teen years of age. One question in particular struck me as absurd, bizarre, and altogether beyond the experience of life or of the intellectual attainments of girls of eighteen. A certain theme, strongly reminiscent of those beloved of short story writers in the more sentimental women's magazines, was given in some detail; and the girls were asked to state how Barrie would have developed it. And, as if this were not enough, they were then required to develop the theme as Bernard Shaw would have done it; and finally, to handle it in the Galsworthy manner.

Is this not an example of mass education carried to the point of absurdity? Is this the sort of thing that the public should pay taxes to support? And what can its effect on its victims be but to instil in them a positive aversion for Barrie, Shaw, Galsworthy and all their works? And, swinging backward with violence, the pendulum strikes the tabloids and "Ankles Preferred."

One cannot help thinking that there is too much of the "highfalutin," the unnecessary, the ludicrously superfluous, in our modern mass education. Possibly, either consciously or unconsciously, its victims sense its inadequacy as an equipment for their own particular battle with life, and the tabloids, the more foolish of the movies, and the silliest of the novels are the symbols of their protest. On the other hand, and in sharp distinction to an education grotesquely useless to the toiling masses, there is always the danger of over-emphasizing the future money value of education. Some little time ago I saw what appeared to me to be a glaring example of this attitude in a

book issued by the Teachers College, Columbia University, and forming part of a series entitled "Contributions to Education." The writer-a male Ph.D.—is comparing American and English conceptions of a liberal education. The prevailing English conception, he says, "is, however, more acceptable than one which identifies culture almost exclusively with a knowledge of ancient times, since it may also include a knowledge of recent times. The danger of such a conception is that it may degenerate into a belief in art for art's sake, or knowledge for its own sake." Indeed! And what if it does? Is there, then, anything so very dangerous for a youth, in seeking a liberal, as opposed to a vocational, education, to become interested in knowledge for its own sake? Is it more pernicious to acquire knowledge because one loves it than to acquire it solely for the sake of starting one's first job with an extra five dollars a week?

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I do not believe that any one except the most obstinate and inveterate of optimists will assert that mass education, as applied to-day, is proving a success or that it has justified the hopes of its pioneers. But what is the alternative? Ernest Renan has dealt at some length with the problem of the education of the man of the people-the humble worker. He himself was the son of a poor Breton fisherman, so that he cannot in any sense be suspected of a class bias in his opinions. But in the preface of his "Questions contemporaines," he views mass education in a spirit that can only be described as distinctly unfriendly. Renan believed in education-but not for every one. The

no

idea is very undemocratic, doubt, but none the less it was voiced by a man of such intellectual eminence that it is scarcely any exaggeration to say that all civilized Europe hung on his words. And what does he say about it? He says a great deal, and among other things that "a million saved on la haute culture may cut short the whole intellectual movement of a country but given to primary education, it will have little effect." Further, he declares that those countries which have established a wide popular education without any really serious higher instruction will long have to expiate their mistake by their intel

lectual mediocrity, their superficial spirit, and their lack of general intelligence.

But what, one may ask, did such an authority as Renan propose in place of mass education?

He said: "Do not say to the poor man, 'Get rich,' but say to him, 'Be consoled; you work for humanity and for your country.' Tell him of the happiness derived from simplicity of heart and fineness of sentiment; persuade the man of the people that the thing which makes him valuable is his respect for great moral truths with which he coöperates without always being able to understand them."

has the Wellsian curiosity, vigor and enthusiasm, the passion for simplifying; the belief that whatever is interesting is relevant. Like Wells he loves to play hare-and-hounds with alluring the ories, chasing them gallantly over fields strewn with meager scraps of fact.

Likewise, Ludwig, along with Wells, loves to play the enfant terrible. Shaking the skeleton in the closet, he'll make it seem as innocent as a baby's rattle, but he'll spot vital weaknesses where others have found only things to praise.

In "Genius and Character" Ludwig draws character-portraits of nineteen men, ranging from Bismarck to Lenin, from Shakspere to Balzac. He considers himself under no obligation to stick to one method, to be comprehensive, to explain-or explain away-any man's greatness. What interests him is to exhibit the man's character in action. He is a scientist, but the kind who loves to study living creatures rather than dissect then.

In his study of Frederick the Great, Ludwig quotes from the creeds of Frederick as expressed at five periods of his life, from twenty to seventy, and serves up a bit of the

the cause, rather than the effect, of each belief. The result is an admirable biography in exactly ten pages. Voltaire he presents in what he calls "eighteen tableaux," but the scenes aren't tableaux at all, for they are crowded with movement. Balzac he draws subjectively, a sloppy, prodigious peasant reaching out hungrily for a petty kind of celebrity and snatching greatness. He shows Woodrow Wilson in an imaginary conversation with George Washington, as a disillusioned idealist drawing inspiration from a disillusioned man of action. For Shakspere alone he has no adequate approach. Throwing up his hands at the meagerness of the facts spread out before him, he tries to synthesize the man according to one of the stock theories based on the sonnets, and produces a bundle of pathological contradictions.

No one could possibly draw so many portraits of others without unconsciously doing one of himself. The picture of Emil Ludwig that emerges from "Genius and Character" is of a man who would rather write than eat, and rather read than write, who is not ready to be awed, but takes a naïve pleasure in being surprised, who goes after whatever is humanly interesting with the zest

of a small boy running to a fire. He is never bored, and he is never boresome. Published by Harcourt, Brace and Company.

THE JAZZY PRess

In "Ballyhoo," Silas Bent peppers the Fourth Estate with a broad assortment of criticisms. Some of them strike home shrewdly, others rattle harmlessly off the hide of the intended victim, and still others ricochet to inflict wounds upon that not so innocent bystander, the great American public.

The chief counts of Mr. Bent's indictment are the newspapers' excessive enterprise in prying into essentially personal matters, and their lack of it in matters of great public concern; their dearth of information of scientific and historical value; their willingness to be used as a tool of commercial press-agentry; their pandering to the lowest impulses of their readers. He shows the press making much of a juvenile suicide wave, when no such condition exists, swallowing wierd frauds, naïvely creating interest in prizefights and then excitedly covering them as news of commanding importance.

But on the other side it might be argued that the fact that newspapers lend themselves so easily to the devices of the publicity man is at least proof that they aren't venalfor the press-agent's job is to get free space for a client who ought to be paying for it. As to the question of how large the head-lines should be for Messrs. Dempsey and Tunney, that is purely a philosophical one. If newspapers had been published in ancient Greece, whose civilization we

admire so much, prize-fights and athletics of every sort would probably have had still more space than in ours-and Homer, Sophocles, Eschylus would have been among the "trained seals" to report them.

On the occasion of the death and gaudy funeral of Rudolph Valentino, a parboiled newspaperman remarked: "That shows how far a movie star will go to get publicity." Mr. Bent objects to the amount of space given to "Rudy," to the vulgarity of it all. But is it the function of the press to record what its readers are interested in, or to censor it? If the latter is the case, the whole basis of the argument shifts, and the trouble at present is not with the papers, but with democracy.

We grant to the novelist an unquestioned right to reflect the vulgar, as well as the beautiful, side of life. Why not to a newspaper? And if a character in a book can say: “I ain't gonna do nothin'," why not a character in a comic strip?

It is easy to see that a seasoned newspaperman, steeped in newspaper idealism, wrote "Ballyhoo." No one else could have been quite so hard on the press. Published by Boni & Liveright.

THOSE WICKED CAREWS

When trouble of any sort developed in Elder's Hollow, people looked for a Carew at the bottom of it; but when they found him they thought it just as well to turn away and pretend to see nothing. For "The Mad Carews" that Martha Ostenso writes about were a formidable crowdthose hard-riding, hard-fighting, debauching, aristocratic Carews.

When a Carew asked a girl to

marry him, she did, and lived unhappily ever after. If he didn't see fit to ask her to marry him, she went to him on his own terms with the same result. And if he happened to pay no attention to her whatever, she was simply devastatingly snubbed. Those hard-drinking, hard-hearted Carews! When they made truce with the world at intervals, it was only to bury their dead, or hold family conferences.

Leastways, that is the note on which Miss Ostenso begins. For a while, she grits her teeth and seems to mean it. But she is much too human to carry such arch theatricality for long. And by and by she seems to be smiling reassuringly at the reader and telling him that she was only fooling. Rescued by a bit of humor, the Carews turn out to be quite recognizable people.

Among the good farm folk of Elder's Hollow who feared God and the Carews was Elsa Bowers. As a child, she wouldn't have the gift of a green enameled frog from handsome little Bayliss Carew. As a young lady she wouldn't have his friendship or his love. Not she! She knew too much about those Carews; and besides she had come to like the laughing, singing, romantic-souled Joe Tracy.

In story-book fashion, Bayliss humbled himself, and asked her to marry him, “without love." In the way of this practical world, Elsa decided that she would do that very thing. They ran off to be wed, and returned in time for the funeral of Peter Carew, who had returned from one of his unprincipled roisterings with his head bashed in.

Melodrama runs its course, and as

we always knew she would, Elsa ends up as madly in love with Bayliss as he is with her.

The essential weaknesses of "The Mad Carews" are those of a definite tradition that has grown up around "novels of the soil," imposing a stereotyped austerity, an overwrought atmosphere of tension, upon the most matter-of-fact episodes. Even when she is under the spell of that convention, Miss Ostenso writes entertainingly. When she crashes through it, as she does from time to time, she shows reserves of power that promise brilliant things. Published by Dodd, Mead & Company.

VILLAINY ANd Derring-Do

If your fancy runs to cloak-andsword romance, you will find an extra large portion of it, concocted of thorough historical research and leavened with humor, in William Stearns Davis's new novel "Gilman of Redford." It is the old-fashioned article, nourishing and with lots of gilt on the gingerbread. It has villainous villains, heroic heroes, perils galore, and an ever so beautiful and loyal lady to be won and lost and won again.

"Gilman of Redford" is a long and elaborate story of the American Revolution. It's the sort of yarn in which the fair heroine bends low over the wounded lover and whispers: "Better a soldier's widow, than never my true-love's wife." And prospective readers who aren't frightened away by that circumstance will find it very good of its kind.

Roger Gilman, a typical New England lad who has been reared on Cotton Mather, the Bible, Harvard,