The New York herald., 1922-05-28

Il. ComStock. Doubleday, rage q
Co.
A MONG the many women who
~ are writing novels in this
country Harriet T. Com
stock and Ellen Glasgow have
makers of sincerely felt books that
reflect the life of our time with
gentle serenity and a sympathetic
insight not without its touch o.
humor Both of them are at home
in the suaver and more cultivated
portion of our American scene, but
neither has any patience with its
shams or it's weaknesses, and each
is deeply interested in the working
of the democracy whose future may
be either intensely dramatic or
deadly dull, but which at present is
at least capable of producing sur
prises and of displaying character
in sharp contrast to environment.
Ellen Glasgow likes the public
arena, the political flavor. She is
keenly interested in observing the
effect of political power upon a man,
and she delights in contrasting the
actual with the imagined results of
our system of government. 1t does
not seem likely to her that America
will grow greater or become more
worth while by leaning ON its tradi-
tons and depending on the rule of
thumb. The conservatives are not
the people who count. Yet nothing
could be more sane and balanced and
free from the Rawlings of the radical
than the philosophy of this writer.
She has an extraordinary devotion
to seeing both sides, to presenting
both sides. and there is nothing from
which she turns with such decision
as from the panacea. She makes
old Darrow say of the Governor in
this new book:
He thinks because he sees the
way to help people that they want
to be helped. I've been mixed up in
politics now for fifty years, and in
the labor movement ever since
it began to move in the Southland
1vei found out that people really
don't want to be helped-they want
to be fooled. Vetch offers 'em facts.
and all the time it amt facts they're
wanting, but names.-. The crowd
will come a little way after a fact:
but in the end it gets tired because
the fact won't work magic :.
and then it turns back to the old
names that mean nothing. :"
And Darrow takes Stephen, the
rich young man, to the slums of his
city, shows him the poor living in
poverty and facing worse poverty;
tells him that the slum is owned by
Stephens father, and then, when the
boy, for he is not much more. sickens
at the realization, he counsels him
not to lose hissbalance. That's life,"
he says, "yes, but it amt the whole
of life. Those folks we've been to
see have had their good times like
the rest of us, only we saw 'em just
now when they were in the midst of
a bad time. Life amt confined to a
ditch any more than it is to a lily
pond" And then he goes on to re-
late how a cousin of Stephens, a de-
lightful woman called Corinna, who
was confronted with the same situa-
tion, set to work and improved the
property she owned, put up model
flats with gardens, and charged the
same rental as before the war. With
the result that her tenants moved
out into novels and tenements and
sublet the fine new places to more
fastidious lodgers.
The Governor to whom Darrow n,
ludes has been elected in Virginia on
a wave of popular frenzy. He is n
man of the people. He began as a
circus performer. and comes to the
head of his party, the Independents,
through the sheer force of personal
ity and faculty for leadership. Nat
nrally he is anathema to the whole
army of the privileged classes. They