The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-12-01
By DOLLY DALRYMPLE

other families that you and I know so we'll, with their grounded mode of life, beliefs, prejudlces. weaknesses many of such type having been cured" since the war.
 In To Let" the possessive prin- ciple has got its shutters up," as 1t were, and, like Robin Hll, the house ''soames" built for his wife Irene, and in which she presently lived with another man, Is ITO Let"
 In the Forsyte way, and with the Forsyte theory of life, we find this dominant philosophy:
 "A man owned his soul, his in- Vestments and his woman without check or question. And now the state had, or would have. his invest ments; his woman had herself, and God knew who had his soul. TO Let that sane and simple creed!f
 But since man Is by nature "pos- sessiNe animal" 1t was possible for soames to see this destruction as necessary to make room for future property" The Forsyte type has gone --the new has not yet come. In the interval is world unrestful and perturbed
 But since the past is joined to the present by thousand threads. so the wrong which began so long ago, when Irene married a man she did not love, man who presently owned her as negro slave was owned, starts up out of 20-year sleep to influence the lives of the second generation-of Jon Forsyte, son of Jolyon and Irene, and of F'leur, Soames' daughter by Annette, his sec, ond wife. Both the boy and the girl have been brought up in complete ignorance of their parents story. They meet by accident and fall in love. while receiving an impression of the feud between their different branches of the family which is en- tirely incorrect. And then suddenly they learn of the impalpable, impas- sable barrier which divides them. Soames loved his daughter greatly 1-absorbingiy. Tt was odd how. with all his ingrained care for mod eration and secure investment, Soames ever put his emotional eggs into one packet. First Irene-now Fleur." He cared so much for Fleur that he was willing to do anything to make her happy. And Irene adored her son, caring more for him than she did for her husband. She was ready to leave 1t all in Jon's hands, even while she realized that Fleur was her fathers own daughter, and knew she spoke the truth when she said; You are giver, Jon; she is taker."
 Really to appreciate this novel one should have read its predecessors. especially "The Man of Property" and Tn Chancery," otherwise 1t will be impossible to understand how wonderfully the characters have been sustained throughout. especially that of Soames Forsyte. In him MT. Gals worthy has given us a genuine ere ation, real human being, neither all good nor all bad, emineutly pitiable and eminently unloVable. He could not understand his own nnioYable- ness and was unlovable just because he could not understand He might wish and wish and never get it. the beauty and the loving in the worldw
 Whether Mir Galsworthy is right in believing that the type the For sytes represent Is also at an end, who shall say? Certainly there is no bet ter, more interesting study of a cer- tain aspect of those years which closed with the great war than his study of the Forsyte family which comes to a conclusion in this volume, ITO Let" s}xt f