New-York tribune., 1920-10-24


focused and directed as in Tba 11.,ho-
o'' Dy bit the heat. which in that
mover we took to be an incomplete reve-
.,~'ion OF deeper fire, has grown diff
, 'osed and vague and cloudy. From too
easy dealing in large terms Poole bas
grown little insensitive has Lost h;s
edge somewhat.
bhnd' published by Macmillan, is the
largest attempt of allan effort ~
cram the America of the last thirty
years and the whole war and after into
one novel The effect is bew;Ider;no
or "here The Harbor synthesized all
modern life in q single figure, in the
c'ahglng aspects of one place, and His
famlly IN one family, Blind has no
such orentation. 1t ranges ever the
whole world, it takes in a bewildering
nVmoer Of people, striving to match
tnelr intellectual progress over a
period Of thirty years with adequate
human experiences.
The life Of his hero is a thread on
winch Mr.. Poole has strung all the ex-
reriences, intellectual and human.
which the last thirty years might have
yielded a man who believed faithfully
IN the experiment of democracy. Larry
Hart Is the son Of rich man in a small
connecticut town The father is a
pertunctorily sketched fgure-vague
and only generally representative of
the captains of industry of the age.
his sons gift from the first is his tai
ent for democracy-m mixing, he calls it,
1t is that which bfings him to
New York newspaper, following his
high h-spirited college days 1t is that
which determines him to dwell ,n the
slums, in sight of the harbor, in
lehborhood where Irish and Italians
battle for supremacy, but which shell
ters in its .interstices nnumerable
other nationalities. 1t is that which
4pmakes him the friend of ward captains,
gangsters and political exiles.
This is the melting pot, of which
/ only the vaguest echoes reach his
fathers home on Park Avenue, where
lis fathers young wife is engaged in
building up a social machinery as COM
plex as her husbands business organi-
zation. Then comes an abrupt transi-
ton when he finds himself successful
Gramatist, and he has a sharp expert
ence of the gay life of Broel lway, which
I ends for him in a mesalliance.
Meantime the scenes are crowded with
other figures, all of them symbols for
the significant elements in American. life
the radical young cousin, the old aunt
who cings to the idealisms of her pion-
eering youth and Of Abolition days, his
young sister and her doctor husband,
whose one passion is his science, the
settlements, the newspapers the
confused vortex that plpcks man
from remote detachment into the sweep
lng current of democracy
Then comes the war-and the canvas
becomes larger and more crowded
There is Germany in the early days of
the war, France and Russia Quite
apart from its place in the novel the
sketches Of Russia during 1917 are ex-
tremely able reporting. Exceptionally
fine is the account Of Hart's visit Che is
d war correspondent to the estate of
the liberal old prince. He found a
stoop- -shouldered, bearded, spectacled old
man in linen dustcr, looking more like
professor than prince, benign old
man who had for years cultivated the
dream of uplifting the peasantry by n
liberal landlordship. Such kind, cult
waited people, 50 we'll intentioned so
inept to work their reforms.
My kind says the hero, in an illu-
ninating moment of revelation.
Then other viewpoints of other groups
and meantime the peasant working
things out shrewd.y, realistically, hon
esty by his own rule of thumb. At
this point America enters the war, and
in his faith in the democracy to which
he has committed himself Hart enlists,
experiences the war and returns, blinded
in battle to an America more than ever
confused in its purposes and aims, torn
and diffused by its war hysteria.
1t is a Confused mass of perceptions
and eXperiences-a great many Of them
skllful and Illuminating, but none Of
them pointed and sustained enough to
press home any definite impression.
One is disturbed by the lack Of some
cohering conviction, some personal evo-
luton that would give shape and tex
ture and, above all, consistency to
these fragments Of experience. People
are ierked from one stage Of develop
ment to another too rapidly for them
to become identified in their human
quality, and run through too many in
tollectual references TO have any clear
color.
Mr.. Poole may say that he has no
point Of view to cxpress-he is the
Impartial observer-and that Blind is
chaotic as life itself is chaotic. But
the really aloof artist is the one who
subjects an experience remorselessly
to s personal viewpoint. SO far from
being aloof, Poole has been carried
away by the turGid sweep of a be-
wildering experience, so that he seems
as pathetcally confused by it as the
least of us.
The Story of a Creole Wait