Newspaper Page Text
Books and the Book World of Th Sun, January 18, 1920.
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"Ireland" With Two
Endings Both Happy?
IPLING wrote two endings for Ha
.novel The Light That Failed &
Iiappy eniling in response to the demand,
and the unhappy ending originally con
ceived. It made some confusion and not
a little noise when, for example, two
young women started in to discuss the
story between soles or short orders or dic
tations and one had read one ending and
the other the other.
Similarly Francis Haciett has provided
two endings, or beginnings, for his book
on Ireland, and since any book on Ireland
is sure to start a discussion readers
should be careful to note which edition
they are reading, the edition (June, 1918,)
in which 3Ir. Hackctt advocates dominion
home rule for Ireland as the "democratic
minimum," or the edition (July, 1910,) in
wlrich he names as the "irreducible mini
mum" an Irish republic. For the conven
ience of leaders Mr. Htckett's publisher
has put up in the corner of the new edi
tion of hiH book "Irish Republic Edition."
The two editions arc as identical as
allied notes, with the exception of the
preface to the new edition. Anybody who
has the d"pIorable habit of skipping pref
aces wonM therefore miss the point, which
is that Mr. Haekett, who in June, 1918,
was energetically advocating govern
mental cooperation on the part of Ireland
with Britain, in July, 1919, with equal
energy demands for Ireland complete
separation land a clean slate of her own
Ulster or no Ulster.
In 1918 Mr. Hackctt wrote:
"With the establishment of dominion
home rule Ireland may look for whatever
good there is to be found in parliament
ary government, and not the least of the
good may be n certain healthy disillusion.
Some women lmve gone through divorce
and remarriage only to discover through
their experience of a second husband that
' many of the first husband's faults were
mere average masculinity. Ireland may
discover that ji good many of the defects
of English rule were simply the average
defects of all rule, with perhaps a supe
rior technique to England's credit."
In 1919 Mr. Hackctt says the same,
with.Jiowever, the following reservation,
or direct amendment, in the preface:
"The union between Ireland and England
Jack London might
have written this tale b the
, Sea and the Northwest ; of .a
tenderfoot among strong men,
hardened by suffering, spurred
on by love, and coming out of
a terrible, spirit-breaking test,
a man.
THE SHEPHERD
OF THE SEA
by Henry Leverage
Nd $1J5 . jjjj Published ly
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE 6s CO.
THE VITAL
MESSAGE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"His wonderful ability to
write, brings to Spiritual
ism a champion worthy
of thearmor."-W.lr. Mail
GEORGE H. DO RAN COMPANY
BOOKS BOUGHT
ESPECIALLY SCTS
HU3HEST PfUCCfi .
A new and interesting book.
FRED WINSTED, A COLLEGE MAN.
By MAJOR Mc CLAVE.
Those who have read this book agree it
is a gripping, thrilling story, full of action,
with intense realism.
Gn sale &t BRENTANO'Sj also MACY'S.
was a union by force and fraud, and it
is repudiated."
In 1918 writes Mr. Haekett, "I admit
that I considered the will of Ulster an
obstacle to Irish self-determination." He
was of the opinion, in 1918, that the mil
lion Unionists had at least a "squatter's
claim," which could not be ignored. In
1919, however, ho finds that "the Union
ists had no more democratic claim than
the Tories had in the American colonies."
In June, 1918, Mr. Haekett believed the
rebellion would represent a crisis in Irish
affairs for a long time to come. He did
not think the Irish republic, as a "con
crete popular ideal," would so soon fol
low. Perhaps Mr. Haekett underesti
mated the influence of his own book, since
he wrote of the Dominion Home Rule
edition : "I must quickly assert that I was
not so ambitious as to hope for direct
results from this book."
"Whatever brought about the change in
Mr. Hackett's views, everybody will give
him credit for considerable nimblcness.
Although looking back, ho now says in
the new preface that the failure of the
Irish Convention in 1917 destroyed the
last hope of constitutionalism; he did
not realize this when he wrote his book,
first edition, as he explains: "I was not
fully informed as to Britain's part in
this convention when I wrote of it in
these pages."
These frank changes and confessions
and admissions, far from reassuring
readers, will make them uneasy. Too
timid, perhaps,, to have an opinion of
their own on Ireland, they absolutely de
pend upon leaders to take them safely
through the battle lines. They do not
like to think that those to whom they
look for guidance would write without
being fully informed.
Chiefly, however, Mr. Haekett ascribes
his quick changes to the failure of Brit
ain in the war-to meet "the supreme test
of its principles." He is now inclined to
believe that the whole import of his book
is "tjie crime that Britain has committed
against democracy in denying self-determination
to Ireland." He says Sinn Fein
and republicanism were not made in Ger
many, but in England, with valiant aid
from America.
"How did the British Government help
to promote Sinn Fein all over Ireland?
"With the assistance, of course, of Wood
row Wilson. "What Ireland needed to
become a flaming fire of republicanism
was two things one, the fuel of fresh
British tyranny; two, the wind of ideal
ism. Gen. Maxwell first supplied the
tyranny and Woodrow Wilson supplied
the wind."
Mr. Haekett says he was at first tempt
ed to rewrite his Ireland, but decided that
the fact that in 191S "it labored so hard
for governmental cooperation with Brit
ain had fl. greater significance than any
new edition could have." It will have
a still greater significance and march
with the times if still another edition
may be forthcoming with perhaps the
words "New Irish Republic Edition" up
in the corner.
In regard to Ulster Mr.Hackett docs
not quote Mrs. Sheeny Skeffington's ad
mirable suggestion that a trip ticket to
England should be given to every Ulster
ite, with no return. Perhaps some one
will be subtle enough to explain why Mr.
Hackctt docs not mention Skoffington, the
freethinker, along with the other martyrs
of the Easter rebellion. " N. P.'d.
IRELAND. Irish Republic Edition. Br
1'EANcis Hackext. B. W. Huebsch.
Iri Which a Thankless
Tooth Is Extracted
'THE January Bookman's table of
contents, along with most of the
names of writers whom readers expect
with pleasure in a number of the Book
man, includes: Frank Swinnerton, Hys
Name and glad we are to sec it; Alex
ander Woollcott, the ablest dramatic
critic of the war he writes about his fel
low Stars and Striper, C. Le Roy Bal
dridge, the artist; Robert C. Benchley and
P. G. Wodehonse, both of whom, R. L. S.
might have said, are almost too clever to
live. But it also contains the following:
"Perhaps, or rather doubtless, it is not
necessary to remark that the best of Mr.
De Casseres's work appears in the Book
man." Hmph! Can the Bookman's edi
tor gainsay, we wonder, that The most
glorious book review ever published on
any page was Jlr. De Casseres's in Books
and the Book World, of Broome Street
Straxcs by Robert Cortes Holliday?
THE new editor in chief of Harper's
2laga;ine is Thomas Bucklin Wells,
for many years the associate in editorship
of Henry Mills Alden.
His Mother's Memoir
Of a Youth Who Died
WITH Rupert Brooke for the first
and most conspicuous spokesman,
the youth that-"was England' six years
ago forms a pageant now, and Eton and
Winchester, Oxford and Cambridge, gain
a new traditional lustre' as the meeting
places of so much charm and talent,
where the arts were in favor along with
crieket, as a pretty game. Edward
Wyndham Tennant as is evident in
every letter he wrote, every anecdote,
every photograph in his mothcrTsmemoir
of him represented the embodiment of
this type. He left "Winchester to enter
the Grenadier Guards, and after a year's
training went to France to be killed at
the liattle of the Somme. He was jnst 19.
Life had been such a graceful perform
ance, with all the world seeming in league
to give this especial generation in Eng
land a" jolly good time of it, that their
instinctive gallantry, their very vocabu
lary, led them to speak of tho War, too,
as a game. And it was a discovery -when
the fact that there was such a thing as
pain in the world was forced upon them.
And their first reaction from the discov
ery was to conceal it, to refer to it, if at
all, with an austere formality, with a
hauteur of conventional -terms. Thus this
particular boy wrote to his mother, on
his going to the front: "I think of Death
with a light heart and as a friend whom
there is no need to fear."
It i3 more as the type of si class that
has grown glorious for its grace that
young Tennant is important. As a poet
he died too young to be placed with sep
arate emphasis; he must be disposed, of
as .one who had promise. But much
' The best travel book
WHITE SHADOWS
in the
SOUTH SEAS
By FREDERICK O'BRIEN
THIS is that travel book of the South Seas which lifts people' away
to strange, beautiful, far-away scenes, entertains them with
extraordinary adventures, makes them laugh a thousand times, and
touches their hearts with a story of epic nobility. (A Ctiuryjwok.
63 full-page illustrations from photographs. Price $4.00. At'' all
bookstores.)
A LANDSCAPE PAINTER
By HENRY JAMES
The Great American Novelist
Professor William Lyon Phelps of Yale University, in a Ions article in
The New York Times, says the following:
"They the stories are the work of an absolute master of plot and
style. . . . All four of these are love stories stories white hot with
passion. ...
I hope Mr.. Thomas Hardy will read these tales, for even he can hardly
dramatize the irony of life more powerfully than it is set forth here.
I regard this book as a truly great addition to American literature.
At All Booksellers. (x.7s net. Postage Extra.
.First edition nearly sold out in two weeks.
SCOTT & SELTZER, 5 West 50th Street, New York
promise! As a school! jy of 17 he hao
died the difficult ballad form of his Pan'
Stepping Stones with admirable, deftness.
I remember that our college Engl i A de
partment never erpeetc&niore of us at
that age than a two jss'.v theme on The
Pessimism of Thomas Hardy, with the
right number of commas in the right
places. The Westminster Gazette (the
IV. G. of Rupert lirooke) published many
of Tenn ant's later things. There is his:
Green gardens of Laventie
Soldiers only know the street
Where the mud is churned and splashed
about,
' By battle wending feet,
And yet behind one stricken house there
is -i glimpse of grass,
Look for it when you pass. -
Hungry for spring X bend my head
The perfume tuned my face,
And all my soul was dancing
In that lovely little place,
Dancing with a measured step f rem wreckad
and shattered towns.
Away upon the downs.
And what a sudden growing np he must
have had from that day in school when
he wrote a sonnet to his spaniel to the
time of that sonnet a year later, In Mc
moriamj beginning "He looked ahead, be
-smiled, and then looked back."
It needed a war to give a significance
to these favored boys. There was too
much soap bubble happiness in the first
phase not to draw upon them the sus
picion of even the optimistic experienced
of this earth. But now, like a balm oa
the hurt of the war, their romantic mem
ory survives a memory, at least, no
"hungry generations" can tread down.
J. C. M-
EDWABD WYNDHAM TENNANT; A
MEMOIR. Br his MotEB, PiinxA
GifKooitxoE. John Lane Company.
in years and years"