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20. Dr. Cuno formed a new German Cabinet.

21. Professor David S. Cairns of Aberdeen was chosen as Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Free Church of Scotland.

23. The Prince of Wales opened a new department of the Victoria Hospital for Children, Chelsea.

24. It was announced in the House of Commons that the Government had decided to make a grant of 10s. in the pound, in addition to the assets, to certain victims of the failure of Sir C. McGrigor & Co., Army bankers.

25. Two persons were killed and five were injured in motor car accidents at Blindley Heath and Titsey Hill, near Oxted.

27. Three miners were killed and four injured by an explosion at the Penn End (Siddick) colliery, near Workington.

28. Lord Anglesey was appointed Lord Chamberlain to the Queen. 29. The number of persons recorded on the live register of the employment exchanges in Great Britain as wholly unemployed was 1,387,400. 30. Mr. Alfred Turner, sculptor, and Mr. Herbert Baker, architect, were elected Associates of the Royal Academy.

DECEMBER.

1. Convocation of Canterbury was opened and the Dean of Westminster was re-elected Prolocutor of the Lower House.

The first Honours list issued by the Government of Northern Ireland was published; it included one baronet and five knights.

3. The proposal for a capital levy in Switzerland was rejected in a referendum by a very large majority.

4. The Times announced that Mr. Timothy Healy had accepted the post of Governor-General of Southern Ireland.

Opening of the Smithfield Club Show.

5. Gerard Lee Bevan was found guilty at the Central Criminal Court of publishing false balance sheets, and other offences, and sentenced to seven years' penal servitude.

Resignation of the Spanish Cabinet.

6. The King signed a proclamation declaring the adoption of the Irish Free State constitution.

One lady was killed and a number of passengers were injured in a collision at Park Station, Birkenhead.

7. The Rev. Canon A. C. Headlam, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, was appointed Bishop of Gloucester.

8. Rear-Admiral Walter Ellerton was appointed Admiral Superintendent of Gibraltar.

9. M. Gabriel Narutowicz was elected President of the Polish Republic.

10. The Nobel Peace Prize for 1921-22 was awarded to Dr. Fridtjof Nansen.

11. The Times announced the appointment of the Duke of Abercorn as Governor of Northern Ireland.

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The number of persons recorded on the live register of the employment exchanges in Great Britain as wholly unemployed was 1,388,600. 12. Admiral Sir Sidney Fremantle was appointed Commander-inChief at Portsmouth.

13. Mr. J. W. Olive was appointed Deputy Commissioner of Police.

At a bye-election in South Portsmouth, caused by the retirement of the member who had been elected the previous month, Colonel Leslie Wilson (C.) was returned by a majority of 5,867 over an Independent Conservative candidate.

16. The Glasgow steamer Smerdis was sunk in a collision in the Mersey with a loss of ten of her crew.

M. Narutowicz, the newly-elected Polish President, was assassinated. 18. The Irish Senate passed the first Act of an Irish Parliament for over 100 years. It was an act adapting British Laws to Irish conditions. 19. Lieut.-Commander E. Hilton Young, M.P., was appointed Chief Whip of the National Liberal Party in succession to Mr. C. A. McCurdy. 20. General Sir Walter Congreve, V.C., was appointed General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Southern Command.

Mr. O. E. Niemeyer, C.B., was appointed Controller of Finance in succession to Sir Basil Blackett.

22. Property of the gross value of 1,181,705l. was left by Sir Prince Smith, head of the firm of Messrs. Prince, Smith & Son, textile machine manufacturers.

24. A new processional Cross, the gift of the Hon. Rodman Wanamaker, was presented to Westminster Abbey during evening service.

25. The Christmas post was very heavy; the Foreign and Colonial parcel mails were 15 per cent. higher than in 1921.

26. At a meeting of the Reparation Committee, Germany was declared in voluntary default in regard to the deliveries of timber.

27. Dr. W. N. Robson, of the Egyptian Law School, was murdered in Cairo.

28. Lord Crewe, the new British Ambassador to France, arrived in Paris.

Owing to an escape of gas in Bethnal Green, three persons were suffocated, and many others affected.

29. The Prime Minister appointed a tribunal of economists to inquire into the Agricultural problem.

Announcement that from January 1 railway fares throughout the country would be reduced to a general basis of 14d. a mile 3rd class, and 2 d. 1st class.

30. Mr. Geoffrey Dawson was appointed Editor of The Times in suc. cession to Mr. H. Wickham Steed who had resigned.

31. The airman, Sadi Lecointe, established a new record for speed at the Centre d'Istre. He attained an average speed of 348 028 kilometres, or nearly 217 miles an hour.

RETROSPECT

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART IN 1922.

LITERATURE.

(Books marked with an asterisk are further noted at the end of this section.) THE following analysis of books published in the United Kingdom during 1922 is taken from the Publishers' Circular, by kind permission of the Editor, Mr. R. B. Marston. As compared with the previous year's total there is a decrease of 184, which will be found to be localised under the head of "New Editions." On the other hand, a notable increase is evident in the item of "Poetry and Drama." Publishing activity was most intense towards the end of the year, and generally reaffirmed a "seasonal" CLASSIFIED ANALYSIS OF BOOKS PUBLISHED DURING THE YEAR 1922.

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tendency which was thought to be disappearing. The output of some of the newer publishers was surprisingly large. The experience of the autumn provided no fresh foundation for the popular belief that a General Election has a baneful influence on the book trade.

In the department of weekly journalism a famous editorship closed with Mr. A. R. Orage's retirement from the New Age. Fortnightly publications with an educational appeal, such as Peoples of All Nations and the Outline of Science, the latter one of Newnes' enterprises, obtained considerable popular support. One quarterly review, The Criterion, devoted to literature and the arts, “arrived" with its first number by forswearing intolerance and gathering the best of all schools. The contents included Mr. T. S. Eliot's long poem "The Waste Land," which won the author an important American literary prize. The Golden Hind, another quarterly of art and literature, was chiefly distinguished by the graphic work and influence of the second of its editors, Mr. Clifford Bax and Mr. Austin O. Spare. English writers contributed to a new Italian monthly review, of similar scope but higher scholarship, L'Esame, issued in Milan. The publication of an English edition of the famous Dutch art magazine, Wendingen, began with numbers devoted to architecture. The appearance of a new natural history quarterly, Natureland, should also be noted. To the study of foreign affairs fresh contributions were made by the admirable Slavonic Review, to appear three times a year under the editorship of Sir Bernard Pares, R. W. Seton-Watson, and Harold Williams, and by the Oxford Hungarian Review, issued by the Oxford League for Hungarian Self-Determination, and so bearing a certain load of propaganda. A valuable Czech year-book, Rocenka Na Rok, was also issued, intended to provide a survey of European literature in a concise form. An Australian fortnightly, The Forum, began the task of performing for the Antipodes the high office of our own political weeklies, and dispelling English ignorance of the Dominion's outlook and affairs.

The spate of biography, autobiography, and reminiscence continued unchecked throughout the year. The output of volumes dealing with living politicians, authors, and artists, either singly or in batches, was again considerable. The most prominent of those responsible for the conduct of the war and the making of what a recent volume called "Peace with a vengeance," issued or announced attempts to justify themselves to a world now able to realise what it sacrificed, what it underwent, what it was promised, and what it enjoys to-day. The Washington Conference produced a crop of works mainly optimistic in tone. Important contributions were made to general political history and theory. Sociology, as is perhaps inevitable when attention is strained upon the international scene, languished perceptibly. History gathered a remarkable harvest. Three supplementary volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica provided a storehouse for all that the passing of ten crowded years had added to human knowledge; while in the sphere of science, a most useful publication was the * Dictionary of Applied Physics (Vols. 1 and 2) edited by Sir R. Glazebrook.

Publications of great beauty and considerable costliness were devoted to the fine arts and individual artists, and the yield of specially illustrated editions of poems, plays, and stories was unusually rich. The undeniable

musical renaissance in this country evoked great activity in that department. Poetry and the drama would seem to have flourished exceedingly, including such additions to our heritage as those made by Mr. A. E. Housman and Mr. Thomas Hardy, to name no others. Collections of essays were exceptionally numerous, their success showing a very definite revival of interest in a form modern journalism tends to cheapen and produce in bulk. Books connected with the principles of M. Coué met an eager demand, as did the numbers written in defence or confutation of spiritualistic principles and phenomena. Psychology made exorbitant demands of its serious students, and here Mr. A. Wyatt Tilby may be mentioned as providing interesting fare in his * Evolution of Consciousness. The year's travel volumes were as a class rather more entertaining than seriously informative. The chief of several attractive mountaineering chronicles was, of course, concerned with the attempt upon Mount Everest.

*

Works of fiction exceeded the total of 1921. Although Mr. Walpole was generally held to have surpassed himself with The Cathedral, and Miss Rebecca West's The Judge was perhaps the year's finest achievement in fiction, no new novel asserted itself as an indubitable masterpiece. Collections of short stories gained and merited more consideration than had for some time been their meed. The appearance of several new works of pure fantasy or allegory, such as Mr. E. R. Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros, Mr. David Garnett's successful Lady into Fox, and the Legends of Smokeover of Principal L. P. Jacks, was particularly welcome. The publicity given to American novels of any real standing, and the labours of selection and appraisement undertaken in this respect by Mr. Walpole and Mr. C. E. Bechhofer, formed part of a movement to appease the resentment expressed by certain authors at this country's indifference to all but the worst American fiction. Translations of minor Scandinavian fiction appeared in some number, and one publisher began a pleasant series of short stories translated from the French. Swann's Way, Mr. C. K. Scott-Moncrieff's translation of the first part of Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, attracted considerable attention and admiration.

*

The year's biographies ranged over a wide field. Prominent among those devoted to political and public figures was Mr. Ian Colvin's just and stirring Life of Jameson. Mr. Oscar Douglas Skelton dealt, on rather an overwhelming scale, with another outstanding figure of Imperial Politics in his Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The Hon. Clive Bigham assembled a series of admirable studies in a work that had long been awaiting the proper hand, * The Prime Ministers of Britain, 1721-1921. Mabell, Countess of Airlie, made a Prime Minister's wife the centre of a brilliant picture in Lady Palmerston and Her Times. In the Life of George, IVth Earl of Aberdeen, Lady Frances Balfour wrote two volumes of unexpected interest on what seemed the unpromising career of one of the less illustrious Victorian Premiers. Lord Melbourne provided the central character for a biographical play, The Queen's Minister, by Miss E. M. Smith-Dampier, and in Dethronements Mr. Laurence Housman dramatised with real understanding the reflections of several modern statesmen in the time of their sunset. *Woodrow

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