Remaining Material

318 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY and somewhat more stirring than most of this sort. The two on Raleigh and Hebert are particularly fine. Such material ought to be made available to school-children as part of the regular curriculum . Roy MacGregor Watt does a series of compact and terse anti-Forest-fire scripts. Miriam Stein has a catchy rimed version of "Snow-white," which children should enjoy. Allen Noblston contributes a well-written spy melodrama, "Final Test." When one considers the breadth of the appeal of radio, and the commercial demand for good scripts, one is surprised that more Canadian writers have not mastered air technique. Summarizing, one notes that the general quality of this year's crop is good, most achieving a high level of mediocrity, with Gwen Pharis, Hilda Smith, J. Munro MacLennan, Miriam Stein, and Mary Ellen Burgess contributing plays which rise above the rest. The preponderance of comedy, some of it extravagant and highspirited clowning, is a very healthy sign. The best serious plays seem to come from the West; the comedies from the East. There are fewer published plays than last year, and a great dearth of good full-length plays. Little Theatre groups all over the country are successfully encouraging and fostering the growth of a native drama, and one university, that of Alberta, through the Banff School of Fine Arts, is doing splendid work in the field. IV. REMAINING MATERIAL' THE EDITOR A. We commence with Autobiography and Biography. As a detailed and personal record of one who shaped Canadian policy in an era crowded with momentous issues for Canada and the Empire, and who discharged his duty to them both faithfully and well, the thousand pages of Sir Robert Borden's Memoirs immediately take their place as an historical document of the first importance (see review by A. Brady, QUARTERLY, Jan. 1939). But as literature they are disappointing. In other countries, the Rt. Hon. Arthur Meighen observes rather wistfully in his foreword, statesmen have occasionally built themselves monuments which were permanent contributions to literature. He is too wise to make any such claim for Borden. But he is also too discreet to lIncorporatcd in quotation marks arc a section on Socia] Studies by Professor A. Brady, and notes by others on special subjects. LETTERS IN CANADA, 1938 319 tell us the bald truth: that here is a narrative of great events in which the pulses of writer and reader never quicken, here is the material of drama lived and recorded with, it would seem, little or no sense of the dramatic. The party poli tics which Borden at bottom despised bulk too large; and the patriotic wisdom which he was adept at translating into action, he was far less adc;pt at translating into words. With the Memoirs may be dismissed the RecolltCtions, Political and Personal, of another politician, the Hon. E. M. Macdonald. The writer of the foreword; the Hon. G. P. Graham, remarks with disarming naivete: "Being a Nova Scotian, early in life Colonel Macdonald was endowed with a flare [sicl (or writing) inherited in a measure at least from an uncle who was a Journalist...." This endowment carries the author on for 584 pages-a good deal of it baffling detail and excruciating commonplace ; but the legacy does not seem to have included much punctuatIOn . Despite the complete absence of literary art, a faithfuland to the reflective a rather terrifying-picture of the petty warfare of parties manages to emerge; and as history the book makes at intervals slight additions of fact. For the defects of style, great and small, the publisher must take his full share of blame. In this country especially, if there is to be any secure improvement in the literary output, all the leamng houses will require efficient editorial departments, under the direction of a highly trained general editor with large powers. It is permissible to record that the experimentif one can so designate what is the settled practice in England and the States-has been tried in the Press of this University, with the most encouraging results. Postscript to Adventure: The Autobiography 0/ Ralph Connor may well dispute wi th The Man/rom...