Welsh Journals

and His Kingdom." A very useful book, containing a good deal of information well-arranged, clearly and compactly expressed. Most serviceable for week- day addresses and Bible classes. The Healing of the Nations. Archibald Chisholm, D.Litt. 4/ paper cover, 2/6. Studies in international aspects of social problems. A succinst account of the difficulties facing the world to-d.ay-unemployment in England, racial problems in America, the Eastern nations seeking an outlet for their rapidly increasing populations, the World as one market, the clash of East and West; these are some of the problems frankly and carefully faced. None of us can properly serve the Kingdom on earth without getting to know such facts and to weigh such considerations as are put before us here, so fairly and so simply. Preachers should go to books like this to get "body" for their sermons. The same might be said about Betting Facts. E. Benson Perkins; Preface by Isaac Foot. 2/ Mr. Perkins is the hon. secretary of the Com- mittee of the Christian Churches on Gambling, and it is at the request of that committee he has written this book. The Blue Book containing the report of the Government's Select Committee on the Betting Tax, runs to 700 pages and costs £ 1 2s. 6d.! In this book we have the facts classified and put plainly before us. Here are some of the chapters: The State of the Law, The Volume of Betting, Betting Organisations, The Office Book-makers, Ready-mon^y Betting, The Social Effects of Betting, Recommendations and Summary. The facts in this book are terrible and ought to be known. Eleven Christians-Studies in Personality. 5/ A delightful book. Essays written by Wesleyan members of the Fellowship moyement-a move- ment whose members "seek a new transforming and communicable experice of Crrist" to enable them to serve their age. The book tries to show us what Jesus Christ has meant (religiously) to men of differing types-eleven great souls are brought into a fellowship-meeting" to give their testimony! They are: Clement of Alexandria, St. Augustine, Gerard Groote, Saint Teresa, Pascal, John Bunyan, George Fox, John Henry Newman, William Ewart Gladstone, Francis Paget, James Smetham. Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Two volumes, 42/- nett. Ernest Benn, Ltd. The review of Earl Grey's memoirs Twenty-five Years in the January number of "The Welsh Outlook" tempts me to supplement it by some account of another great war diary which has been published in this country and in America, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House." It may safely be said that to the literature of international peace, and especially to the history of the evolution of the League of Nations idea, it will be a notable if not, indeed, unique contribution that no student of the peace movement can afford to miss. Who was this Colonel House? The public saw little or nothing of him. He was never in the popular eye. But previous to the war, as well as throughout the bitter struggle itself and in the anxious peace efforts that followed the Armistice, he was one of the most potent, active, mysterious, ubiquitous figures behind the official scenes. He became associated with President Wilson before his first nomination as president, and was almost up to the close of his life his most intimate confidante and adviser. It was a spiritual and human friend- ship exceeding that even of David and Jonathan; in the words of Sir Horace Plunkett "the strangest and most fruitful personal alliance in human history." To Wilson himself House was his "second personality," his "independent self"; his thoughts and mine are one." And House's reciprocal estimate of Wilson was expressed in a message on the eve of one of his many visits to Europe: "You are the bravest, wisest leader, the gentlest and most gallant gentleman, the truest friend in all the world." House was no place or pot hunter. He despised honours and rewards. He rejected offers of high office. He avoided the limelight but loved active movement behind the scenes. He was received without reserve in the highest diplomatic quarters in Europe and America not only as the President's representative but as the personification of the American nation. Wilson's own soul could not have worked for him more loyally. But all through his personal attachment to his beloved President he worked for something beyond-the cause of uni- versal world peace. One well-known officer of the League of Nations who saw much of House during the Peace Conferences, remarked, when told that his diary and correspondence were at last to be made public, If House tells half what he knows, or says half what he thinks, his book should be quite unique." At last he has decided to break a strictly kept silence and io tell the whole remarkable story. The work is made up of House's diary and corres- pondence over seveial years, linked into a connected narrative by Dr. Seymour, Professor of History at Yale, and perhaps America's foremost living historian. The diary, faithfully kept every evening over a period of years, of one who enjoyed the confidence of kings, ministers, soldiers, and diplo- matists, who had a born journalist's gift of describ- ing what he saw and recording what he heard, must needs possess a piquant personal and political interest. The voluminous and intimate correspon- dence with the great personalities of the war period is equally arresting. But to the student of the international peace movement-and it is from this point of view that it will appeal to the "Welsh Outlook’’­the serious interest of the work lies in its disclosure of America's consistent efforts-first to prevent the outbreak of war in Europe, next to :n- tervene to prevent its progress, then mercifully to terminate it by throwing all its resources into the struggle, and finally to establish peace on the broad basis it had advocated before the war began. The League of Nations idea is shown to be no mere after- thought born of the despair of the battlefield, but the fulfilment of a pre-war policy by which America, through the European activities of House and with the hearty support of President Wilson, earnestly hoped and strove to avert the calamity. This interesting point is convincingly brought out in the vivid personal record of Colonel House's mission in Europe in the months immediately pre- ceding the war, and in his account of the American conditions and aims that inspired that mission. Even before the war, it is now clear, House was one of those far-seeing Americans who realised that the traditional separation of the United States from Europe in matters political, on the basis of the Monroe doctrine, could not be indefinitely main- tained. He saw, too, signs of a coming disaster that threatened to shake civilisation to its foun- dations. House's experience in American domestic politics had previously compelled his acceptance of the Pan- American idea, and he had some time before the war conceived in his mind the plan of a rather loose League of American States and Republics, which should mutually guarantee security from aggression and furnish a mechanism for the pacific settlement of disputes. At that early stage his plan bore a strong resemblance in principle to what President Wilson later advocated for the world at large His proposed Pan-American Pact, framed in the first year of the war but never ratified, was designed not merely to bring the American States closer together, but also to serve as a post-war model to the European nations.