THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
Ma. Pinup GinErtatta modestly calls his studies of the men who made the United States a sketchbook. He says " five generations ago the United States leapt from the trap-door of history. This startling event was achieved by some men and in spite of others. Repeatedly portrayed, they somehow fail to stand vividly in the world's memory." But never have bolder and more life-like pictures been drawn of the eighteenth-century statesmen and soldiers concerned in the greatest drama of history. Lord Chatham making his dying speech to the Lords, the thunders of Burke, the racially English Washington, and Franklin, " the mildest Ajax that ever defied the lightning," stand vividly before us. In a book so bright with human interest and full of delicate allusion it is invidious to select a single passage, but the opening paragraphs of the Essay on Washington are truly a model of cogent and luminous prose. Sir Edmund Gosse has well said that in the author we find " the paladin to whom we look to deliver us from the dragon of historical dreariness." Everyone who reads history should read this book. (Independence Day. By Philip Guedalla. Murray. 12s.) "
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