Evening star., 1933-02-19

Macmllan Co.
Joseph CHAMBERLAIN, British states
man of the Victorian period, lived until
the year when the World War came like
an explosion to shatter the remnants of
a i that period with his cousin in Birmtng-
ham. Though he developed marked bus1-
ness ability and helped to bring monopolistic
prosperity to the firm, he retired when he was
only 38 and from that time devoted himself
to public life. He was successfully mayor OF
Birmingham, member of Parliament president
of the Board of Trade and colonial secretary.
James Lewis Garvin's biography of Chamberlain
is no sketchy, fctionized affair. 1t Is sub
stantial, authentically sourced, satisfy1ngiy
meaty biography, of the type of the Monypen-
ny-Buckle "DisraeL" Morleys Gladstone"
Trevelyan's "Macauley" and Beveridge's Mar
shall" Mr.. Garvin would not be expected to
follow the biographical method of Maurois,
Strachey of Gamaliel Bradford. He was editor
in chief Of the last fourteenth) edition OF the
Encyclopedias Britannica and has been since
1908 editor of the London Observer. Emphasis
on the scholarly qualities of this political biog-
raphy carries no implication of lack Of interest.
The personality of Chamberlain appears in
every stage of his influential and famous career,
and so engrossed 90 we become in it that we
find ourselves regretting that he was never
prime minister, as we regret in reading Claude
Fuess Daniel Webster" that Webster was
never President.
Mr.. Garvn says in his preface: Chamber
lain was an extraordinary man of action His
record was remarkable before he entered public
life. Afterward nearly every phase OF his
career, whether as democrat or imperialist, was
the subject of intense controversy and dispute.
He profoundly influenced the fortunes of all
parties and introduced the modern age Of Brit
ish politics. The duty of biography in such q
case Is to narrate the action and explain the
motives-to show what he was and what he
did" In Birmingham politics Mr.. Chamberlain
Dad
as mayor many municipal reforms and improve
ments were carried through, among them the
library, art gallery and public recreation
grounoS. As member of Parliament for Btr-
mingham, he advanced rapidly to the front In
the Liberal party. He broke with Gladstone
over the home rule bill and as a result was one
Of the founders of the Liberal Unionists, who
joined forces with the Tories to keep Gladstone
out OF Office He held Office as colonial secre-
tary under the Conservative government of Lord
Salisbury and In his later years became q pro-
nounced Imperialist. He approved the Boer
War without reservations All his interest in
this period was in colonial affairs and from 1902,
when Balfour became prime minister and he
continued as colonial secretary, he worked con-
tinuouSly for tariff revision in the interest of
the British colonies But this takes us far be-
yond the narrative Of the present volume and
into events which will form the subject matter
Tor Mr.. GarVn'S second volume, which should
be, If possible even more interesting than the
first
THE YEARS OF THE LOCUST BY Gilbert
Seldes. Boston: Little, Brown g. Co.
uIF thou refuse to let my people go, behold
tomorrow win bring the locusts into thy
coast. And they shall cover the face Of the
earth, that one cannot be able to see the earth" !"
Exodus, x4-5) Gilbert Seldes looks upon the
years 1929-1932 in the United States as COM
parable with the plague of locusts brought upon
Egypt on behalf of the children of Israel Mr.
Seldes has had considerable journalistic expert
ence and has done some thinking of a rather
pessimistic sort. His book is of the general
type Of Mark Sullivans "Our Times" and Fred
erick Aliens "Only Yesterday" but more re-
stricted in time and more intensive in treat
ment. From the very nature of its material
1t also provides fewer amusing episodes of social
history. The past three years have not been
very rich in amusement here or elsewhere In
the world
Mr.. Seldes does not believe that the collapse
Of the stock market in September, 1929, was en-
hrely the result Of over-Speculation, nor that
1t was inevitable. Production had been speed
ed up far beyond markets and then despite at
temptS had been made to create markets by
advertising high-pressure salesmanship and
installment buying. But all this has been an
alyZed before, many times. "The American
people," he says, "in IL years spent nearly sew
enteen billion dollars more than they earned"
put ADDS footnote, so phrased for purposes
OF shock only; the figure includes savings and
taxes as well as what we usually call spending"
An original method of tracing the progress Of
our economic disease is the use of "fever
chart" suggesting that of a very i'll patient in
hospital red line, superimposed on a
Standard Statistics Co. stock price index, marks
the psychological temperature" of the country
and indicates the ''excitements, despairs, &C
cesSes Of faith or scepticism, hopes, enthusiasm
and apathy" Some of the entries on the chart
are Wages kept up" Saved by the tariff"
Federal building program" Moratorium" Z"
Crying for Dictator" ETC. AS record Of
the depression years, Mr.. Seldes' book has value,
but his interpretations are open to both politi-
cal and economic questionings. Perhaps the