THE BOOKMAN A Magazine of of Literature and Life Manuscripts submitted to THE BOOKMAN should be addressed to "The Editors of THE BOOKMAN." Manuscripts sent to either of the Editors personally are liable to be mislaid or lost. & ម CHRONICLE AND COMMENT Language Reform in Japan The Japanese Government has recently sanctioned the use of the Roman alphabet for the transliteration of Japanese in printed books. This removes one stumbling block from the path of Occidentals who have found the acquisition of the Japanese language made doubly difficult by the fact that its literature could be read only after mastering the complicated Chinese ideographs which have until now been exclusively employed in the Mikado's empire. The literary language of the Japanese has, in the course of centuries, been greatly affected by Chinese influence, precisely as literary English has been affected by the influence of Latin. Educated men in Japan use a form of speech which is so full of Chinese words and phrases as to be almost unintelligible to the cominon people; and therefore, the substitution of the Roman alphabet for the Chinese symbols will be one step toward a simplification of the native tongue. Precisely for this reason, conservative Japanese opposed the change. The more difficult the written language, the more sharply the line of demarcation between the cultivated and the illiterate. In fact, there is in Japan as in China, a sort of aristocracy of learning, an intellectual caste founded upon book knowledge; so that anything which smooths the path for the common THE STRENUOUS LITERARY LIFE-GEORGE BERNARD SHAW AT WORK. From the London Sketch, man and makes it easier for him to read the Japanese classics is resented by the scholars who have acquired the written language with great labour and as a result of years of patient study. Their objection is somewhat like that which was made in Greece a year or two ago to the translation of the New Testament from Hellenistic Greek into the vernaculara proposal which led to serious rioting in Athens. Naturally, there is also a certain sentimental dislike felt by Japanese conservatives toward a movement which will soon result in printing the ancient and al MRS. HUTCHINS HAPGOOD (NEITH BOYCE) The Author of the Unusual Novel, "The Forerunner," Reviewed in the December Bookman. In books, The Amateur Cracksman and Raffles, should by all means go to see the play; while those who have seen the play should not fail to read the books from which its material is largely drawn. Mr. Presbrey's drama bears about the same relation to the Hornung stories as Mr. Gillette's Sherlock Holmes bears to Conan Doyle's original invention. neither case does the play follow the books, but rather assimilates them and transmutes them into a dramatic form. In one respect, Mr. Presbrey's play is more effective than Mr. Gillette's; for it reserves its grand climax-a most startling and unexpected one-for the final curtain, whereas in Sherlock Holmes the real climax is the episode of the gas chamber. After that, the rest of the play is comparatively tame. On the other hand, there is nothing so original and creepy in Raffles as this same gas chamber, and the cleverness of Raffles himself has not the superb assurance with which Mr. Gillette so perfectly panoplies his impersonation of Holmes. Moreover, it jars upon one's sense of the probable to see Raffles in his early fencing with the detective doing everything which in life E. M HOLLAND AS "CAPTAIN BEDFORD." would draw suspicion upon himself. His continual and suspicious allusions to the Cracksman, his bet with Bedford, and his obvious self-consciousness all through the first act, are neither necessary nor artistic. Mr. Bellew ought to take a lesson here from Mr. Gillette and cultivate a little more self-repression besides cutting some of his lines and modifying some of his business. When the detective, Bedford, says that he hopes soon to meet the Cracksman face to face, and Raffles replies, "And so do I!" (or words to that effect), it is surely absurd for him to thrust his face forward so as almost to touch his adversary's. Even a Scotland Yard detective-a Lestrade or a Gregson-would have suspected him after that. Mr. E. M. Holland is de lightful as Captain Bedford, repeating both his make-up and his success of twenty years ago as the detective in Jim the Penman. His face is a study at every moment, and his conception of a Dundreary in the rôle of a criminal expert is inimitably comic. For genuine entertainment, this is one of the very best plays of the season. The Raffles of Mr. Hornung's books (which are published by the Messrs. Scribner) differs in some respects from the Raffles of the play. The latter is made to appear a genuine amateur in crime and to rob only for the excitement of the thing. This, of course, is to make it easier for the audience to sympathise with him. In the book, he plunders because he is hard up and needs the money. So, too, with Bunny, who in the play has no share in the misdeeds of Raffles, but who in the book becomes a burglar of his own choice and finally gets a term in prison. Someone suggested several years ago that Mr. Hornung and Conan Doyle should write a book in collaboration, pitting the clever criminal, Raffles, against the inspired detective, Holmes. But apart from the impossibility of that kind of collaboration (for both authors would have to agree as to which hero should ultimately win), Raffles is not in the same class as Sherlock Holmes. He is several times outwitted in the stories -once by the South African millionaire and again by Captain Mackenzie, a mere Scotchman. In fact, as a criminal he is about on a level with the originator of the Red Headed League. The man who patiently wove a net around Professor Robert Moriarty would have run down Raffles in twenty-four hours. Russian Americans The recent appearance of A History of Socialism in the United States by Mr. Morris Hillquit, calls attention to the increasing number of Russian Americans who are beginning to make themselves felt in the spheres of literature and art and science. Mr. Hillquit, for instance, came to this country little more than fifteen years ago, as a poor boy and with no knowledge of English whatsoever. At first he had a hard struggle, trying in turn six trades in as many months. In less than a year he had begun to teach in one of the night schools of New York, and to-day he is well known as a lawyer of repute, an influential political leader among the New York Socialists, and an investigator of social conditions in the United States. Among American citizens of Russian birth he is a prominent figure well known for the unostentatious assistance which he is continually giving to his compatriots who come to this country in the hope of finding opportunities which are denied to them in the empire of the Czar. To all such he shows himself to be an untiring and generous friend and helper. Mr. Hillquit, however, is only one of many Russians who have become well known to Americans in general. Mr. Cahan secured by his Yekl a warm recognition from American men of letters; Mr. Bernstein the pianist, Mr. Volpe the violinist, and Mr. Altschuler the 'cellist, have won a definite place among American musicians; while Mr. Maurice S. Sterne is well known as an etcher and painter. These and many others of their countrymen are coming steadily into prominence; and both by their remarkable facility in acquiring an idiomatic knowledge of English and by their adaptability, they are able in a wonderfully short time to assimilate the habits of thought and the intellectual traditions of their adopted country. Bruno Lessing So many inquiries have come to us concerning the identity of the author of Children of Men which was reviewed in the last number of this magazine as to justify us in dispelling the obscurity of his pseudonym. "Bruno Lessing" is the pen name of Mr. Rudolph Block, and his book has excited too much interest for his secret to remain unknown. Mr. Block, though only thirty-three years of age, has had a long experience in practical journalism, having been for six years a reporter on the New York Sun, where he got his early newspaper training. Subsequently, he was connected with the World, and for the past five years has been editor of the Comic Supplements to Mr. Hearst's newspapers, in which capacity he has delighted scores of thousands of American children by providing them with harmless and never-failing amusement in spreading before them the now classic adventures of Foxy Grandpa, Lady Bountiful, Happy Hooligan, the Stone Age People, and Mr. Swinnerton's tigers. During his connection with the Sun, Mr. Block was assigned for a year to "labour reporting," and while engaged in this occupation he became deeply interested |