Various

“ Such a work of imagination as this, with its deep humor, its deep humanity, brings home to us, as nothing else can, the artificial nature of those boundaries which language and custom set between one race and another. It is a book for the world; one cannot lay it down without a sense of quickened emotion and enlarged vision. ”

“ This little book, translated from the French, with an introduction by Rabindranath Tagore, sets forth a view of the war as a conflict which the old social order is waging against itself. “The war has a purpose, even if the belligerents have none. It has a purpose to which none of them would care to attain, but which all will be forced to realize at last. This purpose is very simple: the old evil must be destroyed down to its root, the old foundations of the life of the people must be torn up, and replaced by the foundations of a better and truer civilization.” ”

“ It is panoramic, rich in perspective—passing all the way from lyric and reflective sonnets to terse poetic dialogues and narrative lyric almost ugly in its bareness. It would be idle to pretend that Mr Masefield is a philosopher. He is not intellectual except in the sense that he is tortured by an intellectual issue; he is neither subtle nor profound. But he feels this issue intensely, and even more than usual he strikes music and beauty from it. ”

“ And indeed, if one were forced to offer a criticism of the work as a whole, it would be just this: that the book is not, to all appearance, the ripe result of a life study. No doubt the brilliant author would grow tired of philosophy long before she had given a lifetime to it. And that is perhaps the world’s gain. But at the same time, as we feel compelled to think, it is philosophy’s loss. ”

“ As a physician, Veresaev had a rather limited field of observation, but even through his narrow prism he was able to behold an appalling picture of human masses being abused, neglected, demoralized, and senselessly slaughtered, through the whim, carelessness, greed, and ignorance of their superiors.”
“What war can do to even the greatest of men is shown here in a realism which would be merely revolting if it were not for the note of bitterness and irony that gives an undercurrent of clear criticism to the sluggish and sickening stream of war’s horror.” ”

“ Amid all the literature called forth by the Great war this epic account of the Katabasis of the Serbians and of the hospital unit conducted by Mrs Stobart will best deserve to be a classic in the millenniums to come. ... It is the most telling document against war that the war has produced, it shows the horror of it, and it shows the futility of it. ... The book sparkles with wit and has amusing passages, and it fills one with admiration for its stories of gallant deeds of heroism—not in the taking of life, but in saving life. ”

“ Mr Roosevelt thinks that “in the long run we have less to fear from foes without than from foes within. The men who oppose preparedness in our military and our industrial life; the business or political corruptionist or reactionary and the reckless demagogue who is his nominal opponent; the man of wealth and greed who cares for nothing but profits, and the sinister creature who plays upon and inflames the passions of envy and violence: the hard materialist, the self-indulgent lover of ease and pleasure, and the silly sentimentalist—all these are the permanent foes of our own household.” ”

“ She deems it by far a more attractive appearance to be dressed in a linen suit with exquisite trimmings than in the sinuous silk of her modern sisters, suggestive and alluring in every movement. No, in ‘Garlands and wayfarings’ are the fruits of a ripe culture, a love of beauty and art for their own sake, an idyllic sensibility to nature and a classic sympathy with the spirit of life. ”

“ One is grateful to Mr Untermeyer because he takes beauty into account, because he feels it, strives for it, and often, as he deserves, wins it for his own. For beauty too is grateful to Mr Untermeyer, one may fancy, and shines out through his work in many places. ... One trouble with Mr Untermeyer, indeed, is that he is not half enough content to be the good poet that he is. He is possessed of a gift and of a specialized, rather naïve philosophy of life, and his gift distinctly suffers for it. For life presents itself to him too much as being merely blind activity. ”

“ B. Fuller
“The essence of Mr Sherman’s criticism is American correctness, that bloodless correctness to which New England has given its wintry flavor. It is correctness rampant that makes Mr Sherman’s crest different from the ordinary heraldry; and the main delectation of his book is its conservative call to arms. Mr Sherman preaches a forlorn gospel when he begs us to cower behind the moral life of the race to peer at art.” ”

“ A student of nature, he saw in the life of the bee a theme for the creation of a human community after their fashion, and he has therefore made ‘A crystal age’ a perfect analogy between the two. If we read it with that knowledge in view, we have a perfect scientific study; if we read it simply as a story, we have a narrative complete in substance and beautiful in form. ”

“ The words are mine but all that gives life to them, the moods and thoughts, the hopes and sufferings, the abasement of the soul and the horror of the mind—all these are his.” It is the terrible story of one who endured all of the horrors of war without any of the sustainment of a conviction of right. ”

“ One feels in reading these poems that Miss Wallace is writing from within out; she is not portraying childhood as she sees or remembers it, but interpreting it as she still feels it. In her choice of subjects and language, she is always well within the mood and psychology of her subject. In this slender book are to be found the vaguely defined imaginings, the sudden sharp impressions, the bubbling excitement and joyousness of childhood. ”

“ Victory for the Allies is the first essential for a durable peace. The second is the stamping out of the military ideal, not in Prussia alone, but in all the countries of the world. “The spirit and the point of view which manifest themselves in militarism, in the subordination of civil to military authority and policy, and in the setting of right below might, must be driven out of the hearts and minds of men. ... The basis of sound international policy will be found in sound domestic policy, and in sympathy with equally sound domestic policies in other lands.” ”

“ One almost despairs of conveying it to the person who has conventionalized his idea of Ireland and modern Irish literature, yet there is a poignant Irish reality to be found in few existing plays and no preexistent novel, presented here with extraordinary candor and beauty and power. ... ‘A portrait of the artist as a young man’ is not entirely pleasant. But it has such beauty, such love of beauty, such intensity of feeling, such pathos, such candor, it goes beyond anything in English that reveals the inevitable malaise of serious youth. ”

“ Conrad Aiken
“Such sketches of the individual soldier in the trenches as make up the section ‘Battle’ are so brief, so compact, so single in their purpose that every lyric suggests the flight of a bullet. And, like bullets, these war poems either hit altogether or not at all. They are all perfect; tho three or four of them are perfect failures. ... In war and peace alike, Gibson selects by preference the themes that are commonplace or even disagreeable and makes them splendid by revealing the heroism and kindliness which lie deep in the hearts of common folk.” ”

“ He asserts on several occasions the men refused to obey orders to shoot wounded enemy soldiers and helpless civilians, and were more tortured than punished for such insubordination.”
“It will rekindle our determination not to become swamped in the war to the point where we forget our chief purpose—not defeat of Germany so much as defeat of war as an institution. ... ‘A German deserter’s war experience,’ with its directness and almost clumsy sincerity, is a chastening and thrilling book for all of us, but it is as a symbol of revolt that one will not wish to forget it.” ”

“ A chaotic vehement mist of ideas hangs over the entire story. Mr Sheppard is so much addicted to thinking in ink that ‘The rise of Ledgar Dunstan’ comes near to striding the border that separates fiction from philosophy. ... When the author chooses to narrate, he can, and in a most telling manner. He has accuracy of touch and sympathy and insight. He has an experience which he must have gained from a varied life, a breadth of view which approaches the universal, and above all the saving grace of humor which prevents him taking himself with too deadly a seriousness. ”

“ Cosma Wakely was a village girl of twenty years, in speech, manner, and environment the antipodes of everything that culture stands for. Her story, told by herself, begins as ungrammatically and crudely as the character demands. But during a morning’s walk she meets a stranger whose talk with her changes at once all her personal ideals and her entire outlook upon life. Obeying the hint he has given her in regard to seeking wider horizons, she breaks her engagement with a country lover, and, taking with her the wife and child of a drunken brute, seeks employment in the city. ”

“ Mr Wells didn’t want to go, but having gone he writes of the experience with characteristic frankness. He had been seeing the war as “something purposeful and epic.” He came back from the front with a revised view. “If I were to be tied down to one word for my impression of this war, I should say that this war is ‘Queer.’ It is not like anything in a really waking world, but like something in a dream. It hasn’t exactly that clearness of light against darkness or good against ill. But it has the quality of wholesome instinct struggling under a nightmare.” ”

“ It is one of those comfortable books which one can take up at odd moments with the assurance that they will prove good moments—a book genial without loss of seriousness, thoughtful without being profound, and (grateful virtue) contemporary without being harrowing.”
“Mr G. W. E. Russell’s new book of essays is exceedingly good reading. Whether he writes of politics or persons, he is never dull; and whether he provokes us to argument, agreement, or only to a smile, he is excellent company.” ”

“ Political Russia is of more vital interest than physical Russia; but at the moment when the fate of that nation seems to center in one city, it is not amiss to remember that Petrograd is one of the least representative cities of the new republic and that behind all its changes and its transitory emotions there lies the great mass of the Russian people, sturdy, industrious, and immovable. ”

“ Today the nation stands in a position to contribute to the political progress of the world, says the author: “Either it can cling hopelessly to the last vestiges of its policy of isolation or can launch out into imperialistic ventures, or finally it can promote, as can no other nation, a policy of internationalism, which will bind together the nations in a union of mutual interest, and will hasten the peaceful progress of the economic and political integration of the world.” ”

“ Macy
“The book in many places is exceedingly coarse, so marring uncommon beauty, descriptive power and insight.”
“What thrusts itself forward is the naturalism.’ Apart from this, in spite of it, the book has a measure of force by virtue of its sincere intent and its unconquered though ingrowing and indeterminate idealism. Its hero (who surely discourses like nobody in nature) is to be an artist in words—for the sake of Ireland.” ”

“ His people, save for his superman and superwoman with their conception of the new world, are all more or less caricatures, illustrative of present-day types. Indeed the superman and superwoman themselves are tremendously overdrawn, as they must perhaps be in an allegorical play, yet drawn for all that with force and feeling. They express radical doctrines. They utter lines that are ultra-modern, occasionally blasphemous—a compound of Wells and Shaw—and yet it is impossible to escape the lofty thought that animated the poet-dramatist in writing. ”

“ In this new book Bertrand Russell makes a study of the springs of human conduct. Responsibility for the war is placed by one group of people on the wickedness of the Germans, by another on the tangles of diplomacy and the ambitions of governments. Both groups, Mr Russell thinks, fail to realize the extent to which war grows out of ordinary human nature. “War is accepted by men who are neither Germans nor diplomatists with a readiness, an acquiescence in untrue and inadequate reasons, which would not be possible if any deep repugnance to war were widespread in other nations or classes.” ”

“ Mr Gibson has clearly proved that poetry can deal with the commonplaces of daily life,—with the bitter and trivial and powerful and universal commonplaces of human consciousness,—and do it with force and beauty. ”

“ L. M. Field
“Dr Lay, for all the qualities of his argument that look like prepossessions, lays out this difficult lore with a clarity, a charm and a high moral force, that point his book with every power to instruct and improve. No science is so immediately devoted to human service as psychology, no person with his own or society’s welfare at heart can afford to neglect it, and few writers have laid bare its main principles with happier effect than Dr Lay.” ”

“ The tact and sympathy of the mother and the kindness and high spirits of the young people make friends for them all and several blighted lives—like that of the old school teacher who has lost his position, and of the girl who is paying for her mother’s failings—are set in happier lines by their companionship. The touch of love interest blends unobtrusively into the narrative. ”

“ Odell Shepard
“Of late years, Mr William Watson has been making poetry a criticism of art rather than a criticism of life. Many of the poems in ‘Retrogression’ seem to be versifications of passages in his ‘Pencraft: a plea for the older ways.’ But the versification is deftly done; it glows now and then with the magic of Wordsworth’s grave’ and the ‘Ode in May.’”
“If our own poet’s judgments are correct, surely he need not excite himself over the faults which give to his own virtues the helpful emphasis of contrast; there are worse fates than insulation—on a pinnacle.” ”

“ Hatred is contagious. The animals under its spell turned on man to destroy him.
“‘The terror’ is a pure tour de force in diabolism. With its haunting unreality, its many passages of real beauty, its passages of description of Welsh scenery, no little pleasure may be derived from its chapters.”
“Artfully does the story-teller establish his fiction upon an indubitable fact, fresh in every reader’s mind. The British were inactive; we all wondered why at the time, and here, says our deponent, with his crisp reporter’s air, is the answer.” ”

“ If Mr Poole were primarily an artist, writing a novel for the sake of giving such emotion as a work of art can convey, his insistence would not be nearly so great on his specific idea of the family. But the thing that seems to lead Mr Poole to write a novel is the same thing that led Zola to write novels—the desire to illustrate a large group-idea by the processes of fiction. It is really the way of the scientist as against the way of the artist. ”

“ To nerve himself up to the task before him, he is forced to make himself believe that he is engaged in a war between good and evil, that he is battling for civilization. Natalie encourages his belief, but even at the moment of parting she has begun to doubt it, and as time goes on she comes to feel more and more that war cannot save civilization, that war cannot end war, that militarism is a hydra-headed monster, that if one of its heads, Germany, be cut off today, another will have grown up tomorrow. ”