World Affairs Institute

The Legacy of War: Peace by Boris A. BakhmeteffAdvocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 90, No. 3 (March, 1928), p. 192Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20661868 .

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192 ADVOCATE OF PEACE March THE LEGACY OF WAR : PEAOE. By Boris A.

Bakhmeteff. Pp. 53. Houghton, Mifflin

Co., Boston, 1927. Price, $2.00.

The war-time ambassador of Russia to the

United States delivered this address at Mil

ton Academy in June, 1927. It was given under the permanent foundation, which was

established in that school in 1922, in memory of those alumni who gave their lives in the

World War. The noble and appropriate pur

pose of the foundation is to provide lectures

and informal conferences dealing with demo

cratic responsibilities and the opportunities for leadership in the new day.

M. Bakhmateff, therefore, traces for his

young auditors the contrasting conditions in

Europe and the United States since the war.

He especially contrasts the unfortunate col

lective "6tatism" in Russia, with individual

istic democracy in the United States. Since

real peace is "a peaceful progress of life"

internally, rather than mere absence of war,

he finds greater political health in this coun

try. We have, he says, attained personality

among the nations ; we have little to fear

from subversive doctrines. It remains for

us to follow up the ideas already begun in

the way of open diplomacy, patience, good

will. In these lines America has already

inaugurated, since the war, a democratic

doctrine in international behavior which

holds the seed of future equity and freedom

for the world.

BUILDING INTERNATIONAL GOOD WILL. By various writers. Pp. 242. Macmillan Co.,

New York, 1927. Price, $1.50.

Here is a well printed, but amazingly in

adequate, book on its subject. It consists of

a series of small articles on large topics.

They are written by Jane Addams and Emily

Balch jointly, by J. H. Scattergood, Denys P.

Myers, and others.

In its historical portions no credit is given to the first workers for peace in this eduntry,

except in one sentence in the Addams-Balch

article. There William Ladd, mentioned in

four words, is called, astonishingly, "of Con

necticut." Since he was born in New Hamp

shire, lived in Maine, and, except for a year

and a half, his peace activities were largely

centered in either New York or Boston, it

seems odd that the year and a half of his

long work which did center in Connecticut

should have placed him there in the minds of

these ladies. Of the other articles some are

strongly pro-League, some non-resistant in

tone, absolute in doctrine ; many of them

quite out of date.

The book is put out by the officers and Executive Committee of the World Alliance

for International Friendship Through the

Churches. They claim it to be a "r~sum6 of

the various constructive methods" which are

now in use making toward universal peace. The book is, we must repeat, lamentably in

adequate to its purpose.

BROTHER JOHN : A TALE OF THE FIRST FRAN

CISCANS. By Vida D. Scudder. Pp. 336.

Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1927. Price,

$2.50.

Miss Scudder, Professor of English Litera

ture at Wellesley College, has felt, with

many others, that the story of St. Francis

and his early disciples has somewhat to teach

the modern world. A close student of the

thirteenth century, she sees something akin

to our modern paradoxes in the "varying atti

tudes of Lady Poverty's friends to questions of property and war." The emphasis on joy is another point which the Franciscans of

those days have in common with many in

the modern world, though perhaps today we

expect happiness to flow from impossible causes.

The book is not quite a novel, yet it is an

imaginative and dramatic narrative of the

absorbing struggles which moved the two

wings of the Franciscan order immediately after Francis' death.

Brother John is a lovable and loving Eng lish youth, who leaves his estates in England and becomes a sincere and humble Brother

Minor, finally a "spiritual, or zealot," and

dies in prison, singing. Other brothers are

vivid and living-Brother Bernard, Brother

Elias, Brother Thomas, Brother Giles, and

all.

The sunny Umbrian landscape, with its

hills, rivers and sky, as also the heavy po litical atmosphere of Rome, are represented in a way to be remembered. Withal, there is

a sane recognition-Was it Brother John or

the twentieth-century author?-that poverty, actual avoidance of responsibility, has its

dangers. It may burden others unfairly. These are still, as they were then, questions, and the answer is not yet.

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