Boston Transcript p4 Je 9 ’20 150w
WISTER, OWEN. Straight deal; or, The ancient grudge. *$2 (2c) Macmillan 327
20–7009
The ancient grudge is the American feeling of ill-will toward England. This anti-English prejudice is explained by the author as a “complex” founded on false history teaching in childhood and fostered by Great Britain’s enemies. He reviews the history of our relations with England from the revolution down and says in conclusion: “In this many-peopled world England is our nearest relation. From Bonaparte to the Kaiser, never has she allowed any outsider to harm us. We are her cub. She has often clawed us, and we have clawed her in return.... Her good treatment of us has been to her own interest.... If we were so far-seeing as she is, we also should know that her good will is equally important to us.”
“Mr Wister’s purpose in his new book commands our sympathies. He has good intentions, but he is just a shade too friendly. He presses our hand a little too enthusiastically.”
− + Ath p825 Je 25 ’20 730w Booklist 16:332 Jl ’20
“Mr Wister is too good a writer of fiction to be quite satisfactory as a historian. He relies too much upon imagination and invention; he deals with historic personages as though they were characters in a novel, to be managed as the requirements of the plot dictate. The fact is that this book of Mr Wister’s, like his earlier ‘Pentecost of calamity,’ is a product of war psychology. It is a case of off with the old hate, on with the new.” R. L. Schuyler
− Bookm 51:566 Jl ’20 1000w Boston Transcript p8 Mr 10 ’20 150w