J. Allen Baker, M.P., A Memoir (review)

84 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION 1759, with burying ground on same plot of approximately one acre. At the time of the Separation the Orthodox Friends built the brick house about a mile further west, but the burying ground has been used by both branches. Very stimulating for those who wish to refresh their knowledge of Quaker history and activities is the section in the Friends' Intelligencer entitled, " Can Thee Tell Me, Friend ? " All sorts of questions are asked in regard to outstanding people and important events in the Society of Friends, past and present, and the answers are printed in another part of the paper. This department is conducted by Ruth H. Conrow, of Westtown School, Westtown, Penna. The Friend (London) has a similar department , which is called, " Canst Thou Tell," in which are asked the same kind of questions. BOOK REVIEWS Books of interest to Friends may usually be purchased at the following places : Friends' Book Store, 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Friends' Book Store, 1515 Cherry Street, Philadelphia. Friends' Book and Tract Committee, 144 East 20th Street, New York City. Friends' Book and Supply House, Richmond, Indiana. Friends Book Centre, Friends House, Euston Road, London, N. W. 1, England. When the price of an English book is given below in terms of American money, it means that one of the American book stores has quoted that price. Baker, Elizabeth B., and Baker, P. Noel. /. Allen Baker, M.P., A Memoir . London: The Swarthmore Press, Ltd. 1927. P. 269, cloth. $2.25. Quaker literature is rich in biographies of many outstanding men who have been leaders and moulders of public opinion. A memoir worthy to be classed with the best of our Quaker biographies is the life of J. Allen Baker, M.P., by his wife, Elizabeth B. Baker and by his youngest son, P. Noel Baker, Professor of International Relations in the University of London. The authors have collaborated with skill and a nice sense of proportion. They have given an impressionist account of Allen Baker's personality rather than a detailed story of his life, with the result that while the reader is given an adequate idea of Allen Baker's amazingly varied anc. BOOK REVIEWS85 useful career there emerges from the pages a real character of great personal charm and power whose influence, one feels, is still dynamic. Born of English parents on a Canadian farm in 1852, Allen Baker, at the age of 24 went to England where, associated with his brothers, he became the director of an important manufacturing concern which later established business connections all over the world. He was a leader in the early Adult School Movement in England—the precursor of the modern Workers Educational Association, and for twelve years he served on the London County Council. It was as a County Councillor that Allen Baker was drawn into an ever-widening circle of public usefulness. The Housing problem, the Temperance cause and Transportation all claimed his serious attention, though it was more particularly in the electrification and municipal operation of the London Tramways that Allen Baker made his most important and enduring contribution to the life of the great metropolis. The greater part of the memoir, and the most interesting, deals with Allen Baker's life after his election to Parliament in the so-called " Khaki Election " of 1900 when the Boer War was still in progress. While calling himself a " Radical," he was supported both by " Liberals " and " Labour," and he was among the few men in public life at that time who openly condemned the Boer War. From this time on his Quaker, pacifist convictions came more and more into evidence. He was a Pacifist of a thoroughgoing and courageous type whose outspoken language on occasions won for him the title of " the fighting Quaker." His constituents received a liberal education in the problems of peace and war, and he never missed an opportunity of bringing the question not only before his own constituents but before the general public as well. True to the policy of that great liberal statesman, Gladstone, Allen Baker opposed the policy of naval expansion pursued by the Rosebery and Salisbury governments; while he...