ASIA AT THE CROSSROADS. By E. Alexander Powell. New York: The Century Company.

In reading books about the Far East one is more or less distressed by the feeling, not that the author lacks information-there is usually even a superabundance of interesting facts-but that there is a certain inequality of information. One suspects no bias, yet is somehow aware of a temperamental leaning. Sentiment seems to determine the attitude of writers on this subject to a greater degree than one would antecedently think probable. Thus, while nearly every book of this class reveals some new aspect of a large situation involving difficult problems, one can seldom feel confident that the emphasis given to facts is quite correct.

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An exception to the general rule seems to be Mr. Powell's Asia at the Crossroads. The author appears to have written in the expectation that his book would be read, in some cases at least, by those from whom he has obtained information or toward whom he feels for other reasons a certain responsibility. Under these circumstances he has chosen to be quite frank and at the same time to abjure all special pleading. He lays considerable stress, for example, upon the dual nature of the goverment of Japan and upon the importance of the 'unseen" government which so often works at cross purposes with the official organs of the Government. But there is nothing accusatory in this. There is little or no true public opinion in Japan, he declares, giving in support of this statement not mere evidence (of the kind that so often fails to convince), but a real explanation of causes and effects. If he perceives the militaristic tendencies of Japanese foreign policy, he also sees no reason why Japan should not be permitted peacefully to penetrate China through the channels of trade. Markets are an absolute necessity to Japan. Some sort of expansion she must have. Faced by three grave and pressing problems,-that of finding sources of raw materials for her factories, that of finding markets for her manufactured products, and that of finding room for the expansion of her surplus population,-she can hardly be expected to be quite so altruistic in her outlook as America can well afford to be. "That her expansion should be at the expense of other and weaker nations is unfortunate, but under the circumstances unavoidable. But Japan must abandon

once for all her old policy of monopolization and coercion."

In other words, Mr. Powell wishes to stand for that measure of international morality which seems humanly possible in the world as it now is this and no more. Humanly speaking, we are well off when individuals, classes, nations, follow out the promptings of their own natures with decency, moderation, and good faith. We ought not to complain that politicians are not saints, but rather to rejoice that there is such a person as a good politician. So it is reasonable to hope for a decent and moderately well-intentioned nationalism in all countries. But it is unreasonable to expect that every nation and every individual will conform strictly to abstract principles; they cannot so easily alter their conditions or their heredity.

Most writers on China fluctuate between admiration for the wonderful qualities of the Chinese people-taking "qualities" in an absolute sense and not as relative characteristics implying equivalent weaknesses-between this and despair over the political situation. Mr. Powell has little patience with the predatory methods employed by various foreign nations, yet he perceives clearly enough the farcical nature of Chinese attempts at republican self-government. There is, however, a measure of justice that can be secured for China without carrying principles of "self-determination" to the verge of absurdity. China should certainly have, for example, control of her own custom house.

Similarly in appraising the results of Japanese occupation of Korea and in dealing with the question of independence for the Philippines, Mr. Powell shows an equal fairness and an equal regard for facts. One detects no political bias in his discourse, no temperamental leaning toward "strong government" and no excess of sympathy for the under dog; no favoritism for any one race or people, though obviously he has had intimate relations with all of whom he writes. On the whole, there is in this book uncommonly little that savors of propaganda, sentiment, or political theorizing. It is generally satisfactory and convincing.

WALL SHADOWs: A Study in American Prisons. By Frank Tannenbaum. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Mr. Tannenbaum's book is distinguished from most of what has been written about American prisons, not so much by the concreteness of his evidencethough the book is based upon thorough personal investigations as by the acuteness and vigor of the author's analysis of prison psychology—the psychology of the prisoner and still more that of the jailer.

"Brutality," says the author, "is a constant factor-constant as the prison itself; and the publicity which upon occasion makes it known to the public bears only an accidental relation to the thing itself." Cruel penalties become common, not altogether through any innate disposition toward cruelty on the part of those possessing despotic authority, but mainly through the limitation of the field of punishment. When a man has been sent to prison-has been deprived of liberty and of personal property-the resources of further punishment to secure discipline are crude and few. Physical man-handling is a more or less logical result. The keeper, too, is a prisoner, living all day long in an atmosphere of suppressed emotion. There is, moreover, a conflict of two codes of morality. The prisoner feels that he is much better than the keeper and certainly as good as most people in the community. He is often convinced that all people are crooked, and that the only exceptional feature of his own case is that he has been caught. He is wrong, but it is a fact that he thinks thus; he feels it necessary to his self-respect to take this view, and consequently he will adhere to it. On the other hand, the keeper tends to suffer a disintegration of character from association with those whom he naturally deems vastly

inferior to him in the moral scale. A peculiarly subtle and almost irresistible form of egoism comes in on both sides, and under prison conditions only a saintly character could resist its influence. Naturally, neither prisoners nor keepers "grow into plaster saints." It is the system that is wrong.

The best remedy that has thus far been found seems to be the "prison democracy" advocated by Thomas Mott Osborne. Mr. Tannenbaum goes much further than this. Professionalization of prison administration and the destruction of present prison buildings are to him only beginnings. Ultimately he would do away with prisons altogether and would abandon the conception of punishment. For these extremer views he can hardly hope to gain acceptance or even serious consideration from the majority of his readers; yet a number of his less sweeping suggestions, such as the establishment of an institution for the examination and classification of convicts and the regular employment of indeterminate sentences, seem enlightened and practical. The really convincing ideas, however, grow out of the author's acute perception of prison psychology. The most striking result of experiments with prison democracy has been the discovery that under this system "the man who is the most insistent upon group approval-that is, the most sensitive and rebellious type under the old system becomes the most social and serviceable type under democratic organization." The method, moreover, appears to have survived the severest test-that of its ability to deal with the professional criminal. Wall Shadows is a book that is "human" without being in the least sentimental; it is well informed and analytical, yet savors not at all of the academic manner of the professional criminologist.

THE OPPIDAN. By Shane Leslie. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Mr. Leslie must have written The Oppidan largely for his own satisfaction: the book, if it sometimes wears the appearance of a satire, strikes one as on the whole a labor of love. There is something mysterious in the care with which the author lingers over the pettiest details and spreads a certain glamour over features admittedly mean and unpleasant. A labor of love, then, surely else why this more or less rapt dwelling upon traditions that are at the same time more or less effectively exposed as snobbish or unreasonable? But the book seems somewhat at war with itself—there is a subdued note of satire and protest throughout the story.

It would be an easy way of dismissing the whole question merely to say that the novel is a realistic story of Eton. But this would be a mere contradiction of terms. Who can write a realistic story of school life, except, perhaps, as part of a larger story? School life is romantic or nothing and it is romantic in its own peculiar way. A purely realistic story of Eton or any other school would be unreadable-nor would a genuinely romantic story of school life be much more acceptable. It is in vain that Professor Canby of Yale points out that our American college life affords perhaps the largest field of romance as

yet unexplored. School life is neither realistic nor romantic-but youthful; that is, full of fun, immature emotions, and crude thinking. Its charm would be utterly destroyed by the dead-earnest, dry-as-dust method of realism; it will not lend itself to the grand manner of traditional romance; and it is, with all its follies and its sincerities, too obvious for the method of the newer romance, which makes life, above all else a complex affair mingled of love and mystery and fate and brute fact. To the schoolboy and the college man, life is generally simple. Try to write of it in any of the truly literary ways, and you will have the boys grinning behind your back.

And so it is no wonder that Mr. Shane Leslie's story of Eton strikes one as a somewhat perplexing compromise between realism and romance, and also as anything but a good story of the immortal Tom Brown type. One cannot remember another tale which one has found at once so persistently engaging and yet so repellant. The atmosphere is so thick, so vivid, so attractive to any one who has, so to speak, the school instinct, and the maze of meanness, snobbery, tradition, social intricacies, poor ambitions, high ideals, irrational customs, noble symbolism, cheap naughtiness,trifling rivalries, and high-minded school patriotism, is so utterly baffling to interest! To live among the young, to play their games and to share their point of view, is exhilarating; but to be plunged into a fictional world in which boys play football listlessly and a caste of classical masters maintains an attitude of scornful neutrality toward a caste of mathematical masters, one feels to be stifling. It is all as absurd, in its way, as the game of croquet in Alice's Adventures, and as dryly inhuman as Swift's Battle of the Books.

Perhaps what one misses is merely the note of ingenuous sentiment. The taste for sentiment is not a high one, but if there is a place for it this place would seem to be in the story of school life.

A recognizably veracious picture of Eton before the war, The Oppidan unquestionably is; but it will scarcely find its way into the minds and hearts of most American readers. One's final impression is that there is a quality of exclusiveness about the whole performance which is identical with the tone of the institution. Let no one naïvely try to love Eton through the medium of this story-Mr. Leslie will not let him! And one also feels somehow warned against formulating for oneself any unfavorable criticisms of the school. Eton is Eton!

SIR:

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

LUXURY, ART AND WAR

If, as Rear-Admiral Fiske says, in a recent article in THE REVIEW entitled Luxury and War, one can hardly avoid the conclusion that war is the twin brother of civilization, one can go farther in this family connection, with little fear of contradiction, and say that luxury is the same. In fine, these are triplets, war, civilization and luxury. For is it not the commonly implied definition of present civilization, that our wonderful advances in Science are the gauge of human advancement during the last seventy-five years? And what is civilization if not human advancement? To all of which I, like the rest, murmur a prayerful "Amen". But when I have stopped praying, and begin to think, how is it that my mind keeps reverting to the well-known phrase about sudden death, which is bracketed with battle, though made upon us by civilization's smoke and noise and haste. And where is the real difference when you are run down and killed, or only mangled, by the motor car of business? Truck or limousine matters not. Deaths were counted by thousands and casualties by many thousands from such warfare of civilization, last year, in our streets. And it is safe to predict that these numbers will be materially increased next year. But I would be fair and not forget that these dead were taken to undertaking establishments, and these wounded to hospitals, far more promptly than would have been the case half a century ago when we were far less advanced.

Admiral Fiske also says that war is waged for obtaining luxuries, and that women create the demand for luxuries, and man, being gallant, goes forth to war for those things which are productive of luxuries. The Admiral is doubtless prepared. He needs to be, for he may expect a prompt and savage feminist attack. Between Twenty-third and Fifty-ninth streets in New York more than in any other area in the world of equal size you will see the fundamental causes of war, he says. Now what do you see there over and above furs, velvets, satins, feathers and splendid motor cars of the latest and most scientific make? Is it not antiques, old furniture, old porcelains, old masters, priceless and made in an age that knew no machinery, no scientific advance, much less strides; an age of little smoke, little noise and small haste? It is these things of a past civilization that cost most, and set the highest standards of the present; things all our science cannot produce; things it takes all our science to produce the wherewithal to purchase; things new palaces cannot exist without; things the great museums covet, and in connection with which