Putnam patriot., 1922-07-21
THE SEVENTH ANGEL
A Novel For conssrva,ive. About
 Radicals


 When a book starts with sentences ike these you can almost be certain that t wilI hold attention to the end. With SO many watching the girl. you might think there would have been some agreement as 10 what happened. i. in particular as to just what she did that brought about such a eommotion. But there was no agreement. no unan- unity as 10 anything beyond the point where she came face to face with the man" In this entieing manner Alex ander Black begins The Seventh An- gel, novel whose title is derived from the Book Of Revelations And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air. and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne. saying. IL is done
 To 10 two species of the animal kingdom, t is to be supposed. does the world seem identical. This sphere must seem a strange place indeed to the beetle or the house-fy, with their mosaic eyes. And the same applies to any two members of a given species. for there is always a personal equa- fion. Take man. for example-the most favored of all the animals What he sees about him depends not only upon the condition of his organs of sight. but also upon his past expert ence; upon his training i democrat and a republican. both men though they are. do not regard the tariff or the League of Nations in the same light at all This is fact that is of- ten forgotten we are prone 10 be- lieve that there Is 0nlg one way in which to look at everything; and Of course that way is sour' way. Mans mind Is single tracked, and there are mighty few switches leading from the main line-of thought. There is g loo frequent willingness to ignore a point of view beyond the one the thinker holds There is neglect of the fact that someone else may look upon a
 situation or event from an entirely different angle Yet there always is the other angle. and as Ben Franklin pointed out decades ago. every stone waIl has Two sides
 BIack's book gives the conservative render Che other side of the stone wall: it presents the minority view on social subjects that the mass af men have come to regard as totally one sided; have come to regard as 20 one sided that to suggest that there is an- other is herctical, even sacriiegioRs. The author roots under seme of the established beliefs that mankind cher ishes. and presents the world fo the reader through Che eyes of a radical. To the conservative t may all be dis eoneerting; | surely would be were 1t not that Black manages SO to balance many of his ideas that no one will probably take offence. Both sides are there, conservative and radical. The author makes his own position clear in the words of character who re- marks
 It seems to me to be a profoundly noteworthy fact that Columbus was a radical in his geography but con- servative in his navigation. eolum- bus was Red in his attitude toward the old maps. Hc was hard shell in his attitude toward the North star l svmpathize with the conservatives un- ftA they stop moving sympathize a4tb radicals until they curse the com pass ! sympathize with neither when thcy forget men Occasionally feel like reminding radicals that some things like gravItation. are here to stay And occasionally feel like re- mudne the conservatives that natufe has a process for things that stop growing There haze been Re since thc Stone Age Some of them start ed revolutions m laboratories. Some of them in front af Bastiles And the departments of justice are quite as