Booklist 17:9 O ’20
“This business-like explanation of the law’s provisions is infinitely more satisfactory and useful than the mushy, sentimental and verbose expository books for the foreign-born of which there are so many.” B. L.
+ − Survey 43:408 Ja 10 ’20 250w + Wis Lib Bul 16:233 D ’20 60w
BECK, JAMES MONTGOMERY. Passing of the new freedom. *$1.50 Doran 940.314
20–18420
In part in the form of imaginary conversations, the book discusses the essential nature of President Wilson’s policies. The dialogues, in which the chief personages of the Peace conference take part, abounds in biting sarcasm. In the first dialogue Mr Wilson is made to appear upon the scene literally exuding “omniscience,” and to expound his new freedom with sounding grandiloquence. In his final estimate of Wilson the author says: “Already the world is conscious of a distinct revaluation of that interesting and complex personality, and it must be sorrowfully added that this revaluation adds nothing to his prestige.” The chapters are: Mr Wilson explains the new freedom; The old freedom; “It might have been”; The apostle of the new freedom.
“The use of imaginary conversation as a means of plucking the mystery out of the heart of the Peace conference may be questioned as to its integrity, but Mr Beck has employed the medium with such rare degree of skill that no one will question its effectiveness for literary purposes.”
+ − N Y Evening Post p24 O 23 ’20 190w
“Mr Beck has produced in these dialogues a kind of literature that is not often written after so much cool, thoughtful preparation, and that is seldom found to be, as in this case, profound and exact as well as amusing.”