World Affairs Institute

Banzai (Hurrah) by John ParisAdvocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 88, No. 8 (AUGUST, 1926), p. 512Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661365 .

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512 ADVOCATE OF PEACE August

International topics and social reform

measures are particularly well reported in

this year's book. The special emphasis in

the maps and corresponding articles this

time seems to be South America and the re

publics there located.

The Confessions of a Reformer. By Fred

erick G. Howe. Pp. 352. Charles Scrib

ner's Sons, New York, 1925. Price, $3.00.

Under this courageous title, branding him

self at the outset as one of an unloved group, the author traces his course from the eco

nomic and social theories current in his boy

hood home to a disillusioned but obstinately

hopeful liberalism.

He records his strenuous and ardent ef

forts to cleanse city and State poUtics of cor

ruption. All the way along he found it neces

sary to scrap one text-book idea of govern

ment after another. Failure and mistakes,

misjudgments, and readjustment continually followed his course.

Incidentally Mr. Howe gives interesting

snap-shots of well-known public men with or

against whom he worked.

His final disillusionment he met in Paris

with Mr. Wilson in 1919. There he found

that the Americans "were amateurs, ama

teurs seeking to right the world by moralistic

appeals . . . Our motives were honest, but Europe only smiled at our

na?vet?."

The President himself, the author's one

time hero, was the last of his ideals to crum

ble and to be reappraised. He saw Mr. Wil

son at last, a man still great as an inspirer of his own people, but one who could not deal

with realities?one who finally failed be

cause he could not face failure, and there

fore sacrificed principles?because, too, he

could not bear criticism or advice.

The most interesting and thought-provok

ing element in the book is the conduct of an

honest man's mind as he meets the graft,

injustice, and greed in much of our political life. He is frank to cruelty, but never bitter.

He has no solution. He concludes with this, "I have more to learn than the time that is

left suffices for. Yet I realize that only a

beginning is possible to any man."

Virgin Spain. By Waldo Frank. Pp. 301.

Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. Price.

$3.00.

The writer of these word pictures has not

outgrown the habit of "fine writing." It is

rhetorical prose which flows like a stream.

One is dominated by the murmur thereof;

rhythm fills the ear so that the thought is hard to catch.

Yet the little essays are colorful pictures of the south, of the many races which are

welded together to make Spain. The very

misticism of the atmosphere has its appropri ateness ad charm. From the Moors of the

south to the Basques of the north, from the

old legends and stories to the life of today,

Spain is presented, not entire, but in little

thumbnail sketches.

It is a book to read in snatches and to

dream over, not to read through at a sitting.

Banzai (Hurrah). By John Paris. Pp.313. Boni & Liveright, New York, 1926. Price,

$2.50.

The engaging rascal, on whose life story are strung the episodes of this book, is dis

tinctly drawn down to the moment when he

disappears with his benefactor's oriental curios and the story ends.

The volume is not put out as a novel.

Rather, it is the transcription, by an author

thoroughly familiar with Japan, of the remi

niscences of a demobilized Japanese, who had

been an aviator in the British army. There are obvious embroideries and additions, all

along, contributed by Mr. Paris himself?

helps to the understanding of Japanese con

ditions.

As in his two novels previously published, Mr. Paris, though evidently a lover of Japan, strips off the romance with which westerners are wont to clothe her.

By means of these experiences of a bright,

restless, unguided youth through family after

family of the lower middle classes in Japan, we are shown, with a coolness and lack of

condemnation, which is brutal or scientific, as one chooses, human and moral conditions that would be scandals in the occident.

Surely not all of Japan, nor even the best

of it, is here chronicled; but for the chosen

cross-section of it, the book is definitely con

vincing.

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