makes one laugh aloud in reading it. She can give life to her characters by the lightest breath of description, the briefest bit of dialogue. Or the philosophically inclined can see in her Celia and in her Anthony, objective man and subjective, doer and dreamer. The seeker after esoteric symbolism can even trace through her story of the twin soul the warring of the powers of darkness and light in man.

Helen Simpson's gift, above all, is for effortless expression. Writing in a vein which other contemporary writers (the reader will supply the names easily enough) have made familiar, she achieves with ease that happy mixture of wisdom and audacious wit, fatality. sophistication, humanity, which has cost them such evident exertion. Where they have arrived hot and panting, she comes unruffled and unblown. And so, because it is her first book to appear here, because it is a delightful book, and because, greedy readers, we want others as charming from her, let us hope that Helen Simpson is not committed to do another "Cups, Wands and Swords," only a little different, for next fall, and let us be temperate in the praise we give.

T

HE editor of this department will be glad to help readers with advice and suggestions in buying current books, whether noticed in these pages or not. If you wish guidance in selecting books for yourself or to give away, we shall do the best we can for you if you will write us, giving some suggestions, preferably with examples, of the taste which is to be satisfied. We shall confine ourselves to books published within the last year or so, so that you will have no trouble in buying them through your own bookshop.

of P

and

Drea

ich

The Incredible Heflin

(Continued from page 173)

the Senate is another thing. That his wishes have little weight with his Democratic colleagues is proved by the fact that when Senator Robinson had called a conference of Democrats and turned the position of floor leader back into its hands, all but one voted to retain him in that position and that one, Senator Trammell, of Florida, explained that he voted against the resolution because of a technical objection. Robinson could have afforded to ignore Heflin, as, in the main, the country will ignore him.

True, Heflin is a trial and a tragedy to his party associates. His is a case of arrested development, or worse. He brought to Congress an ability which, if he had developed it, would have made him a serviceable Senator. But he developed only that side of his ability which has to do with the arts of the demagogue. Of those he is a master.

For a long time the people of Alabama -enough of them to give him a majority-voted for the Heflin that they used to know. That was partly true, but only partly, at his last election in 1924. Since that time Heflin has been the only one-hundred-per-cent Ku Klux Klan Senator. I suppose he is not a Klansman, Nobody is, so far as I have been able to ascertain. The Klan, however, appears to claim him, along with other Senators, but he is the only one who "goes the whole hog." They told me in Alabama three months ago that he made one effort to break away, but that the Klan "scared him to death" and sent him, hot foot, on a speech-making tour. He comes up for election again in 1930.

Heflin's most recent outbreak, and his most virulent, may mean something to the Democratic Party, or it may not. The question of religion in politics is, in a sense, out in the open now. would almost certainly have had to come But it there anyhow, even if Heflin could have been able to keep his mouth shut.

I think that Heflin means nothing to democracy with the small d. have always been demagogues and There cranks, and, thus far, democracy has

survived.

Until the day of that speech I should have said that J. Thomas Heflin is the only man who takes J. Thomas Heflin seriously. Now I have to suppose that Joseph T. Robinson does.

But I am sure that Thomas J. Walsh's attitude toward Heflin is the right attitude-to go calmly ahead with the day's work as though he did not exist.

February 1, 1928

are you tired of
of being

"experted"

into ways of THINKING?

N fact, is there any point in thinking at all-when the whole process is so thoroughly Ford-ized for us? When there are experts who know all about everything and who can provide us with conventional schemes, tricks, rules, and points of view that will make us authorities, elevate us socially, and lead us on to success?

Outlook readers certainly are not impressed with that sort of information and opinion. We assume that you have ideas of your own. We suspect that you refer to this weekly journal for the world's news, the judgment of MANY able minds on the subjects covered.

You are interested in knowing how people in other spheres think about the issues which confront them. You want those issues presented from a number of points of view. You are not satisfied with the opinions of one man on the subject of-let us say— companionate marriage. You want to know what the doctor thinks about it, the clergy, the person who has been an actual party to it.

In short, you want to be free to reach your own clusions on this and all other issues before the world.

con

This is the function of The Outlook: to recognize the really significant activities and influences in our daily affairs. . . to point them out, draw the facts coherently together and to give you a basis for intelligent opinions. of your own.

The fact that people are tired of being "experted" into ways of thinking, that they are eagerly seeking the TRUTH, as it applies to them and their needs, is evidenced by The Outlook's constantly increasing number of regular readers.

The subscription price is $5 a year-for 52 weekly issues.

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Circulation Manager

THE OUTLOOK COMPANY

120 East 16th Street

New York, N. Y.

THE OUTLOOK, February 8, 1928. Volume 148, Number 6. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscription to countries in the postal Union, $6.56. Entered as second-class at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1928, by The Outlook Company. matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office

OST people like to know something about the writers whose opinions they read in article form. Hendrik Willem Van Loon, for instance-whom every one remembers for his "Story of Mankind"—is now living in Westport, Connecticut, whence he has recently published still another book, "America." His article on "Big Bill" Thompson, which heads this issue, was written at our request.

Arthur Davison Ficke, whose paper continues the discussion of marriage started some time since in The Outlook, is well known as a poet and essayist. His article is the result of reading Dr. Collins's recent paper and being considerably stirred up thereby. He has recently become a New Mexican, and lives near Santa Fé.

Charles Merz is an editorial writer for the New York "World." He surveys life from the high tower of the Pulitzer Building, and of late has taken to penning essays and publishing them in "Harper's," The Outlook, and elsewhere.

THESE three men have written the

leading articles in this issue. But the mere rehearsal of their names makes us wonder whether our readers often reflect on the number of other minds which have busied themselves in making this magazine-men who are studying politics and foreign affairs; women who are spending their time with modern authors and with humble people; critics who are attending concerts, theatres, and movies; journalists who are going to Senatorial debates in Washington, to political meetings in Paris, or motor-boat shows in New York; editors who are weighing current happenings, day by day, and ascertaining the facts sent them from special correspondents from Texas, California, London.