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Hogg. CHARACTER: "I think it would be true to say that his intellect has a punch in it, but not his personality. It is the fist of Carpentier, but the soul of Joe Beckett. One feels that if his intellectual equipment had been at the disposal of any ambitious politician it could not have failed to make its mark, and perhaps a permanent mark, on contemporary politics. . . . He suggests in his appearance that he would like fighting and dislike dirt. There is something military in his carriage and something pugilistic in his precise and vigorous face. He is also one of those men on whose clear and fine skin soap and water seem to produce a sheen or a glow, such as the manufacturers of a boot polish assure the world is a pedal consequence of using their particular cream. He stands very upright and square-shouldered, with a rather commanding tilt to his head, and a look in his eyes, when he is opposed, which is quick with challenge."
Lloyd-Greame. CHARACTER: "Philip Lloyd-Greame is unquestionably one of the ablest men now in Parliament, and one of the most eager and energetic. He has the economic facts of the British Empire at his fingers' ends, and his brain is a series of pigeonholes stuffed with the documents of world trade . . . laughing at ant-heaps. . . . I regard him as a man of the very highest promise, and one who may yet do as much for the prosperity of the British Empire as any man now living."
SOCIALISM CRITICAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE—J. Ramsay MacDonald—Bobbs Merrill ($3.00).
A great deal has been heard in the British and U. S. press concerning the analogy of British Socialism to Russian Bolshevism; but hear what the ex-Premier has to say about Karl Marx, whose writings are the Bolshevik Bible: "Today, Marx is known over as wide a world as even Christ or Mohammed. . . . His writings, largely unread, are held as inspired. . . . The validity of his economic theories is more than doubtful; his historical philosophy is in the same position."
The doctrines of Marx are not accepted by the ex-Premier, much less the Bolshevik interpretation of them. Socialism for him is a communal democracy in which universal service is obligatory upon the people—to be performed by the people, for the people.
Here is probably the clearest exposition of practical Socialism that has yet been written, and, if the theory is overcharged with idealism, it is also permeated with lofty and religious concern for the welfare of humanity which claims for it a fair hearing.
THE EVOLUTION OF FRENCH CANADA—Jean Charlemagne Bracq—Macmillan ($2.50).
This, as the title depicts, is a history of the French people in Canada since the days of the Cession. The author discusses with the utmost frankness and fairness almost every phase of life with which the French Canadians have been concerned. The book, taken as a whole, is a great tribute, despite some severe censures, to the British Government and to the Anglo Saxon Canadians.
Among the many points upon which M. Bracq dilates is the difference between French Canadians and the French.
GERMAN WHITE BOOK and PRELIMINARY HISTORY OF THE ARMISTICE— edited by James Brown Scott—Oxford University Press ($2.00 each).