World Affairs Institute

Disraeli, Alien Patriot by E. L. RaymondAdvocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 89, No. 2 (February, 1927), p. 127Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661510 .

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1927 BOOK REVIEWS 127

To meet its obligations the League should,

thinks Mr. Waller, be considerably made over.

Here the author takes into consideration

the criticisms, particularly American criti

cisms, of the League. He does not give

enough weight to the possibility of inter

national justice as a real foundation, nor

see how that has been worked out in the

United States. Codification of international

law seems to him so difficult as to lie far in the future.

Yet he does see many gaps in the League's

efficiency and makes various suggestions for

its improvement. Most important among

them is the idea of a subdivision of League members into regional groups to consider re

gional questions; where pressure is to be

brought upon recalcitrant States, this, too,

should be regional to win support. This ar

rangement would substitute understood and

clear-cut obligations in place of vague, far

reaching ones.

The Council and Assembly of the League

would then consider only questions of world

wide import, matters which ought to be

handled by the League itself. There would

be some danger of intergroup rivalries in

such an organization of nations, but with a

well-organized central body he thint?s that

danger would be forestalled.

Mr. Waller has the well-known European obsession for coercive measures and magni

fies, even beyond its merits, political action in

place of judicial procedure; but it is evident

that the school of thought most prevalent in

America has modified this European cast

of mind.

The book is a hopeful analysis of the whole

question of the League's further efficiency and very well worth careful study.

Man and His Fellows. By Ernest M. Hop kins. Pp. 92. Princeton University Press,

1926. Price, $1.50.

President Hopkins, of Dartmouth College,

gave these three lectures in the Academy

of Music, Philadelphia, 1925, under the Henry La Barre Jayne Foundation. In them

he surveys the trend of present civilization,

particularly in the United States, and points out certain principles and policies which

should take the place of slogans in our daily

life?social, industrial, and civic.

There is a chatty, rambling style to the

lectures which makes them less easy to

follow in print than if they had more closely

followed an essay outline. Nevertheless, from a mind of the caliber of President Hop

kins, the leisurely manner of a soliloquy has

a special charm.

One who longs to formulate a philosophy for these days will do well to study these

addresses.

Disraeli, Alien Patriot. By E. L. Raymond.

Pp. 346. George H. Doran Co., New York, 1926.

This is a book to be read slowly and care

fully. The life of Disraeli cannot be under

stood, scarcely even followed at all, with

out a clear knowledge of English politics during his lifetime. The story brings in such

other prominent figures as Peel, Palmerston,

Russell, and Gladstone. It was the time

of the Crimean War, of the "No Popery"

slogan, and of crucial moments in the omni

present Irish question. Therefore Mr. Ray mond's book is really a history of English

politics from about 1830 to Disraeli's death, in 1881. Yet these events are viewed con

sistently, as they related to the Jewish

English politician, who understood England so much better than England understood

him.

Disraeli, with all his apparent inconsist

encies, is made entirely logical under the

author's treatment. The book is not a

eulogy ; but its subject is judged, as he should be, in his character as Jew, an Oriental?

English sincerely, but only by adoption. He

is judged especially as a genius whose loyal

ties are to other standards than those of the

typical Britich mind. Thus is explained much apparent opportunism and many super ficial insincerities without damage to the in

tegrity of Mr. Disraeli.

Mr. Raymond frequently pauses in the rush

of events to illuminate the course of Disraeli

by the political, religious, and social views ex

pressed in his novels, many of which were

probably somewhat biographical.

One lays the book down with a clear im

pression that the Jewish Prime Minister,

though sometimes a comedian and frequently

out of taste, was, nevertheless, an unmis

takable genius and a practical statesman,

who served England as well as she would let

him serve her.

East Wind. By Amy Lowell Pp. 240.

Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston, 1926. Price,

$2.25.

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