Evening star., 1932-03-29
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
THUNDER AND DAWN Americas
Appointment with Destiny Glenn
Frank. New York: The Macmillan
/. G. NJ.

Appointment with Destiny. Glenn
Frank. New York: The Macmillan
Co.
Thunder and Dawn" is poetry
Ruskin. Americas Appointment with
Destiny" is poetry also-Glenn Frank.
The picture of near horizon. Does
it menace in thunder? Does it smile
with promise Of dawn? In either case
it is close by. Its date with destiny Sc
pressing as to suggest the packed kit
and waiting taxi for America.
Literally here is series of studies
upon current civilization, with prime
stress and urgency placed upon the
United States.
The world as whole is in a bad vay
All agree. Yet, essentially, the world
is not at all in bad way. It's scourge
is of the surface, like scurvy or other
pestiferous and dangerous skin malady,
that spreads with alarming rapidity and
disastrous effect. The source of the
ailment Is double one Current news
and a public mind gone completely of
into hysteria. Perfect medium of con-
tagion, that combination.
The press, the radio. the movie, air
traffic, good roads and the motor
pretty much every conceivable whatnot
of swift communication danger
faster than it does security, carries ru-
por more speedily than it does truth,
Simply because the human being is built
that way, built to snap up the idle tale
rather than the valid fact. Gossip Is
picturesque, calling to the adventurer
within. Truth is drabbish and dull.
The freedom for which the fathers
fought-free government, free con-
science, free speech-iS fast becoming a
frankenstein. The world is at this mo-
ment a vast pandemonium. a huge
Tower of Babel, a confusion Of tongues.
What can be done about it? Were the
fathers wrong? No, gloriously right,
instead
The public, however. as such is still
in its babyhood toward the heritage of
modern freedom and opportunity that
it holds. Not till the public grows UP
to the privilege and responsibility cdr
ried by that freedom will the future be
safe from the destructive loquacities of
modern existence. In the meantime the
world may be smashed. Easily may
The adventurous infant with hammer
and looking glass can do a deal OF
smashing.
Science has pushed material progress
far ahead of the average mans con-
ception. He sees the marvellous doings
of this magician. Not alive to the
fact that, in a thousand ways, he is
already direct beneficiary to science, he
yearnS to be active partner in the huge
concern, pecuniary partaker in the
seeming overflow of plenty But he is
barred, by circumstance, by himself. too
However, he can talk. Free speech Is
part of his birthright. And he does
talk, in resentment and diatribe and in
an order of disorganization and general
discomfort. And then
X
Glenn Frank and other men of his
kind, scholars in human science-his-
tory. biology, anthropoiogy, psychology
sociology, politics and theories of gov
ernment-wise men, mellowed men, far
seeing and dispassionate. are doing
what they can to inject some modicunl
of thinking into the clear catastrophe
Of unfounded and unquenchable speech
In effect, these say, Glenn Prank
says: Come on, let US sit down to-
gether to see If, possibly, we may not
be able to work out at least some sort
of pattern, In actuality, in things as
they are, for direction and, maybe, for
VIZ VI 6uioaHCe. Dehie teeSAci
president of Wisconsin University
Glenn Frank drifts, naturally, into the
way of the teacher And q good way
it is with him. He tells, briefly, OF
certain great periods of history, not
too ancient and remote to have lost
their power of contact. The Renais-
sance, the Reformation, the Industrial
Revolution. Almost every one has bow
ing acquaintance with these names at
least. And that scant touch serves
For the author lifts these periods over,
bodily, into the present, stripping from
them in the transit out-worn frag-
ments that no longer apply. So that
here before us, the Renaissance points
upon culture, as it stands today in aim
and effect. The Reformation means
the religious concept and motive, not
of Martin Luther, but OF the whole
spiritual idea of the moment. And as
for the Industrial Revolution, here II
is. right now, in the entire economic
complex of production, labor, distribu-
ton finance a unit of natural resource
and its sequence Of production.
Such simple historic approach is i'm
portant since it shows that periods OF
vital change in the past, periods OF
supreme crisis, have been survived and
that this one just as surely Will be-.
He makes clear also that these three
movements are interviewer, parts OF
single whole. Their representatives
are today, as then, the scholar, the
priest, the captain of industry. And
these are not specialists dealing with
distinct thirds of mems lives. Each
whether he realizes it or not. is dealing
with the whole of mems lives. Men are
not minds on Saturday, spirits on Sun
day, machines on Monday. They are
human beings all week, and anything
that affects any part of their lives
affects the whole of their lives"
4
A hundred pertinent and practical
points in this near-horizon search
Glenn Frank sets out as desirable equip
ment, necessary even, for all of us In
the approaching engagement of our
country with destiny. But you will need
to read the book for any adequate
seizure of either its scope or its pene-
trating depth as well. And, having
read it, you will read it again. Its
substance and its lure are beyond
escape.
Cleaning here and there: "Of the new
Renaissance I mean a secular move
ment of social renewal that shall rescue
culture from the pedant and the. poseur !;
redeem it from its dilettante implica-
tions, rid it of its drawing-room inani-
ties, and make it a magisterial force
in the affairs of the age; movement
that shall give short shrift to that
debilitated clasSicism which hangs like
discarnate ghost over so much of con-
temporary education and put in its
place the dynamic classician of the
ancient Greeks, which was not, with
them, drab discipline of the class
room. but guide to behavior in novel
world, way of thinking and living
a movement to direct mems
thoughts through press and school and
church toward the comprehension and
control of a civilization born of science
and the machine; a movement to estab-
lish social control of the impact of
modern knowledge upon modern life;
a rational adventure that shall make
science the servant of life that shall
culminate in the flood-tide of a valid
humanism to water the parched roots
of Western culture"
Here are a few of the hacklinp oleS-