Instead of the above title the author has been tempted to call her collection of essays “Democracy, plumbing, and the war” because democracy, always having a materialistic connotation, and plumbing, symbolizing physical comforts, as well as war, “make the problem of our immediate future a rather special one.” In the first essay, The new simplicity, the cultural élite are exhorted to practice a severe simplicity of living in order to hold their own against overpaid labor whose tastes run to luxuries. In The extirpation of culture four causes are named for this gradual extirpation among us: The increased hold of the democratic fallacy on the public mind; The influx of a racially and socially inferior population; Materialism in all classes; and The idolatry of science. The other essays are: Dress and the woman; Caviare on principle; Fashions in men; The newest woman; Tabu and temperament; The boundaries of truth; Miss Alcott’s New England; The sensual ear; British novelists, ltd.; The remarkable rightness of Rudyard Kipling.
“Stimulating and provocative essays.”
“Sparkling little essays full of originality and common sense.”
“Mrs Gerould is infinitely more agreeable as an essayist than as a short story writer and her discussions of current problems, social, spiritual and literary, are not only clever but stimulating.”
Reviewed by Dorothy Brewster
“The book is as charming as it is clever, as wise as it is witty. ‘British novelists, ltd.,’ is the most individual of the essays in this volume, as it is also the most amusing. It is full of humor and of good humor. It has the light touch so much desired nowadays; none the less is it a searching criticism.” Brander Matthews
“One salutes the Mrs Gerould of the short stories as a fictional artist of subtle power and distinguished skill. One views her secondary personality, the social philosopher, the student of manners and morals, as an example of the perturbing truth that a mind which creates with brilliancy and force may be feeble and unrewarding in ratiocination. Mrs Gerould is trite and trivial not only whenever her subject gives her an opportunity to be, but at moments when she might easily be something else.” Lawrence Gilman
“A little superior, supercilious Mrs Gerould doubtless is, and not a little paradoxical. But in her speculation, she uncovers a good many meaty ideas. One may not always agree with her or think her correct in her statement of facts; but one has at least got some return for the energy expended in reading.”
“When we say that Mrs Gerould is sometimes rather flippant, we have indicated all the defects that a truly impartial critic may find in this attractive and satisfying volume.” M. F. Egan
GIBBON, JOHN MURRAY. Conquering hero. *$2 (3½c) Lane
A fishing party of city men is interrupted by the startling appearance of a beautiful woman. She introduces herself as the Princess Stephanie Sobieska, and is then recognized as a moving picture star. One of the guides of the fishing party, Donald Macdonald, Scotch Canadian and veteran of the world war, becomes a prime favorite with her, and after the fishing season is over, they still remain friends. He goes out to a farm in British Columbia and there meets a little girl whom he shortly becomes engaged to. But here the Princess Sobieska unwittingly makes trouble for him, for she appears on the scene again, and Kate thinks there is or has been something more than friendship, between Donald and her, and breaks the engagement. The Princess, in her wisdom, takes just the right course to straighten matters out, and all ends happily.
“The book suggests an attractive open-air atmosphere, and the freedom of great spaces.”
“Frankly, Mr Gibbon has contrived to secure a host of ill-assorted ingredients that, so far from assimilating each other, make known their utter unsimilarity in no uncertain fashion.”
“If it is possible, Mr Gibbon has too much real life in his book. Now and again the realization comes quite consciously that he is using his carpetbag of a romance as a receptacle for chunks of his own life. On the whole his story is a crude, vigorous, simple and attractive sketch of the Canada of today.”
“It is an amusing tale, but carries no serious conviction.”
GIBBON, M. MORGAN. Jan. *$1.90 (3c) Doubleday
John and Jan are both Owens, John, son of the quiet, staid Henry, and Jan, daughter of the wild, wilful John. The younger John and Jan alike crave freedom and liberty from the time they play together as children. Even then John’s love for Jan is strong and protecting and it never wavers all thru their school life until she promises to marry him. But she finds the engagement irksome and after a quarrel, John sets her free. She experiments with her freedom, trying one excursion into liberty after another. But nothing satisfies, she and John are both miserable and both too proud to give in. Eventually she realizes that she would rather have love than freedom.
“The young lady who gives a name to ‘Jan’ labours obviously under the disadvantage—very usual with novel heroines—of meaning something to her creator, which has not been conveyed to the reader. The descriptions of Welsh middle-class life are vivid and sympathetic, and impress us as drawn from actual fact.”
“It is a thoroughly wholesome story, set forth by a writer who has the gift of frank, effective, convincing narrative. The value of this novel, which most readers will appreciate, lies in the fact that it is entertaining in itself, page after page.”
“This is a first novel which may fairly be described as promising. Praise must be given to the careful delineation of the characters of Jan and John.”
GIBBONS, HERBERT ADAMS. France and ourselves. *$1.50 (2½c) Century 940.344
This collection of “Interpretative studies, 1917–1919,” is from the author’s war contributions to various American magazines, mainly to the Century. The burden of the book throughout is “We must see problems as France sees them, and we must help to solve them in the French way and not in the American.” Even when the author contrasts America’s “fourteen points” with what he is pleased to call France’s “fourteen points,” he does not consider the task hopeless. Contents: How we can help France; The tiger of France; World justice for France; The industrial effort of France during the war; Human currents of the war; The attitude of France toward peace; The reconstruction of northern France; The case against Caillaux; What confronts France.
“Much of the book must be classed less as history than as propaganda, though propaganda of a very high-minded type. But the inevitable shortcomings of the book add in another way to its value. It vibrates with the spirit of the war and with the generous enthusiasm that inspired those Americans to whom the true character of France had been revealed.” A. D. Hill
“Much of this book is now badly out of date. Aside from this, there is much that is valuable and even timely in the book. Dr Gibbons writes with vigor and clarity of vision.”
“The chapter on the attitude of France toward peace, written about a year ago, is full of matter for thought today.” T. M. Parrott
“The average American can be benefited by reading this collection of essays.”
GIBBONS, HERBERT ADAMS. Riviera towns. il *$6 McBride 914.4
“The Mediterranean is more blue than elsewhere because firs and cedars and pines are not too green. The cliffs are more red than elsewhere because there is no prevailing tone of bare, baked earth to modify them into brown and gray. On the Riviera one does not have to give up the rich green of northern landscapes to enjoy the alternative of brilliant sunshine.” With this characterization of the Riviera before him the reader is taken along the coast and up thoroughfares “built for legs and nothing else” to browse through the picturesque and medieval towns, more or less familiar to every one but made more real to him by the thirty-two full-page illustrations of Lester George Hornby. The towns described are Grasse; Cagnes; Saint-Paul-duVar; Villeneuve-Loubet; Vence; Menton; Monte Carlo; Villefranche; Nice; Antibes; Cannes; Mougins; Fréjus; Saint-Raphaël; Théoule.
“As it must be an open question as to which is the most interesting town, so it is an unanswerable question as to which of the chapters is the best, and Mr Hornby has added much to the book by his clever illustrations.” G. M. H.
“It represents the best type of its class of literature, written, as it is, in a delightfully informal and intimate mood, with description and anecdote blended with a rare felicity.” B. R. Redman
GIBBONS, HERBERT ADAMS. Venizelos. (Modern statesmen ser.) il *$3.50 Houghton
Much of this biography is based on the author’s personal acquaintance with his subject. As a college teacher in the Near East he has, moreover, an intimate knowledge of the entire political situation that precipitated the second Balkan war, that kept Greece neutral in 1915 and 1916, and that dictated the policy of Venizelos at the peace conference. Venizelos, although a native of Crete, inherited his Hellenism and became active in its cause from the time he entered the University of Athens as a law student. Contents: The boyhood and early manhood of an unredeemed Greek; A revolutionary by profession; Venizelos solves the Cretan question; Venizelos intervenes in Greece; The Balkan alliance surprises Europe; Turkey is crushed by her former Balkan subjects; The second Balkan war and the treaty of Bukarest; Venizelos reorganizes Greece internally; Venizelos offers to join the entente against Germany; Constantine tries to keep Greece neutral; Venizelos goes to Saloniki; Greece in the world war; Venizelos at the peace conference; Greece against the integrity of the Ottoman empire. The book has a number of maps and is illustrated and indexed.
“This study is not that of an academic student, nor a detached investigator. As the author himself states in his introduction, he is more a reporter than a historian. His narrative gains thereby measurably in freshness and interest.” O. McK., jr.
“The book was written before the downfall of Premier Venizelos, but it will be none the less useful.”
“What he is writing is not dignified biography, but propaganda.” Elenore Kellogg
“The book is one of great value, notwithstanding its lack of some of the qualities artistic and interesting biography ought to have.”
“Mr Gibbons’ book is the most successful attempt to give a complete and proportioned account of Venizelos’ life.” A. E. Phoutrides
“Aside from its strictly biographical features, this volume is a contribution to the recent history of the Balkans, as well as to that of the peace conference at Paris.”
“Mr Gibbons has contributed a notable addition to modern biography.” E. B. Moses
GIBBS, GEORGE FORT. Splendid outcast. il *$2 (2c) Appleton
In the midst of a battle Jim Horton finds his twin brother Harry, an officer with responsibility, crouching behind the lines in a “blue funk,” desperately afraid to obey his major’s orders, Jim compels Harry to change uniforms with him, takes Harry’s place, and so splendidly performs his brother’s duty that he gains for him the croix de guerre. Incidentally, Jim is seriously wounded. Recovering in the hospital he finds himself in a strange dilemma. No one believes his story. At last he grimly resolves to see the game through. This is difficult, as Harry is a dissolute crook engaged in some shady undertakings, and Jim is all that a true gentleman ought to be. Furthermore there is Harry’s beautiful bride to add more perplexing complications. Around this situation evolves a tense story, running through the underworld of Paris. In the end Jim, upon the death of his worthless brother, marries the beautiful Moira, whose marriage to Harry had been forced upon her, and who loves Jim beyond question.
“It is undeniably a dramatic story that Mr Gibbs tells. In spite of the transparent confusion of identities, he manages to keep us genuinely guessing at least part of the time.”
“If the characters were any of them real people the probabilities of the plot would not matter so much, but they are merely the stereotyped figures who have appeared in dozens of tales of this order, and they rather detract than add to the book’s credibility.”
“The book would make a tremendous movie. The moves of the detective-like story are too intricate, the action too violent, the scenes too realistic to be overlooked in this field. It is a book for tired brains and jaded moments.” Katharine Oliver
“The story moves with the rapid characteristic of Gibbs’s tales, but many of the incidents are more obviously manufactured for effect than in some of the author’s preceding books.”
GIBBS, SIR PHILIP HAMILTON. Now it can be told (Eng title, Realities of war). *$3 (1c) Harper 940.3
“In this book I have written in a blunt way some episodes of the war as I observed them, and gained firsthand knowledge of them in their daily traffic. I have not painted the picture blacker than it was, nor selected gruesome morsels and joined them together to make a jig-saw puzzle for ghoulish delight.... I have tried to set down as many aspects of the war’s psychology as I could find in my remembrance of these years, without exaggeration or false emphasis, so that out of their confusion, even out of their contradiction, the real truth of the adventure might be seen as it touched the souls of men. Yet when one strives to sum up the evidence ... are we really poor beasts in the jungle, striving by tooth and claw, high velocity and poison-gas, for the survival of the fittest in an endless conflict? If that is so, then God mocks at us. Or, rather, if that is so, there is no God such as we men may love with love for men.” (Part 8) Contents: Observers and commanders; The school of courage; The nature of a battle; A winter of discontent; The heart of a city; Psychology on the Somme; The fields of Armageddon; For what men died.
“The war writing of Mr Gibbs presents an interesting problem. He appears to be a reasonably sensitive observer, he has had exceptional opportunities for observing, and he writes with considerable fluency. Why, then, does his writing affect us so little?... Mr Gibbs’ style has no definite and unique outline; it is, as it were, a composite style, his voice has the indistinctness of the voice of a crowd. The style is adequate to his purpose because his sentiments have something of the same quality. They furnish, as it were, the greatest common measure of the more intelligent opinion and the more decent feeling about the war.” J. W. N. S.
“His book is a bit querulous about the obvious indignities; but it is calm and terrible about the great wrongs.”
“The indictment of war is written in the same spirit as Barbusse’s famous novel ‘Le feu’ or Sassoon’s war poetry, and with as much literary skill as either. Mr Gibbs’ emotional reaction to the horrors of war fuses the miscellaneous details of the book into a powerful picture of the whole. His intellectual reaction is not so clear.”
“It is a great triumph for him to have written this book, to say the things he does say and reveal the facts he reveals.” F. H.
“This volume marks the close of that great work done by Mr Philip Gibbs as a chronicler of war. It is a wonderful close, and a public tired of war books must not make the mistake of neglecting this, which has a frankness, a truth and a stern reality never before shown in all the literature of the war.” Cecil Robert
“Different from his other books in that it shows no particular design, is painfully fragmentary and reveals Mr Gibbs as an unsatisfactory psychologist.”
“A book which, however unpleasant it may be, is to all appearances both truthful and sincere. Its truthfulness is its greatest virtue. In several ways, however, the book is somewhat unsatisfactory. Its tone, one may say, is not that of well-balanced thinking or of altogether unbiassed criticism; it does not wholly convince. Furthermore, one cannot rid oneself of the feeling that Sir Philip leans somewhat toward the pacifist fallacy.”
“Mr Gibbs says things well: his fault is that he says them too often. Some of the repetition is clever emphasis that drives home the point while the speed saves the effect of boredom. If the book lasts it will be as a record of matters which properly belong to history, but with which history does not always deal.”
“We cannot honestly recommend anyone to read this book just now, valuable and interesting though it may be to the next and succeeding generations. Power of graphic description Sir Philip Gibbs undoubtedly has; but his bitterness of spirit and his emotional worship of youth are not moods to be prolonged at the present hour.”
“He has a keen eye for the telling detail that impresses a picture indelibly on the mind, and his quick sympathy with all who suffer helps him to keep the human side of the great tragedy foremost in our thoughts. His style is sufficient without being distinguished. He has, however, the defects of his qualities. He sees what is to be seen so intensely that he is inclined to forget the existence of what he does not see.”
“From the beginning to the end he resolutely refused (and it is a great thing to say of him) to become familiar with war. He took no intellectual pleasure, as it was so easy to do, in all the human ingenuity that was concentrated on it. So too Mr Gibbs kept himself remote from everything that concerned war as a profession, with its inevitable indifference to suffering. He is single-minded in his desire to be the spokesman of youth that went to the war.”
“If ‘The judgment of peace’ is a flame, ‘Now it can be told’ is a slow and smoldering fire. These books, accepted by mankind, would be sufficient in themselves to end war forever.” G. H.
GIBBS, SIR PHILIP HAMILTON. People of destiny; Americans as I saw them at home and abroad. il *$2 (5c) Harper 917.3
In describing the life in New York and the people he met in America the author records impressions that are much the same as those of other Europeans, vid., that there is too much vastness, bustle and hubbub, too little “art, beauty, leisure, the quiet pools of thought.” In summing up the characteristics of the people he finds them “filled with vital energy, kind in heart, sincere and simple in their ways of thought and speech, idealistic in emotion, practical in conduct and democratic by faith and upbringing”; and he expresses the hope that these characteristics will help them to steer free of the dangers that threaten our liberties since the war. In telling America what England thinks of it he is holding up a warning mirror to us. Contents: The adventure of life in New York; Some people I met in America; Things I like in the United States; America’s new place in the world; What England thinks of America; Americans in Europe.
“He expresses a number of opinions about America, but they are not all consistent with one another, they belong to different emotional registers, and we feel it would be a purely arbitrary proceeding to select any consistent set of them as representative.”
“His first few chapters are so insistently laudatory that one feels his praise issues more from his will than from his judgment, that he is simply determined to see good, and one longs—perversely, no doubt—for more shading in the picture. In the closing chapters, however, he comes to grips with his subject and gives a more balanced verdict.”
“Sir Philip Gibbs met so many of the right people during his stay among us that it is curious he should have learned anything whatever about America. Sir Philip’s book is occupied largely with the conventional admirations of the casual European for the physical conveniences of our civilization, with the regulation amazements about wonder cities and their subways and skylines and palaces and bejewelled parasites.” Harold Kellock
“In the main his studies of the American man, woman, and child at home are not only correct, but animated by a cordial pleasure in having seen people he likes, doing the things he likes.”
GIBBS, SIR PHILIP HAMILTON. Wounded souls. *$2 (2c) Doran
The story is not so much a novel as it is an account of the war’s effect on human souls. We see it first in Lille with its inhuman savage hatred and lust for revenge on the part of the French and a revulsion of feeling in the English soldiers from patriotism to an abomination of the war. Then the author shows us the effect of the armistice on the German people and their reviving hope kindled by the fourteen points. Again in England the same irreconcilable spirit of hatred as in France and the ruthless, morbid, neurotic sullenness of the returned soldier. Between all these forces the crushing out of love and life in the young couple—the English officer and his German wife—whose humanity had carried them beyond nationality. The whole is a drastic picture of post-war Europe.
“In this book Philip Gibbs, with powerful, vital strokes, brings home to us that the war is not yet over, although fought and won.”
“Only a man who has been there could introduce so much background. Mr Gibbs was either too close to his material or too much the journalist to succeed in giving the atmosphere of an invaded country as well as Sir Harry Johnston has done in ‘Mrs Warren’s daughter.’ But his chronicle of public sentiment in England equals that of H. G. Wells’s stories of the war.”
“All of the descriptive part, where the author confines himself principally to an admirable reporting of what he himself saw and heard, is extremely interesting and worth while. The fictional portion of the book is less successful.” L. M. Field
“The junkers of all nations, the militarists, the advocates of universal military training, will not thank Philip Gibbs for ‘Wounded souls,’ which must at least be credited with eloquence and disquieting vision.”
“It is excellently done, and often moving, but it is just the feeling that everything is being made so skilfully to tell which prevents one accepting it in the spirit of real æsthetic enjoyment. Sir Philip Gibbs, like many another of us, is disillusioned, which is not surprising, but he overdraws the picture of disillusionment and spiritual decay. His shadows are all pitch dark and his lights too high.”
GIBRAN, KAHLIL. Forerunner; his parables and poems. il *$1.50 Knopf 892.7
This book is similar in form and thought to “The madman,” published in 1918. “You are your own forerunner, and the towers you have builded are but the foundation of your giant-self. And that self too shall be a foundation,” are the opening words. The five illustrations are from drawings by the author.
“There is a great deal of beauty and imaginative power in Mr Gibran’s pages which sink into the consciousness with a kind of Oriental hush that is captivating.” W. S. B.
GIBRAN, KAHLIL. Twenty drawings. *$3.50 Knopf 741
“The drawings in this book are by a Syrian who the publishers tell us ‘has brought the mysticism of the Near East to America and has chosen to throw in his lot with the artists of the Occident in an endeavor to fuse new bonds of interest between the old world and the new.’ This theme of the publishers is further elaborated in an interpretative essay by Miss Alice Raphael which prefaces the volume.”—Nation
“His drawings call up instantaneously to the memory the tinted pencil sketches of Rodin; they strive for the massiveness of Rodin but attain instead a feminine sweetness of touch and conception. They hint strongly too of the methods and mannerisms of Leonardo da Vinci.” Glen Mullin
GIBSON, CHARLES R. Chemistry and its mysteries; the story of what things are made of told in simple language. il *$1.50 Lippincott 540
“The preface of ‘Chemistry and its mysteries,’ is addressed to the adult and sets forth the advantages of disabusing the mind of any child below high school age of the idea that chemistry is a dry and merely technical study. The author bases the book on the belief that children will become genuinely interested in science, if the subject is put before them in a manner in which they can easily grasp it. The volume is the fifth in the Science for children series, the text showing in a simple manner the inner meaning of everyday happenings and the composition of materials met in everyday life.”—Springf’d Republican
“Of interest to the adult as well as child.”
“He certainly has achieved considerable success in a difficult task. It is unfortunate that Mr Gibson makes a few statements to which exception can be taken in themselves.”
GIBSON, WILFRID WILSON.[2] Neighbours. *$2 Macmillan 821
“There is restraint and beauty in these poems which always keep close touch with men and women. Neighbours speak in the quiet of their homes a few intimate lines which open whole life stories; pretty love poems, poems of travel and picture verses are gathered with ‘In khaki’ and ‘Casualties.’”—Booklist
“Mr Gibson for us has something of the power and the achievement of his fellow-Northumbrian, Bewick. Granted that he possesses not a tithe of Bewick’s nature-knowledge, he approaches him more nearly in his reading of human nature; and when he leaves this province for the dash and splendour of Turner or even the woodland reverie of Birket Foster, he drops for a shadow the substance which he had before.” E. B.
“The only definitely interesting section of Mr Gibson’s new book is the first, called ‘Neighbours,’ containing a series of grim rural monologues and dialogues. The other sections are filled with turgid sonnets and monotonous quatrains about the war.” Mark Van Doren
“Admiring Mr Gibson’s careful workmanship and truth to nature, we cannot escape the feeling that at least half the time he is to the real poet as the photographer, however fine, is to the artist.”
Reviewed by K. L. Bates
“Mr Gibson’s skill is most admirable when we consider that it is allied to poetic feeling of the utmost simplicity and depth.”
“Mr Gibson’s latest book will not lessen his reputation as a poet, but it can scarcely add to it. For while the virtues of style and sincerity which his earlier poetry has taught us to expect, are in equal evidence here, the vices which we trusted were only incidents of his growth remain in an exaggerated condition.”
GILBRETH, FRANK BUNKER, and GILBRETH, LILLIAN EVELYN (MOLLER) (MRS FRANK BUNKER GILBRETH). Motion study for the handicapped. (Efficiency books) il *$4 Dutton 658.7
“The authors maintain that there is ‘one best way’ in every industrial process, and that way can best be determined by a study of the methods of experts as revealed by motion pictures so taken as to show the path of the motion and the time required. The best way of performing an operation having been determined, the authors maintain that the cripple should be taught that method. Their enthusiastic claim is, ‘We have worked out in the laboratory the methods by which suitable occupations for cripples of any type may be determined and also methods by which training in these occupations may be transferred to the crippled learner.’ Much is said about the problem of the crippled soldier, for most of the chapters of the book were papers read before meetings of engineers in 1917 and 1918 when that subject was receiving much attention.”—Survey
Reviewed by J. C. Faris
GILL, CHARLES OTIS, and PINCHOT, GIFFORD. Six thousand country churches. il *$2 Macmillan 261
“The authors whose work ‘The country church’ described rural church conditions in a county each of New York and Vermont, have thoroughly surveyed Ohio, its churches, ministers, education, crime, social life, denominationalism, and other features. They find too great a division into sects, and in some of the counties most needing religious instruction, a great number of ill-attended churches, with non-resident or poorly educated pastors. Community churches are recommended. Many maps make this book more graphic than the former volume.”—Booklist
“Perhaps the chief value of the work ... lies in its impartial exhibit of the zeal and stupidity of denominationalism gone to seed.” Allan Hoben
“This book is indispensable to all who would attempt to shape the program for the living church in America during the next generation.”
“Some very practical and informing light on the subject of church federation is thrown by Charles Otis Gill and Gifford Pinchot, in ‘Six thousand country churches.’”
“Certainly everybody who is at all concerned for the cause of morals and religion, every student of sociology, and every believer in the laboratory method, must feel under deep obligation to the painstaking authors of ’6,000 country churches’ for the statesmanlike survey which they have given to us.” C: E. Beals
GILLESPIE, JAMES EDWARD.[2] Influence of oversea expansion on England to 1700. (Columbia university studies in history, economics, and public law) pa *$3 Longmans 942