A LITERARY CORNER

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 10138, 28 November 1918, Page 8

A LITERARY CORNER

(R.A.L.)

“THE ROUND TABLE.” The September number of this good publication, which we have received from the agents, maintains its high level of .thoughtful, informative interest. Some of the articles in this issue are among the best that have appeared in its columns, giving thought, as they do, to some of the most?-pressing problems of this day of problems, innumerable as they are important. The first of those, headed “The Unity of Civilisation,” opens with a remarkably correct forecast of the military situation, which, seeing that it was published two months before the collapse of the Central Powers, is worth quoting;—

The period of anxious suspense and severe trial which inevitably intervened between the collapse of the Eastern front and the moment when American military help could become effective closed definitely and dramatically on July 18th. 'ihe Allied attack on that day marks the opening of a new phase in the war — a phase in which the military superiority of the Allies will become more and more accentuated until, according to all human reckoning, they must achieve their final Purpose of disabling and discrediting the. military domination of the enemy.

The purport of the article is to lead up to the proposed League of Nations, which it 'urges should be based on nor only organised national. power, but also on organised national opinion. The arguments are striking and good. Their fault is that they incline to the conclusion that the organisation of national opinion must precede the organisation of*national power. It is really of that form of pessimism which substitutes unlimited procrastination for prompt action. But prompt action is the essence of the solution the problem in view demands. The article, therefore, must be pronounced as valuable for the purpose of discussion, but without any of the quality of leadership. It is of the same kidnev as those articles which used to fill the magazines on the subject of Turkish reforms. The writers, after studying the facta of hopeless Turkish misrule on the spot, came back with proposals for handing the subject over either to a concert of European Powers or a single strong Protectorate. We know what came of it. When the European Concert ligated the fire of Armageddon the flames illuminated the massacre of a million Armenians under the eyes of a strong Power, which declined cynically to interfere with the internal arrangements* of the Unspeakable Turk. Nevertheless the article is useful for its lucid statement of the realities of the problem. A more successful article is the one on the American contribution to the war, which does ample justice to the American effoAt. while showing ithe probable lines of future American action in concert with tbs other great branch of the English-speaking world. Another on the Russian Revolution by a “writer who until a few months ago lived through the Revolution,” gives the best account of that upheaval we have vet seen, tracing impartially the various phases after the collapse of Czardom, plus bureaucracy, which fell, “not through, .a frontal attack, but simply' because 'its vitality, its power, its utility, wore exhausted.” In a nation ouite untrained nobody was ready, and only the extremists knew in a wild sort of wav what they wanted. .Such was the situation which the history as we know it rendered inevitable. The writer is hopeful, taking refuge in prophecy thus:—

The people, exhausted by its great experiment, will demand order, will turn, for rest' to many of its former habits of thought. . . . Decentralisation and a satisfactory solution of the agrarian problem are obvious conditions of stable government. Granted the removal of ■ artificial impediments through the defeat of Germany, the nationalities, taught by bitter experience the danger of isolation, will drift into economic and political reunion with the biggest people of the plain, no doubt alter taking all precautions ; to guarantee their national rights. . ■ • His basis’of'hope is the defeat of Germany, and Germany has been defeated badly. More than that it would be unwise to say at the present juncture. It is manifest, at all events, that the German disturbance is removed. and therefore there is more room for hope than there was some weeks ago. Moreover, this writer, who has ventured on optimistic prophecy, speaks with knowledge of the Bnssian peoples. An article on “The Better Government of the United Kingdom” proves the need for radical reform, with the remarkable statement that much may be said for a despotism and much for government by a deliberative assembly, but that for a deliberative assembly that will not and cannot deliberate there can he nothing but condemnation. The writer's views on the question of the necessary reforms are helpful and illuminating. The need for decentralisation is shown thus:— In Germany there is, in round numbers, about one Government to every 2,500,000 souls, in Switzerland one to every 170,000, in the United States one to every 2,000,000, in Canada one to every 800,000, in Australia one to every 700,000, in South Africa one to every 1,200,000. In the United Kingdom 45,000,000 people are served by a single executive and Jegisla- • ture, which have also to control the external affairs of a quarter of mankind. “THE VEILED WOMAN.” Violet Tweedale. (Herbert. Jenkins, Ltd.. -York street, St. James., S.W., London. 1 ) The authoress tells us in a “Foreword” how sho came to write this very remarkable, readable and brilliant book. It is the result of *a compact with the late Beniamin Kidd, “one of the greatest thinkers of the age,” she calls him. Ho wrote “The. Science of Power.” in which book the supreme part is assigned to woman in the conduct of human affairs. According to the compact he. as “the revered friend and master,” supplied the very original and striking plot, and the authoress, in working out that pint, has embodied “certain ethics which he had elaborated in his posthumous' and unique work ‘The Science of Power.’ ” '

The story is good enough to compel reading. There is n climax in the House of Commons dramatic enough to make the fortune of any story. The ethics are worked into many earnest speeches (it is a storr of political life) and brilliant ’conversations. Wo give a few illustrative extracts: —

"The opinions you quote are those of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Weininger, etc., apostles of tho Jack boot in the evolution of the world. But even Schopenhauer was compelled to admit that the lintellec. tual qualities nro transmitted by the motlior. As a matter of fact they have

stumbled on a mighty truth, if they only knew it. They (prove that woman is capable, as no man ever is, of losing the actual in the ideal, of sinking every personal consideration in the faithful adherence to an idea. Don’t you 6ee , sir, that she is as capable of devotion to the ideal as she is to the person, and exactly on the same grounds. This i» the groat secret I am trying to apply to modern politics." "Why, sir, it’s pitiable, when one Comes to think of it, the way woman, in our country, belittles her powers in'.national life. We have at last been compelled to call upon her to help us in our aoutest historical crisis. The advanced women have gone into the munition fac-’ tories, to the forefront of the battle with their hospital units, the timid and unevolved have worked at Bed Cross and War Depot. The abnormal recogniseu heroism of our men is but a reflection of tbe normal unrecognised heroism of their mothers. The tremendous force in woman, formerly lying dormant, and now being developed by war, is a great floor, which is capable of floating even the programmes of practical politics far beyond the dreams of any professional politicians. Do not you see, sir, that women must revolutionise in the future the whole social organism? We have proved that men are unwilling or unable to do this. Let women try. The conditions that are best for the home are best for the State."

"We will yet revert to purity of type, and recover all that has been lost in reputation. At present, both parties are equally discredited. The Unionists have ended their own existence, and we have made ourselves worthy of the nation’s contempt and disdain, but out of the muck-heap shall spring a new growth, like a flower upon a grave. When we have .swept away the legal dry rot, and corroding dust of degraded old age from the seats of the mighty, then, and not till then, shall we share with women the power of losing the actual in the ideal.” "Journalists talk of ‘human documeats,’" he said, "but what copy they could secure if only they could have some of tho=e confessions to read, as they were spread before my eyes. What a wealth of every human experience! Philosophers have been boasting for generations past of altruism and selfabnegation, of social service and eo forth, hut what enlightenment. they would have veined if thay could only have realised the vast, submerged stream of altruism there, is here, running utterly to waste, or spent on the most, worthless objects. - "What material for the world ‘builders’ What a chance for reform, and above all tor young far-seeing politicians! All this lying right under our* hands, waiting to bo grasped. Spencer, with hi* society of altruists, the modern eugenic dreamer with his .SamuraH class, all empty, impossible imaginings. But think what we practical politicians have mVssed, and are missing, at our very doors, right at our feet! Such a force all over the world, unused, all running to waste.” , _ "You'll never get this mud-wall Government to see that,” exclaimed Lady Smith-Harding, "They can’t get away from the fatal habit of living and governing for their own pasts, the older they grow the less capable they are of looking forward. I’d Tike to see a lot of old Cabinet fossils handed over to the embalmers and the sculptors. I’d rather have lhalf-a-dozcn more hideout, sootbegrimed statues scattered over London, than the half dead obstructionists playing havoc at Westminster. The most real of all real things is constantly being sacrificed 'to the worship of what no longer exfists.”