Books: Recent & Readable: Jan. 15, 1940

THE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN SOCIETY—T. S. Eliot—Harcourt, Brace ($1.50).

Poet Eliot writes after due meditation. He took a critical interest in Fascism and Soviet Communism ten years before they became fascinating to many other U. S. and English poets and "intellectuals." His starting point: "The current terms in which we describe our society, the contrasts with other societies by which we—of the 'Western Democracies'—eulogize it, only operate to deceive and stupefy us." His argument: that the choice before the next several generations is "between the formation of a new Christian culture, and...