Men Of Action

EVER since the Page Letters and Strachey’s Queen Victoria we have had a plentiful harvest of biographies. To Charles Johnston, of the editorial staff of the Encyclopœdia Britannica, and himself a walking fund of knowledge, we turn for an estimate of five men of action, in contrast to the men of intellect he will review for us next month.

I relish his high praise of Thomas Boyd’s Mad Anthony Wayne. I have liked Boyd’s earlier work, and have always thought ‘Mad Anthony’ the most glamorous name in American history.

THESE five books promise biography, strong, picturesque, intelligent; far better than the specious liveliness of Maurois, whose Ariel would never have written Adonais, whose Disraeli could not have governed England.

Shelby Little’sGeorge Washington (Minton, Balch, $5.00) rightly heads the list. We accompany him through boyhood, early manhood, maturity, to the great trust of commander of the armies of the Republic and the first Presidency. Mr. Little has joined thorough research to a vivid style, which evokes convincing pictures. At Washington’s side we pass through epochmaking days and months and years, sharing his constant hardships and his rare hours of complete happiness. As a living presentation of events the book stands high, but one is inclined to demur at the chilly atmosphere which wraps Washington’s personality, like a cold mist on Chesapeake Bay. The note of ‘weary-dreary’ is overstressed. It is not clearly brought out that Washington’s moral and intellectual force supplied a strong current that shaped and confirmed the new nation. It is true that he poured out letters of protest during the dark days of melting armies. But it is also true that even in these complaints he was sending forth a stream of energy that inspired and unified a people. And the adversities of war drove hack into his character a profound understanding of the need for closer union, inspiring his masterful work for unity through the Constitution. Finally, his service as President breathed into the new Constitution the breath of enduring life.

If George Washington be epic, Mad Anthony Wayne by Thomas Boyd (Scribner, $3.50) is drama personified. This is the best-told story of the five, sharply focused, free from distracting episodes or moralizings. Thomas Boyd uses words so well that we are not conscious of words, hardly conscious even of vivid pictures; we plunge into the events and live them, not at Mad Anthony’s side, but in Mad Anthony’s skin. And we have a magnificent time with the gallant warrior, a born soldier if ever there was one. The whole story has the essential spirit of drama: the fine adventure at Quebec, the great military achievement at Monmouth, where Washington swore at Lee till the leaves trembled on the trees, the sanely daredevil capture of Stony Point. There is drama, of character rather than event, in the finely conceived campaign north of the Ohio, with Fort Wayne as its outpost and monument.

In Daniel Webster (Cosmopolitan, $.5.00), Allan Benson bridges the period from the Revolution to the Civil War. Captain Ebeuezer, Daniel’s father, guarded Washington; Major Webster, his son, fell at Bull Bun. And his life is representative of the period in a deeper way: he collaborated in the development and consolidation of the Constitution, working with Marshall, his close personal friend; he helped to inspire and strengthen the spirit of national unity, so vital to the events that took shape in 1861. Allan Benson’s book gives us a fine and stirring story of a marked personality; it also shows the deeper aspect of his work, in clarifying the Constitution and making conscious and articulate the life of the nation as one indivisible Union.

While Webster saw the Union as vital to America’s life, he would not have fought to end Negro slavery. So far he went with the South; his life thus leads us naturally to Jefferson Davis(Minton, Balch, $3.50). Allen Tale has accomplished more than he undertook. Clearly demonstrating the sincerity and sacrifice of Davis and his best generals, he goes deeper and convinces us that the loss of the Southern cause flowed from the very principle for which the South took up arms; sectionalism, with its disruptive local loyalties, was selfdestructive. The biographer of Jefferson has an understanding eye for battles and the effective forces of war; his insight into the motives of politicians is equally piercing. But he has the fault that he sees faults more clearly than virtues, laboring too much to bring them to the light. His story would be stronger if he added a dash of hero worship. Again and again he tells us that had this or that happened the South might have won. But in a deeper sense the South did win, since valor and sacrifice are victory.

Captain Liddell Hart has entered fully into the life of Sherman (Dodd, Mead, $5,00). He gives the impression of having seen with his own eyes all Sherman’s battlefields, of having lingered among the hills and defiles of western Georgia, where General Sherman turned the fortune of the war. The character of Sherman, the personalities of all who at each stage are near him, are finely discerned and convincingly rendered. The driving force and the material happenings of each battle, of each march, are so vigorously presented that we grasp and carry in mind the whole complex picture. The fine common sense of great strategy is convincingly brought home to us, so that we realize the magical six weeks from Atlanta to Savannah as if we ourselves had made the march. Sherman, like Anthony Wayne, was a born soldier; it is interesting to compare the methods of their biographers. Thomas Boyd devotes all his powers to keeping Anthony Wayne the dominant figure in a swiftly moving panorama. Captain Liddell Hart carries Sherman forward a stage, then pauses to analyze, to reflect, to compare. He tends to lose in concentration what he gains in extension. Captain Liddell Hart has given us a masterpiece of philosophical history. Thomas Boyd has told a tremendously dramatic story, subordinating everything to that single aim.

CHARLES JOHNSTON