La Détresse des Harpagon, by Pierre Mille. Paris: Albin Michel, 1923.

[L'Indépendance Belge]

Ir would take more space than there is at my disposal to discuss this admirable and extremely witty new novel by Pierre Mille as it deserves. I admire the writer's extraordinary output, not for its bulk but for its quality. So many books already, and not one that is not carefully thought out and written with exquisite pains!

This book is the result of the chances of a stay in the country and of the exploration of the cluttered attic of an old château. There the author found furniture and tapestries from the time of the Great King. The author imagines that these are the same that Cléante had to accept and take away, in Molière's play, when he deals with the usurer, in whom he eventually recognizes his own father. On this fantastic basis he constructs the most modern of novels, a novel of French bourgeoisie through three centuries. Miser and prodigal by turn, this class ruins itself with its stinginess and reconstructs itself with its prodigality, through a paradoxical succession of heights and depths that set the reader's brain to whirling.

One recognizes the master's touch; one yields to it without reserve. The book delights the mind and the senses together. It is a complete delight.

Riders of the Air, by Major A. Corbett-Smith. London: Grant Richards, 1923. 68. net.

[Daily Telegraph]

MAJOR A. CORBETT-SMITH, a practised publicist, endowed with an effective and fulminating style, has here produced an exercise in propaganda, the vigor and sincerity of which are their own best recommendation. The gallant author's plea is directed toward the national and international interests of the Air Service. The future of air transport in this country is in serious jeopardy. Immediately after the Armistice commercial aviation received an astonishing impetus. Demobilized officers set their hopes upon civil flying. Airplanes were plentiful and cheap. Small aviation-companies sprang up all over the country. But within a few months the artificial boom collapsed; the little companies were left derelict, and their organizers without occupation.

To-day, in Lord Curzon's warning words: 'Our air supremacy has gone; we have no effective "striking force" in the air; the aircraft industry is practically dead; civil aviation languishes; and both the Navy and Army are profoundly dissatisfied both with the provision

made for them in the air and with the method of control.' This spirited little book is an attempt to indicate a way of escape, and as it is eagerly written, with a liberal garniture of quotation, and some warm gushes of sentimental rhetoric, it ought to have its effect. At any rate, it deserves success, for its arguments are sound and clearly enunciated.

The author is no militarist; he continually deplores the terrible consequences of war. But nothing will persuade him that the world is yet ripe for disarmament and universal peace. The League of Nations is a manifest failure. The British Government appears to admit the fact; for, while it is ready to spend some hundred-odd millions on armaments and men, it devotes no more than £500,000 to the cause of peace. The fact is that it is useless to set up an ideal unless you are prepared to fight for it; and in the cause of peace the people are content to go on talking. Another and yet more ghastly war is inevitable, and, when that war breaks out, aircraft will be the dominating factor of the struggle. "The potentialities of aircraft attack,' said Marshal Foch, 'upon a large scale are almost incalculable.'

To be prepared in the air is now the first duty of an island race; for supremacy at sea is no longer of its old importance when the sea can be crossed from above and the homes of the islanders leveled to the ground by aerial bombardment. The only possible policy for England to adopt is to make her air defense absolutely secure.

Major Corbett-Smith propounds a definite programme crystallized into seven points. He advocates the following policy:

1. The development of civil aviation on a national basis, and as a commercial proposition, so far as is practicable in England.

2. The establishment of airship communications between England and the several Dominions, with 'feeder' communication by airplane.

3. The building of a reserve of air pilots; and such a reserve of 2000 would, it is estimated, cost about £300,000 a year.

4. A financial appropriation for research and experiment of at least three or four times the present sum.

5. Insistence upon having the best available man in the country for Air Minister, irrespective of political considerations.

6. Giving to the responsible military executive of the Air Ministry freedom from political worry, to enable them to concentrate upon their proper duties.

7. The creation of a wholly adequate 'striking force,' always in perfect condition, trained to the hour, and ready at the first hint of enemy

aggression to fly over the enemy bases and seat of government with the demand of instant demobilization.

He reckons the minimum of machines necessary as 900, and the annual cost at £4,000,000.

Atheism in Pagan Antiquity, by A. B. Drachmann. London: Gyldendal, 1923. 7s. 6d. History of Roman Religion, by W. R. Halliday. Liverpool: University Press; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923. 5s.

[New Statesman]

THESE two scholarly summaries afford considerable insight into the beliefs of ancient Greece and Italy. Professor Drachmann's examination of early atheism is unusual, and the result of an article for a Dictionary which he rightly thought worth expansion. Printed in excellent English, it makes interesting reading. The word 'atheos' can cover indifference, active protest, or the agnostic position. In ancient times it means failure to recognize the established religion of the country, and it is the philosophers who are the atheists, starting speculations which did not trouble the minds of the common people. We do not really know how much in a modern sense an ancient Greek or Roman believed, but the study of primitive peoples of recent years has revealed a world of fears and taboos, and religio means that more than belief in positive divine powers.

The Romans were a practical people, like the English, and were not concerned with speculation, but with duties for which they expected returns of favor. They would never, like a modern Russian, have delayed a meal till they had established the existence of a personal god. The Greeks had a genius for speculation, and many of their philosophers were accused of atheism, or freethinking, as we might call it. It was absurd to accuse Socrates of impiety, for he worshiped the gods and was commanded by the Delphian Oracle. The charge against him, like that of magic against Apuleius, was got up for reasons outside those alleged. He was a disturbing person, and might have been unmolested, if he had not worried everybody to start thinking.

Thinking is not business. The parasite Major, in Dombey and Son, entreated the City merchant not to be thoughtful, because he was far above that sort of thing. Eschylus and, less oddly,

Euripides both use the formula, 'Zeus, whoever he may be.' Was this 'genuine antique piety' in the former? We doubt it, for the Prometheus shows that Zeus had something to learn, though supreme among the gods. Euripides, who seems perpetually insinuating that 'an honest god's the noblest work of man,' is the boldest artist among a crowd of freethinkers at Athens. Xenophanes and Epicurus the latter maligned in subsequent tradition are the most attractive of Greek thinkers of whom we know little.

Cicero, a Stoic with six seaside villas, is not, as Professor Drachmann says, an original figure in the philosophy of religion. His religion, so far as he had any, was of the emotional and occasional sort. He wished to deify his daughter Tullia. His belief approximates to what Pater calls the 'religion of men of letters.' The essay includes some striking generalizations, as well as discriminating work in detail.

Professor Halliday follows Warde Fowler, one of our best authorities on Roman religion. His abstract up to the death of Augustus lacks generally the passages on which it is founded, but these the student can find in the books cited. Horace wrote the Secular Hymn, as is noted, but he also wrote that revealing Ode, beginning, 'Parcus deorum.' Both he and Vergil believed, we think, in the old Roman decencies Augustus strove to restore, though he was not himself a good example of them. The Romans, before they took over the gods of Greece, had their own Etruscan beginnings, which the author treats rather cavalierly, and numina which were very different from personal gods. The book is clear and engaging in style, and should be a success among students, who often have to read learned and dull authors. Professor Halliday is abreast of the latest scholarship, but wisely cautious about theories, and is conscious of the difficulties of being concise, which have made him perhaps a little unfair to the Stoics.

BOOKS MENTIONED

CLUTTON-BROCK, A. Metaphor. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1923. COUDENHOVE-KALERGI, GRAF HEINRICH. Das Wesen des Antisemitismus. Leipzig: Neue Geist Verlag, 1923.

THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY. London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam.

THE GROWTH OF IGNORANCE

PROFESSOR JOHN BURNETT, who delivered the Romanes Lecture at Oxford this year, took for his subject 'Ignorance.' He expressed the fear that the civilized world might be facing another Dark Age.

The only knowledge worth distributing is living, first-hand knowledge, and that, from the nature of the case, can only be realized in its fullness by the few. That is, however, the only reservoir from which the needs of the many can be supplied, and it is therefore supremely important to consider from time to time whether it is being maintained at the proper level. . . . The nineteenth century had a simple faith in the progress of knowledge and enlightenment, but we now know too much history to have any assured confidence in that. There have been Dark Ages before, and they have generally supervened on periods when knowledge of a sort has been more widely distributed than ever. So far as we can see, the decay has always set in at the top. It cannot be denied that there are

certain that the young men of to-day are absolutely and relatively more ignorant than those of forty years ago, and, what was worse, that they have less curiosity and intellectual independence. Every university teacher in the country whose memory could carry him back a generation knew that the educational authorities had had to lower their standard of teaching and examination progressively for the last thirty years, in every department except the physical and natural sciences.

Those inclined to differ from the Professor's views will doubtless reflect that a growing knowledge of the physical and natural sciences is perhaps a sufficient compensation for the alleged decline in other branches of knowledge possessed by undergraduates.

JAPANESE STUDENT PACIFISTS

WHEN the Japanese Association for the Study of Military Science at

such as have before now heralded an Age of Darkness.

The Professor believed the young men of the present are, on the whole, healthier in body and mind, and more intelligent, than those of his own generation. On the other hand, he was