Evening star., 1935-04-14

He asks: will either the American
or the Japanese people have the in
telligence, the moral character and
the self-discipline to adopt the revolu-
tionary changes required?" That Is
indeed the crucial question.
JAPAN'S PACIFIC MANDATE. BY
Paul H. Clyde. New York: The
Macmillan Co.
THE withdrawal Of Japan from the
League Of Nations has raised the
question. among others, as to the effect
that action will have on her COM
petence to continue her mandatory
administration" of more than 1000
islands in the Western Pacific. Prof.
Clyde of the department Of history
in the University of Kentucky, who
has recently studied and travelled in
the Far East and in 1884 made an
extended voyage through the man
date on the invitation of Japan, dis
cusses the legal, social and strategic
problems involved in Japan's Pacific
mandate. The importance of the ques-
tion to the United States is illustrated
by the fact that Guam, acquired by
our country at the close of the Span
lsh-American War, lies only so miles
from Rota, in the Japanese mandate.
DR.. Clyde's discussion includes Japa-
nese methods of ruling the islands in
the mandate, education, industry and,
most important to other nations. in
ternational implications. Among these
the question of Notifications is vital,
and he declares that charges that
Japan has fortified certain islands
are based on "misinformation or
lack of information" Until sub
stantial evidence of fortification is
produced. no useful purpose is served
by the continuation in the Western
press of unofficial and unauthorita-
tive charges. Should Japan at some
future time become engaged in naval
warfare in the Western Pacific she
would in all probability annex and
fortlfy the islands. Such a develop
ment. however, from the naval point
of view, would be of secondary i'm
portance. Fortifications in the islands
can have no value to Japan unless her
navy can control the sea in which
they lie.''
TSAR OF FREEDOM. The Life and
Reign OF Alexander II. BY Stephen
Graham. New Haven: Yale Uni
versity Press.
THE study of Russia has fascinated
Stephen Graham and he has
conveyed much of his own feeling
through his books on two of the great
figures in Russian history, Ivan the
Terrible and Boris Godunof," and
now through this third, about Alex
ander II, liberal Tsar of the nine
teenth century. who freed the serfs
and attempted an experiment in
democracy in autocratic Russia. Al
ways Stephen Graham paints in detail
the background of his central char
acter, and this historical setting con-
stitutes valuable and dramatically
interesting part of his work. The
background of Alexander II was the
golden age Of Russia, the renaissance
which came late to Russia. 1t was
the age of Turgenieff, Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky. 1t corresponded in some
respects to the Victorian Age in Eng
land, but without the stable develop
ment on which the Victorian Age was
based. When Alexander came to the
throne, the Crimean War was in prog
ress, but more important in his reign
was the liberation of the serfs. q
million of them. This emancipation
was followed by other liberal reforms,
such as local self-government, trial by
jury, popular education, and relaxa-
tion of censorship. These reforms
seem only to have whetted the appetite
of the Nihilists, who, like all extreme
radicals, were adverse to evolutionary
progress and demanded violence. So
the reward of Alexander's liberalism
was that he was blown to pieces by
Nihilist bombs. The story of Alex
ander's life is that of a great ruler,
exceptional in any country and espe-
cially so in Russia, but its historical
lesson is hard to read. Bismarck
thought reforms warded off revolu-
ton; others have thought they only
hastened it. Alexander was a sim
cere believer in his reforms and was
a martyr rather than merely a mur-
dered autocrat. Stephen Graham S
gifts of style are such that biography
by him has all the narrative quality
of novel.
EARLY VICTORIAN NOvELISTS.
Essays in Retaliation BY David
Cecil. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-
Merrill Co.
I ORD DAVID CECIL is the author
of that sympathetic biography of
Cowper, The Stricken Deer" which
in 1880 won the Hawthornden prize
for the best piece of imaginative lit
erature by British author under Al,
and the James TAFT Black memorial
prize for the best biography of the
year. In this present volume of es-
says, derived from a series of lee
lures delivered at oxford, he looks
at the leading Victorian novelists-
Dickens, Thackeray. Charlotte and
Emily Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell, Trollope
and George Eliot-with modern eyes,
and finds them on the whole good,
even when compared with twentieth
century novelists like D. H. Law
renee and James Joyce. who have
created cults whose growth and per-
manence have yet to be proved. OF
Dickens, Lord Cecil says: Dickens
gospel is crude: but it is not slight
or shallow. The truth it enshrines
is universal truth" He finds Thack-
cray hamrered by the moral stand
ards of his age so that he could not
create entirely true characters. Char
lotte Bronte's novels are badly con-
structed, they are improbable, they
are often ridiculous; but Emily Bron-
te he considers the outstanding figure
in Victorian fiction. style, structure,
narrative, there is no aspect of Emily
Bronte's craft which does not bril-
liantly exhibit her genius" Mrs. Gas
kell was thoroughly feminine, a typi-
cal Victorian woman, who happened
to write novels. very feminine ones,
and this gives her books a place OF
their own in English literature. VI
Trollope may be commonplace, but
'he has bequeathed to mankind a
legacy of enjoyment as solid and un-
fading and unalloyed as any in Eng