Lord Fisher devotes the first of these volumes to Memories, reserving such biographical details as he chooses to give for the volume of Records. Of the work as a whole, he says, it is “not an autobiography but a collection of memories of a life-long war against limpets, parasites, sycophants and jellyfish.” Aside from its pungent style, the book is of interest for its memories of King Edward, whom the author loved, for his estimates of Lord Nelson, whom he worshipped, and for his outspoken criticisms of Great Britain’s war policy. There are a number of illustrations and each of the volumes has its index. The appendixes to volume 2 give a summary of Lord Fisher’s great naval reforms, by W. T. Stead, and a synopsis of his career.
“This remarkable book is full of good things. The rush of the author’s forcible prose recalls the headlong progress of a motorcycle emitting explosive noises.”
“We get an impression of more than force; we feel that we are dealing with a perfectly honest man who has an unfailing eye for humbug.”
“It is a rambling autobiography without form or plan, frank to the verge of indiscretion or beyond, crammed with the enthusiasm and energy of youth (he was born in 1851 but was of the tribe of Peter Pan), exuberant beyond the bounds of the English language, and altogether delightful and incredible.”
“Many delightful anecdotes testify to the more irresistible side of Lord Fisher’s personality, and his staunch praise of his friends, his inimitable descriptions of many sea captains, and his warm appreciation of the British merchant navy also show fine traits of discernment and character.” B. U. Burke
“His directness and brevity never fail him, every paragraph is charged with interest, and the reader’s mind easily gathers up and puts in place the material. The originalities in printing are devices of this fertile inventor to make truths go home and lodge.” D. S. M.
“There is no connected narrative or any orderly sequence of events; and yet it is continuously interesting, often amusing, and sometimes exciting in a supreme degree. The language is occasionally deplorable, from the standpoint of most drawing rooms and all grammar schools; and yet there are passages of rare and original beauty from even a rhetorical point of view. One feels in the presence of a psychic force.” B. A. Fiske
“A peculiar book, this—gossipy, and good, nervous comment, with technical explanation shoved in like coal into a furnace. Navy men will enjoy it, but so will the man on the street.”
Reviewed by Doris Webb
“Admiral Fisher’s gift for comradeship makes him an admirable portraitist. There is no dull moment in the two volumes.”
“Sturdy fighter as he is, he hits no foul blow. He is not sparing of his epithets on his opponents en masse ... but of no individual living man or woman does he speak otherwise than in terms of kindliness and honour. If his blame is hearty, so is his praise; and while his blame is anonymous, his praise is defined. He who has applauded others so lavishly and willingly may perhaps be excused when he exhibits considerable affection for his own good deeds also.”
“The books are a vivid photograph of picturesque and historic personality.”
“Inaccuracy is the inevitable result of hasty talk. Those of us who are not over and above solemn, and who are quite prepared to give Lord Fisher all the licence of, say, Admiral Coffin, whose free talk once amused the House of commons, often at his own expense, may still regret that he does not endeavour to deserve a share of ‘the heavenly gift of proportion and perspective’ which he admired in King Edward.”
“There are some things in these memories and records which few critics, now or hereafter, will commend except in so far as they exhibit some of the less attractive features of Lord Fisher’s personality with a candour which goes far to redeem them from censure. But these are really superficial traits.”
FISKE, BRADLEY ALLEN. Art of fighting; its evolution and progress. il *$3 (2c) Century 355
Paying a passing tribute to the universal desire for peace, the author says: “Until it is certain that war has actually been banished from the earth, armies and navies must be maintained. In order to give their country the protection needed, each army and navy must be correctly designed, prepared, and operated. To know whether this is being done, the people need a general knowledge of the principles of the art of fighting, especially of strategy. To impart this knowledge in simple language is the object of this book.” (Preface) The book is in three parts: Fighting and war in general; Historical illustrations; Strategy. This third section is composed of three chapters: Strategy in peace; Strategy in war; and Strategy as related to statesmanship. There is no index.
“It may be objected to this book, particularly by the pacifist mind, that it lacks a true perspective, a proper sense of proportion, an adequate conception of relative values. But the ready answer is that it is the book of an inventor, a specialist, an enthusiast. Admiral Fiske has made a notable contribution, worthy of the most careful study.”
FISKE, CHARLES. Perils of respectability, and other studies in Christian life and service for reconstruction days. *$1.50 Revell 252
“The subjects [of the fourteen sermons] are striking without being sensational. Among them are ‘Alone in the wilderness,’ ‘The peril of an empty soul,’ ‘The manliness of Christ,’ and ‘The gospel for an age of luxury.’ The author has found his way into the heart of things and speaks out of a deep experience. He understands the meaning of Christianity in all its phases, individual, social and corporate.”—Boston Transcript
“Bishop Fiske is a plain and convincing preacher: these are sermons worth reading as well as hearing. We miss the personality of the preacher but that is inevitable in the case of printed discourses.”
“No man, minister or layman, can read them without becoming strengthened.”
FITCH, ALBERT PARKER.[2] Can the church survive in the changing order? *80c Macmillan 230
“Prof. Fitch likens the present day to other great periods of transition; the time of Jesus’s advent, of the Mohammedan invasion, of Luther’s protest. The church today stands for the old order. It has attempted to keep abreast of the times merely by tacking new social programs on to an outworn philosophy. This method is doomed to failure from the beginning. If the church is to survive it must mold progressively its fundamental conceptions. And its most fundamental conception, its attitude to the Jesus of history, must be based on an appreciation of his moral grandeur. A quickened conscience, resulting from a clearer apprehension of the moral value of Jesus’s teaching, is far more important for the church than any new Christological formulation. This moral awakening will itself have religious content in its devotion to eternal and transcendent values.”—Springf’d Republican
“We looked to the last sections of the book for something to guide and inspire the church so unsparingly criticized. There is no program offered. This is a fatal weakness. What is needed now is not a negative criticism but a constructive program.”
“Anything from the pen of Dr Albert Parker Fitch is certain to be clear, colorful and aggressive. His latest little book is no exception.”
FITCH, ALBERT PARKER.[2] Preaching and paganism. *$2 Yale univ. press 204
“The Amherst professor describes the permanent element in religion—the sense of God—in contrast with two forces that are in control of our present day thinking and acting, humanism and naturalism. He shows how these alien factors have entered and subtly taken possession of worship and even preaching, and he pleads for the religious view which, while acknowledging God in nature and in man, refuses to set up either man or nature as its norm and guide.” (N Y Evening Post) “The book is the forty-sixth of the series of the Lyman Beecher lectureship on preaching in Yale university and is the fourth work published on the James Wesley Cooper memorial publication fund.” (Boston Transcript)
“Prof. Fitch may not altogether give the philosophical background to the desired restatement of transcendence, but he at least gives evidence of earnest and well-pondered affirmation. The book is meant both to instruct young clergymen and to inspire them, and it should succeed in its double object.”
FITZGERALD, FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. Flappers and philosophers. *$1.75 Scribner
A book of short stories by the author of “This side of paradise.” Contents: The offshore pirate; The ice palace; Head and shoulders; The cut-glass bowl; Bernice bobs her hair; Benediction; Dalyrimple goes wrong; The four fists.
“The author proves himself a master of the mechanism of short-story technique, a neat hand with dialogue, and exactly as bungling with character work as one would expect from an author as young as the cynicism of his endings proclaims this author to be. For he cannot let well enough alone.... In fact that is the chief trouble with all Mr Fitzgerald’s tales. They are too consciously clever.” I. W. L.
“Here are to be found originality and variety, with imaginativeness of the exceptional order that needs not to seek remote, untrodden paths, but plays upon scenes and people within the radius of ordinary life.”
“The substance of the eight stories in his volume is in harmony with his new manner. They have a rather ghastly rattle of movement that apes energy and a hectic straining after emotion that apes intensity. The surface is unnaturally taut; the substance beneath is slack and withered as by a premature old age. In ‘This side of paradise’ there was both gold and dross. Instead of wringing his art, in Mr Hergesheimer’s fine expression, free of all dross, Mr Fitzgerald proceeded to cultivate it and to sell it to the Saturday Evening Post. Why write good books? You have to sell something like five thousand copies to earn the price of one story.”
“Not the most superficial reader can fail to recognize Mr Fitzgerald’s talent and genius.”
“‘Head and shoulders’ has a twist at the end that is truly O. Henryish. So does ‘Bernice bobs her hair.’ We pick these two as the best.”
Reviewed by Sibyl Vane
FITZGERALD, FRANCIS SCOTT KEY. This side of paradise. *$1.75 Scribner
“It isn’t a story in the regular sense: There’s no beginning, except the beginning of Amory Blaine, born healthy, wealthy and extraordinarily good-looking, and by way of being spoiled by a restless mother whom he quaintly calls by her first name, Beatrice. There’s no middle to the story, except the eager fumbling at life of this same handsome boy, proud, cleanminded, born to conquer yet fumbling, at college and in love with Isabelle, then Clara, then Rosalind, then Eleanor. No end to the story except the closing picture of this same boy in his early twenties, a bit less confident about life, with ‘no God in his heart ... his ideas still in riot ... with the pain of memory ... he could not tell why the struggle was worth while,’ and yet ‘determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personality he had passed.’”—Pub W
“In all its affectations, its cleverness, its occasional beauty, even its sometimes intentioned vulgarity and ensuing timidity, it so unites with the matter as to make the book a convincing chronicle of youth by youth.” M. E. Bailey
“It is merely his way of doing things that makes his story different from multitudes of its kind. To say that in ‘This side of paradise’ Mr Fitzgerald has written a novel that will cause us to use a modern and expressive phrase, to sit up and take notice, is a mild expression of the feeling he arouses in us. He is a story teller with a courage of his own. Many will not like his novel, some will abhor it, but none can question the fact that he is a novelist with a message if not with a mission.”
“Part of the story is thoroly amusing; part of it goes deep into the serious thoughts and desires and ambitions of its hero-author; in the last third he dives so deep that he gets well over his head.”
“Mr Fitzgerald is on the path of those who strive. His gifts have an unmistakable amplitude and much in his book is brave and beautiful.”
“An astonishing and refreshing book. The book is fundamentally honest and if the intellectual and spiritual analyses are, sometimes tortuous and the nomenclature bewildering to those not intimate with collegiate invention, it is nevertheless delightful and encouraging to find a novel which gives us in the accurate terms of intellectual honesty a reflection of American undergraduate life.” R. V. A. S.
“The whole story is disconnected, more or less, but loses none of its charm on that account. It could have been written only by an artist who knows how to balance his values, plus a delightful literary style.”
“There are, as I see it, two secrets to the all-round satisfactoriness of Mr Fitzgerald’s book; he can write—that simply sticks out all over the book; and he has the rather rare good sense of ‘crowding his work instead of spreading it thin.’” R. S. L.
Reviewed by H. W. Boynton
“The story’s construction occasionally gives an impression of jerkiness; but the author’s obvious familiarity with his ground and his uncanny ability to see life through the eyes of his characters reduces this defect almost to the vanishing point.”
FLEMING, WILLIAM HENRY. Treaty-making power; Slavery and the race problem in the South. $1.50 Stratford co. 341.2
The book contains two speeches by the author as a member of Congress from the tenth Georgia district. The practical issue underlying the speech of the Treaty-making power was given by the crisis threatening legislation in California to discriminate against Japanese children in the public schools. The second speech, Slavery and the race problem in the South, is a courageous plea for justice on behalf of the negro.
FLETCHER, CHARLES BRUNSDON. Stevenson’s Germany. *$3.50 Scribner 996
“This book, which groups about Stevenson’s ‘Footnote to history’ evidence of German misbehaviour in the Pacific, and particularly in Samoa, is, we are informed by the preface, the conclusion of an ‘argument against Germany, begun in “The new Pacific,” and continued through “The problem of the Pacific”’; it is essentially an attempt to show that Germany is unfit to govern in the islands of the South sea, and a plea that in no circumstances whatever should she be allowed to regain an inch of those profitable lands.”—Ath
“The present volume has little to commend it. The organization is very faulty, the materials used are slight and even they have not been presented as well as they deserved, and there are certain obvious errors.” P. J. T.
“There may be good and just reasons for excluding Germany from the Pacific, but they do not appear conclusively in this book. What appears too clearly is the desire to profit to the utmost by her downfall.” F. W. S.
“Well written and well-documented book.”
“The difficulty in being satisfied with Mr Fletcher’s case is not, however, that it is unfairly put or in any way exaggerated. On the contrary, it has been carefully prepared, and the evidence put forward is trustworthy. The trouble is that, from circumstances over which the Germans had no control, it is all pre-war evidence and must be judged by pre-war standards.”
FLETCHER, CHARLES ROBERT LESLIE. Historical portraits, 1700–1850; with an introd. by C. F. Bell. il 2v ea *$5.65 Oxford 757
“The Clarendon press has published, after a long interval, the third volume of Messrs Fletcher and Walker’s collection of historical portraits. It contains a hundred and fourteen portraits, selected by Mr Walker, of men and women of eighteenth-century Britain, with short and racy memoirs by Mr Fletcher. The portrait gallery includes the famous admirals; generals like Wolfe, Cumberland, Wade, and Ligonier; Wesley, Berkeley, and other great divines; men of letters, lawyers, men of science like Newton and Halley, Dodsley the publisher, Arkwright, Wedgwood, and Brindley, the maker of canals, whose talents would have rusted in obscurity had he not been employed by the Duke of Bridgewater.” (Spec) The previous volumes appeared in 1909 and 1912.
“It is fair to say that the collaborators of this volume are to be congratulated in general on their selection. Yet the principle on which they worked remains a mystery. One needs only to consider the biographies which have accompanied the portraits of other such collections to perceive that Mr Fletcher is as much a genius in his way as Mr Walker is in his; and that between them they have produced an extraordinarily entertaining and instructive book.” W. C. Abbott
“Mr Fletcher’s potted ‘lives’ are excellent: they are a pattern of what such brief biographies should be. Scholarly, of course, informative and readable, they are completely at ease in their handling of men in every walk of life. The book has its limitations.” M. H. Spielmann
“The value of this publication is so great for educational purposes that one hesitates before offering any criticism. Mr Fletcher’s biographical notices are in their turn models of conciseness and economy of space, and give just the information which should excite the student to a better acquaintance with each subject in turn. These notices, however, convey some idea that they have been written entirely apart from the portraits themselves.” Lionel Cust
“We have seen better photographic reproductions. But the volume is none the less of the greatest interest and value.”
“His biographies bring under fire virtually the whole of English history between 1700 and 1850, and few of them are not lit with new interest. We can imagine that in questions of aesthetic criticism his personal view will not be unchallenged.”
FLETCHER, JOSEPH SMITH. Dead men’s money (Eng title, Droonin’ watter). (Borzoi mystery stories) *$2 (2½c) Knopf
This story is told by Hugh Moneylaws, a young law student in Berwick-upon-Tweed. While going on an errand which kept him out very late one night, Hugh comes upon a dead man lying in the woods. In the investigation that follows, Hugh conceals one piece of information, a bit of caution he has reason to regret later. He does not mention publicly having seen Sir Gilbert Carstairs, 7th baronet of Hathercleugh House, at the scene of the murder. When the one person with whom he shares this knowledge meets a violent death, he begins to realize the seriousness of it, and when Sir Gilbert makes a dastardly but unsuccessful attempt to put Hugh himself out of the way, he is convinced of Sir Gilbert’s guilt, and his disappearance makes assurance doubly sure. The remainder of the story tells of the efforts to locate him, and the facts that come to the light about him in the search. On several occasions Hugh’s life hangs by a hair, but he eventually comes out of it with only a crippled knee, and nothing more to fear from “Sir Gilbert,” who has met his punishment at the hands of another enemy.
“Take one typewriterful of Stevenson, add several murders for luck and one mystery that isn’t mysterious, mix well with a sensational jacket and an afterthought of a plot and the answer is ‘Dead men’s money.’”
“The author’s grasp on the various threads of his story is always firm, and he brings them all together at the end, leaving them tied up in a neat bow, with no loose ends, with a skill that compels deep admiration of his craftsmanship.”
“Mr Fletcher is one of the most skilful writers of this type of fiction. The narrative abounds in thrills and tense situations and will be highly diverting to devotees of this school of fiction.”
FLETCHER, JOSEPH SMITH. Paradise mystery. (Borzoi mystery stories) *$1.90 (2c) Knopf
A stranger in the town of Wrychester is killed by a fall from the upper gallery of the cathedral. But this fact naturally is not so simple as stated, and leads to the question, was the fall suicide, accident or murder, and if murder, who was the murderer, and what was the motive. In the answering of these questions many people are involved: Dr Ransford, whom the dead man had been asking for; Dr Bryce, his assistant, who had been forcing unwelcome attentions upon Ransford’s ward, Mary Bewery; Collishaw, the laborer, who later met his death because he knew too much; Simpson Harker, an ex-detective; Stephen Folliot, whose step-son is also a suitor for Mary Bewery’s hand. These, and others, are all bound up in a network of mystery which is not unraveled until the surprising denouement of the story.
“A good English mystery story.”
“Besides the mystery there is a tender little love story and several interesting characters.”
“The excellent reputation earned by J. S. Fletcher as a teller of engaging mystery tales is preserved in his latest story, ‘The Paradise mystery.’”
FLETCHER, JOSEPH SMITH. Talleyrand maxim. il *$1.75 (2c) Knopf
Linford Pratt, a young lawyer, is inspired by Talleyrand’s maxim: “With time and patience the mulberry leaf is turned into satin.” He knew that wit and skill were his, and that time and patience, coupled with opportunity, would bring him the fortune he craved. He was not over nice about the opportunity. It came to him in the shape of a will whose existence no one suspected. It was to have been the first rung of the ladder by which he was to rise. Complications set in in the shape of an unknown witness of his theft, and wits as sharp as his. He must rid himself of the first by murder; he must extricate himself from the latter by blackmail, by fraud and intrigue and still another murder. But the net closes in about him till a bullet from his own weapon is his only means of escape. Side by side with this tale of horror goes a perfectly good romance between a good young man and a virtuous young woman.
“A very ingenious and well told mystery story.”
“In the invention and use of the complications, little and big, with which the author weaves and embroiders his plot, advances and delays its movement, and intrigues the reader’s attention, Mr Fletcher works with ingenuity, resource and skill. And he writes with a freshness of touch and an individual quality of style not always possessed by writers of detective fiction.”
“The story is written with the easy facility of a practised hand, and, if we once accept without demur certain conventional improbabilities, it shows plenty of movement.”
“Mr Fletcher shows much inventive skill, and is resourceful in advancing and delaying the movement of the plot, and in handling the maze of complications which arise. He employs a fresh touch that gives a new zest to the much over-worked detective-story type of light fiction.”
FLEURY, MAURICE, comte. Memoirs of the Empress Eugénie. 2v il *$7.50 Appleton 996
“The publishers have had the manuscript for the last ten years, but because of the personal revelations contained in the book, Eugénie requested that it be withheld from the public until her death. It is written by Comte Fleury, who was for more than twenty years an intimate member of the empress’s entourage.” (Springf’d Republican) The memoirs end with the peace negotiations of 1870 and do not touch on the empress’s later years. There is no index.
“The memoirs contain no surprises. There is nothing in them that will compel any very considerable re-writing of the history of the second empire. Probably the most distinctive feature is the portrait they draw of the empress. It is, I think, much too favorable, inaccurate because incomplete. But it is done with sincerity, modesty, and good taste. It is a revelation of the empress as she would like to be seen.” F. M. Anderson
“A misleading title, for there is proportionately little from the pen of the empress herself and her personality is often lost in the flood of details of diplomacy and court life, but the author has been able to add some fresh information to the history of the second empire.”
“He who hopes to find romance in the two volumes of the ‘Memoirs of the Empress Eugénie’ will be disappointed. What are we to say of a writer who omits both the drama of her rise and the pathos of her closing years, who robs the history of all its picturesque character and concentrates his attention upon her official routine? What are we to say of him? We are to say, of course, that he is an ‘official’ biographer and that, as such, is so anxious to present nothing which will detract from an impression of perfect propriety and dull royal respectability, that he has deprived her of all character.” J. W. Krutch
“The most valuable and important things are the reports of intimate conversations and sayings of the Emperor and Empress and others, which picture forth their characters and, without description or character analysis, place them in a different light than they have been placed by other memoir writers and historians.”
“Being a great admirer of Napoleon and Eugénie, Comte Fleury naturally gives a picture which is highly favorable to them. But he has also attempted to take into consideration the work which has been done by historical scholars on this period. The point at which the reader must be on his guard is in accepting without question Napoleon’s views as given in the conversations which the author quotes.” S. B. Fay
“Memoirs are often disappointments, either containing nothing worth saying, or running to the Margot Asquith type. These memoirs have something to say, and it was not, in the saying, found necessary to surround them with bits of scandal or incidents better left untold.”
“Comte Fleury had access to large quantities of letters and papers. They are thrown into the book pell-mell, with only the loosest arrangement; the source, and therefore the value, of many of them is left uncertain; it is not always easy to see in a particular place whose narrative is being read. None the less they make an interesting assortment, though nothing is brought to light in them to modify the judgment which reasonable people have for some time been accustomed to pass on the empire.”
FLEXNER, HORTENSE. Clouds and cobblestones. *$1.50 Houghton 811
As the title indicates this collection of poems includes in its subjects everything contained in life between the clouds and the cobblestones: wide sympathies and interests and knowledge of men and their ways. The author employs both rhyme and meter and free verse. Among the titles are: If God had known; Children’s ward; Hunger; Masks; Longing; A sky-scraper; To a grasshopper; All souls’ night, 1917; Mammon redeemed; The sons of Icarus; Folk-dance class; Munitions; To Peter Pan; Blown leaves; A child; The masseuse.
“There is not a single poem in this collection that is not purely creative by reason of its presentation of a fresh, vivid idea, emotionalized and expressed poetically.” W: S. Braithwaite
“Quite possibly there is nothing in these pages that will long endure, but the verses touch human values with sincerity and poetic feeling.” L. B.
“She writes with a great deal of technical proficiency; her verse is simple, direct, and readable. This is at the same time its greatest virtue and its greatest defect, for having been apprehended easily, the lines fade from the memory, leaving no trace.”
FLINT, LEON NELSON. Editorial: a study in effectiveness of writing. *$2.50 Appleton 070
The author holds that, for all the truth that there may be in the saying: “the good editor is born not made,” the editor who has not thought out and applied a technique of his craft is “going it blind.” The book deals with methods of finding, gathering and handling editorial materials and with notions as to editorial responsibilities and opportunities. Contents: Development of the editorial column; Weakness and strength of the editorial; The editor and his readers; Materials for editorials; Editorial purposes; Building the editorial; The manner of saying it; Paragraphs and paragraphers; Typographical appearance; The editorial page; Editorial responsibility; The editor’s routine and reading; Analyzing editorials. The numerous illustrations consist of copies of specimen editorial pages and there is an index.
FLYNN, JOHN STEPHEN.[2] Influence of Puritanism on the political and religious thought of the English. *$4 Dutton 285.9
“A broad survey of the results of the English Puritan movement in both hemispheres. The author has sought to distinguish the permanent from the merely transitory elements of Puritanism, and to relate it to the present age.”—R of Rs
“His reading, wide as it is, is in excess of his powers to use it profitably. He sets out with vague ideas on the varied content of Puritanism, with the natural result that he leaves us in a state of vagueness.”
“We are given an amiable piece of dilettantism, praiseworthy in object, careless in execution, and distinguished neither by clearness of intention nor by profundity of thought. We fail to see anything fresh in Mr Flynn’s book, and the ignorance which it would dispel is ignorance of the fundamental kind which a knowledge of English history would make impossible.”
FOCH, FERDINAND. Precepts and judgments. *$4 Holt 355