BOOKS
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
PROBABLY the Battle of Jutland will set historians by the cars in a hundred years' time. To begin with, the Germans are quite convinced that they gained a notable victory and completely destroyed the prestige of the British Fleet. Our own authorities are equally convinced that the result of the battle discouraged the German Fleet and showed that it could never hope to come into action again. At any rate, it is true that both nations had cause for dissatisfaction ; we certainly let opportunities slip by us, and it is by our mismanagement that we allowed the credit of the battle to be in any way debatable. Lord Jellicoe has so far borne, by innuendo if not by direct accusation, the main burden of responsibility ; but now we have a book by Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon, The Jut/and Scandal (Hutchinson), which places the blame upon new shoulders. The sole cause of the incompleteness of our success, he argues, was the inexperi- ence of Lord Beatty. We do not agree, but at all events Admiral Bacon is an able exponent of the strategical doctrines associated with Lord Jellicoe.
Mr. Francis Arthur Jones has written an excellent biography of Thomas Alva Edison (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr. Jones knows his subject intimately and has given a clear, non- technical account of his inventions. It is amusing to find that immense scepticism was expressed by academical scientists over each of Edison's inventions ; in especial they were confi- dent that his electric light bulb was impracticable, and they were engagingly sarcastic at his expense. And, as we might expect, England was the last among civilized countries to adopt electric lighting. Mme. Jeanne Bordeux's biography of Eleonora Duse (Hutchinson) is highly coloured and sentimental ; but for all its faults it provides us with a mass of information.
In Christian Missions and Oriental Civilizations (London : G. E. Stechert and Co.) Mr. Maurice T. Price has catalogued and illustrated, quite disinterestedly, the various kinds and qualities of response which our missions have aroused in other peoples. The most difficult to deal with is absolute indifference or lack of comprehension. When the Congo negroes heard Richards preach to them on sin, they were sympathetic— they suspected other tribes of being sinners and they quite believed that Richards himself was sinful ; but they absolutely reffised to admit such things of themselves. In China one of the chief difficulties missionaries met was the instinctive belief in the -Chinese that -white men. are of an inferior, and- tributary race ; and every attempt_ at conciliation end. kindliness was taken as a recognition of this inferiority. A Chinaman is reported as having said, forty years after the Opium War, "When England revolted, it was the greatest rebellion since the world began." There are more important reactions than these, of course ; and all of them are analyzed and separated into their kinds in Mr. Price's book. It is a valuable work ; though the treatment seems more elaborate that it need be. Mr. K. L. P. Martin, whose short treatise, Missionaries and Annexation in the Pacific (Oxford University Press), shared the Beit Prize in 1921, is still more detached. from apologetic intentions ; he states of our missions that on a broad survey of their work, the good outweighed the bad." A translation of Pistis Sophia, one of the most import- ant of early Christian documents, has been published by Mr. - George Homer (S.P.C.K.).
Professor Charles Hall Grandgent writes very discursive and amusing essays in Getting a Laugh (Humphrey Milford) ; but his very wide erudition gives them ballast, and he shows a most unexpected talent for meeting strange adventures, or for seeing point in occurrences which most of us would have forgotten. There is this tale, for example : "Later in my career, I met an elderly Dutchman, who, having amassed a fortune in his native land, indulged his lifelong desire to travel, and visited the Black Forest. There, to his amazement, he saw hills, huge humps of earth, tree-covered, rising without apparent cause high into the air. 'And you will hardly believe me,' he declared, 'but I assure you it is true. On these hills -were streams of water, starting near the top, all by themselves, and running down to the bottom ! ' " Three volumes are added to Messrs. Philip Allan's series of British Artists, Bartolozzi, Zoffany, and Kauffman, by C. H. S. John, David Cox, by F. G. Roe, and G. F. Watts, by Ernest H. Short.
THE LITERARY EDITOR.
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