he cost of quarrelling with established authority, has a certain merit of
altruism which even the most law-abiding may count as a mitigating
circumstance, however unworthy the end in view; but the egoism of a young
lady (like Miss MARGARET LEGGE'S heroine) who in whatever cause defies all
institutions with the latent motive of asserting herself will induce even
the most lawless to support warmly the powers of suppression. _Miss Esther
Ballinger_ had a number of real grievances, but her point of view was
typified in her attitude towards the illicit and incidental motherhood of
one of her acquaintances. Without hearing the facts, she pronounced it to
be "a courageous stand against conventional morality," which it just
possibly might have proved to be upon enquiry, and by no means a weak
surrender to immediate desires, as much more probably it was in fact. From
my knowledge of _Esther_ she had but one reason for expressing this
opinion, and that was the personal pleasure of saying the unorthodox thing,
an element which accounts for much of the unconventionality of that
intellectual class of townsfolk figuring broadcast in the book, and largely
discounts the value of its criticisms. I suspected the same flaw in her
expressed convictions on religious, political and feminist matters, and I
shouldn't be surprised to learn, though there is no hint of it, that she
stopped short of complete revolt in her own big affair because she realized
instinctively that even a passionate pose may lose its attractions if it
has to be maintained for a lifetime. Miss MARGARET LEGGE, though alive to
the young person's faults, regards her as, on the whole, deep-thinking and
right-minded; and I would not for a moment have our personal difference of
opinion discourage anybody from reading a carefully studied and ably
written novel.

* * * * *

The attitude of Militarist to Pacifist has the makings of a very pretty
comedy. When the Mystics (with the Friends and the Tolstoians) were
evangelical enough to preach their message of peace even to the point of
non-resistance, they were broadly scouted as sentimental and idealistic
idiots, and reminded of a nature red in tooth and claw rampant in this most
sordid of all possible worlds. Now that the Rationalists take up the case
against war from another end, they are denounced as squalid souls, with a
greengrocer's outlook, morbidly anxious about the price of peas and
potatoes