, and urged to remember that not by bread alone doth man live. In
_The Foundations of International Polity_ (HEINEMANN), a series of lectures
developing phases of the argument of the Great Illusion, Mr. NORMAN ANGELL
incidentally deals with this greengrocery business. Nobody with knowledge
of his shrewd and vigorous method will be surprised that without bluster or
rhetoric he establishes a very clear verdict of acquittal. One has always
the impression that the rationalist in him is deliberately repressing the
mystic, lest his case be weakened by a suspicion of sentimentalism. For it
must be obvious that not a cold, still less a squalid, but a generous
purpose alone could inspire the fervour that flashes between the reasoned
lines. When Mr. ANGELL pleads that policy is directed towards
"self-interest," an easily misunderstandable pronouncement, it is no mean
self-interest he has in view but a quality of high civilising and social
value. He argues cogently that defence is not incompatible with, but rather
a part of, rational pacifism, which is the protest against coercion;
re-emphasises the difference between soldiering and policing; and
illustrates the essential shallowness of that venerable tag, "Human nature
doesn't change," by pointing to the decay of the duello, and the decline of
the grill as a means of reasoning with heretics and witches. Were this
learned Clerk a politician (which Heaven avert!), he would move for yet
another increment to the Supplementary Navy Estimates--to wit, the price of
a battleship to be expended in the distribution of this fighting pacifist's
books to all journalists, attaches, clergymen, bazaar-openers, club
oracles, professors, head-masters and other obvious people in both Germany
and Britain.

* * * * *

In his new satirical study of certain modern cranks and their
unpleasantness Mr. OLIVER ONIONS has, I think, allowed his bitterness to
outrun his sense of proportion. _A Crooked Mile_ (METHUEN) is a sequel to
his earlier book, _The Two Kisses_. We meet again those two young women,
_Dorothy_ and _Amory_, and the natural characteristics that they once
presented seem now to be tortured into caricature. _Amory_ has indeed all
my sympathy, so badgered is she by Mr. ONIONS, so relentlessly forced into
ignominious positions; and I cannot feel, as I should do, that she would
have achieved those ignominies without Mr. ONIONS' impelling hand behind
her. I have mysel