EXPLORATION, DESCRIPTION, TRAVEL The Friendly Arctic. By Vilhjalmur Stefansson. Macmillan. 784 pp. Ill. The Stefansson expedition, made under the auspices of the Canadian Government, added about 100,000 miles to the known area of Arctic lands. It began in 1913, and was completed in 1918, just before the signing of the armistice that ended the World War, of which the members of the expedition remained in blissful ignorance for more than a year after the beginning of hostilities. Every book of Arctic exploration is from the nature of the case a tale of adventure, but this volume by Mr. Stefansson is far more than a record of the personal fortunes of those who took part in the expedition. His forerunners in the field of Arctic discovery, including Admiral Peary, the man who found the Pole itself, have related surprising feats of endurance in the Arctic, but it has remained for Stefansson to show how white men can live there and can survive the ups and downs of human existence, much as they do at home. Stefansson not only "lived on the country," where the Eskimos themselves had never ventured, and successfully fought the cold and wet of those far-off regions, but he did this under the serious handicap of illness-typhoid, pneumonia and pleurisy in succession. He and his comrades proved that the socalled solitudes of the Far North are teeming with animal and vegetable life, and that they need have no terrors for the white man from the temperate zone who is endowed with a reasonable amount of physical strength and common sense. After all it is a "friendly Arctic." The Passing of the Old West. By Hal G. Evarts. Boston: Little, Brown & Company. 234 PP. Ill. In this volume Mr. Evarts, who is a popular writer of animal stories, describes the vanishing of certain forms of American wild life - the beaver, the buffalo, and the passenger pigeon— and tells how the elk of the Yellowstone Park have been decimated. He makes a strong plea for the conservation of animal life, as well as of American forests. In the Alaska-Yukon Gamelands. By J. A. McGuire. Cincinnati: Stewart & Kidd Company. 207 pp. Ill. This book relates the experiences of a group of American sportsmen who made a trip to northeastern Alaska for the purpose of collecting specimens of moose, white sheep, caribou, goats and smaller game for the Colorado Museum of Natural History. Mr. McGuire gives some good descriptions of far northern scenery, as well as of the big game which lives in that part of the world. An introduction is supplied by Dr. William T. Hornaday, of the New York Zoological Park. Trapping Wild Animals in Malay Jungles. By Charles Mayer. Duffield and Co. 207 pp. Ill. Thrilling adventures in catching elephants, tigers, apes, snakes, and other wild beasts in the Malay peninsula for the great circuses and menageries. Mr. Mayer's experiences were first published in the form of articles contributed to the magazine Asia. Among the Hill-Folk of Algeria. By M. W. Hilton-Simpson. Dodd, Mead & Company. 248 pp. Ill. The Shawia Berbers of the Aurés Mountains in Algeria, often called the "White Arabs," are representatives of the white race who have remained almost unknown and unvisited, and still retain many customs that have wholly disappeared among other white peoples. The author of this volume gives an account of three winters' sejourn among these primitive tribes. His book discloses many facts heretofore unknown to English or European travelers. Panama Past and Present. By A. Hyatt Verrill. Dodd, Mead & Company, 262 pp. Ill. A good book for mid-winter tourists, many of whom are about to start for the. Canal Zone. Mr. Verrill is not content with merely describing the Canal itself, but includes in his book a great deal of useful information regarding the Republic of Panama itself, which has been referred to as the least known of all Latin-American countries. Mr. Verrill has lived in Panama for several years, and knows its people and its resources. A Fortnight in Naples. By André Maurel. G. P. Putnam's Sons. 385 pp. Ill. The author of "A Month in Rome" gives in this new book a description of Naples arranged in the form of fifteen successive days' observations. There are many excellent illustrations. Sea and Sardinia. By D. H. Lawrence. Thomas Seltzer. 354 pp. Ill. Mr. Lawrence developed his latest book in the primitive conditions to be found on the island of Sardinia. He gives an excellent description of that part of the Mediterranean and the Italian coast, and his text is well supplemented by the color sketches contributed by Jan Juta, a young artist from South Africa. The Tower of London. By Walter George Bell. John Lane Company. 164 pp. Ill. Probably most Americans visiting London wish to inform themselves concerning the Tower. Heretofore there has been no short account of the Tower's history accessible. The want is now supplied by a well-informed Londoner who, oddly enough, seems to have written for the sole purpose of interesting Londoners in their historic possession. The facts that he relates are of equal interest to the traveler from beyond the bounds of London. Some excellent pen-and-ink sketches are contributed by Hanslip Fletcher. More About Unknown London. By Walter George Bell. John Lane Company. 251 pp. Ill. A book of rare and curious information, embodying many historical facts of more than local significance. REVIEW REVIEWS DITED BY ALBERT SHAW H 1922 CH. SHAPING OUR NEW AMERICAN ARMY BRON. CRY WORK. A NATIONAL AGRICULTURAL CONFERENCE J..... HON. CORDENIO A. SEVERANCE, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION [Never before in the history of the legal profession has there been so great an interest as this year in the training and qualifications of practising lawyers. Immediately following Washington's Birthday, a two or three days' convention, to be held at Washington, was arranged by the leading lawyers from all sections, representing State and local bar associations. A call has gone out from leaders of the bar, urging a higher recognition of the duty of lawyers to the community, and insistence upon higher standards of education and character. The Section of Legal Education and the Conference of Bar Associations united in calling this meeting. These are working parts of the American Bar Association, of which Mr. C. A. Severance, of St. Paul, is president this year. Mr. Severance for many years has belonged to the famous law firm of which former Senator Cushman K. Davis was senior member until his death, and of which Senator Kellogg was a member until his recent retirement from practice. Mr. Severance has had a leading place in important federal cases having to do with railroads, corporations, and the Anti-Trust Law. The present movement for better legal training has owed much to the surveys and reports conducted under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation. Nine years ago the Committee on Education of the American Bar Association asked Dr. Pritchett, of the Carnegie Foundation, to have the education of lawyers studied as thoroughly as that of medical practitioners.] VOL. LXV THE AMERICAN REVIEW OF REVIEWS NEW YORK, MARCH, 1922 THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD Hope Comes with the Spring Time The world has been fighting its way through a grim and painful winter. The struggle for food and clothing, for fuel and shelter, has been exceptionally severe. Many millions of workers have been out of employment in the more highly industrialized countries. The business of maintaining governments has been more costly than in former times, because, in all countries except Germany (to which might be added Austria and Hungary) the military establishments have continued to be far greater than they were before the outbreak of the war in 1914. But at least the world has seen less actual clash of arms than in any previous season for a good many years, and that is something to be thankful for. Unemployment and temporary scarcity are hard to bear; but they are not to be compared with the calamities and woes of military conflict on any considerable scale. The present period of economic stagnation has not been very long, and the hope of better times in the near future has sustained many a suffering family whose bread-winners have been deprived of opportunities to earn. Conditions in Europe are slowly improving, and perhaps the worst has been faced. Russia, and American Altruism As spring approaches, it is perceived that by far the greatest area of distress remains, as had been predicted, in the famine-stricken parts of Russia. Many hundreds of thousands of people already have died, while relief services have saved the lives of enough people to populate a small country. European authorities declare that the American Relief Administration in Russia has been efficient beyond any other, and that, considering the difficult conditions, it has been as nearly perfect as any human agency could be. It is agreeable to us to have such tributes, because Europe sometimes criticizes this country in No. 3 terms of bitterness and insult-at least many European newspapers indulge in this practice. Whatever may have been the causes leading to the general result, it is true that the American people are impelled to a surprising extent by the motive of altruism. To blame the United States for not having accepted membership at a given moment in a particular organization called the League of Nations is to be guilty of a kind of bad taste that wise and thoughtful Europeans do not exhibit. They appreciate American generosity. The Nation's America was only one of many Unexampled neutral governments during the Record early part of the World War. Nothing at all happened which required the United States to assume belligerency in aid of the Allies which did not also call with equal insistence upon the governments of Spain, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Argentina, and Chile. Brazil and China shaped their policies to accord with ours. We ought by all means to have expanded our armaments enormously in 1914 and the following years; and we would have done well if we had asserted our principles and shown our power considerably earlier than we did. But from the standpoint of Europe, our later expenditures of money, of effort, of mobilized man-power, were highspirited and unselfish beyond the sum total of all comparable examples of official altruism in the records of mankind. We ought to have formed a proper organization of neutrals at the very beginning of the war; and such an organization should have challenged and prevented illegal submarine warfare, criminal air-raids, Armenian massacres, Belgian atrocities, and many other violations of the accepted rules of international law. Using its influence firmly against the violation of Belgian neutrality, such a grouping of the non-belligerent powers Copyright, 1922, by THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY 227 might have ended the war almost at its beginning. Why Foreign Criticism Irritates But, even if the United States failed to act with energy and with wise forethought until after the elections of November, 1916, our people made herculean efforts and sacrifices in 1917 and 1918, which atoned for every previous mistake-although it is inevitable that the student of history should in due time survey and appraise all that was done and that was left undone. We simply took it upon ourselves as a neutral power-better able to take care of our own interests, regardless of either or both European belligerent groups, than any other neutral-to intervene with all our resources and to bring the war to an end with justice triumphant. Whatever of security in the world for small nations or for large ones is now to be obtained through peace efforts following the Great War, it is true that the United States more than any other country will have merited credit as having intervened for principle's sake, at great cost and without anything to be gained of a selfish nature. Under these circumstances, the insolence of certain European newspapers, and the cold and calculating ingratitude of certain foreign financiers and publicists, is rather irritating to American sensibilities. Certain Innocent If America is further to be im pelled by altruism, there must Mistakes be an ample admixture both of humor and of common sense. The efforts inspired by habitual impulses of generosity must be controlled by knowledge and sound judgment. We are suffering a good deal, not because our efforts to end the war were on too great a scale for indeed it would have been worth while to have embarked on large efforts a year or two sooner-but because in our relations to other countries we were not always sufficiently businesslike and clean-cut. For example, all the preliminary "secret treaties" in which the Allies were involved would have been abrogated will ingly and without dispute in 1917, or at latest in the spring of 1918, if we had but asked for this as a reasonable condition of our immense war efforts. But after the war was ended, and peace negotiations were on foot at Paris, this network of secret treaties enmeshed the whole situation. Particular governments were entrapped, and it was too late to do what would have been so simple and easy only half a year earlier. Again, if our Treasury loans to foreign governments had been issued in a form to show what they really were, we would have escaped practically all of the present embarrassing discussion about them. The Foreign Loans, for Example There was never any trouble about understanding the "United-Kingdom loan" or the "Anglo-French loan," or certain other foreign issues that were floated in the United States. So far as the realities were concerned, the Allied borrowings through our Treasury were of precisely the same nature as the loans we have mentioned. The money loaned for war purposes was that of American investors, whether borrowed through New York bankers or through the Washington authorities. If the foreign loans, which Congress has this last month been making plans for refunding, had been issued directly to the investors not in the form of American Liberty Bonds, but as British or French or Italian bonds, accompanied simply by the statement that the United States would hold itself responsible (as endorser) for ultimate payment of interest and principal, the bonds would have been marketed with perfect ease, and no confusion about their character could ever have arisen. At present, the foreigner-not thinking all the way through the transaction - seems to imagine that the Government at Washington could cancel these loans, thus relieving Europe, without any subsequent burden to anybody. But although the bonds were not printed and issued in the name of the borrower, but rather in the name of the endorser of the paper, they remain outstanding in the hands of the lenders; and, since he is solvent and responsible, Uncle Sam will have to pay the money if the real borrowers should succeed in avoiding the obligation. Putting Things in Proper Form It is now quite an awkward thing to correct the mistake; yet there seems no practical way to deal with these obligations except to issue them, belatedly, as they ought to have been issued in the first instance, so that they may show for themselves exactly what they are. If (as is probable) the American taxpayers are at some future time to assist the taxpayers of Europe in paying the debt due to American investors, no steps to that end can be taken until the obligations themselves are suitably recognized and are so presented that |