who by
arrangement with the Almighty (as set forth in a discreetly flippant
prologue with something of the flavour of those irreverent yarns
invented and retailed by Italian ecclesiastics about Dominiddio) visits
_Job Huss_, the headmaster of Woldingstanton, with the plagues of his
desperate trial. However I take it that the author was anxious that his
parody should be as complete in form as possible, and, being rather
impressed by the insouciance, not to say insolence, of the Satan of the
original, seized his chance of bizarre characterisation and "celestial
badinage" and let consistency go hang for the time. Certainly the
theological disquisitions of Mr. WELLS are remarkable not for their
formal logic, but for their provocative quality and the very real
eloquence of detached passages of the rambling argument. In particular,
taking up again the thread of _Joan and Peter_, he gives such a survey
of the scope and glories of a new education that is to salve the world's
wounds as would move the heart of a jelly-fish. Mr. WELLS has his own
methods of justifying the ways of God to man. He may be discursive,
impatient, rash, perhaps a little shallow; but he has an undying fire of
his own. He is certainly not dull. And therefore orthodox divines and
pedagogues may perhaps have a real grievance against him. But I can't
imagine any serious-minded man in a serious time reading this book and
not getting hope and courage from it.

* * * * *

_Victory Over Blindness_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is a book whose title
gives you at once the key to its contents and to the spirit that
animates them. It is the record by Sir ARTHUR PEARSON of one of the most
finely successful enterprises that the War has called forth. Everyone
to-day has at least a vague idea of the work carried on at St.
Dunstan's, "the biggest individual business," Sir ARTHUR terms it, "that
I have ever conducted." A study of these pages will transform that vague
idea into wonder and admiration. Big the business might well be called,
since it is nothing less than the bringing back, almost to normal life,
of men apparently condemned to an existence of helpless inactivity and
dependence. Few things will strike you more forcibly in this book than
its practical common sense. That and an unsentimental optimism seem to
be the dominant notes of all Sir ARTHUR'S effort. Without doubt the
success of this has been beyond measure helped by the fact that