impulse. The real Socialism of to-day is a religion. It has its dogmas.
The value of the dogma does not consist in its truthfulness, and M.
Anatole France, who loves truth, does not love dogma. Only, unlike
religion, the cohesive strength of Socialism lies not in its dogmas but
in its ideal. It is perhaps a too materialistic ideal, and the mind of
M. Anatole France may not find in it either comfort or consolation. It
is not to be doubted that he suspects this himself; but there is
something reposeful in the finality of popular conceptions. M. Anatole
France, a good prince and a good Republican, will succeed no doubt in
being a good Socialist. He will disregard the stupidity of the dogma and
the unlovely form of the ideal. His art will find its own beauty in the
imaginative presentation of wrongs, of errors, and miseries that call
aloud for redress. M. Anatole France is humane. He is also human. He
may be able to discard his philosophy; to forget that the evils are many
and the remedies are few, that there is no universal panacea, that
fatality is invincible, that there is an implacable menace of death in
the triumph of the humanitarian idea. He may forget all that because
love is stronger than truth.

Besides "Crainquebille" this volume contains sixteen other stories and
sketches. To define them it is enough to say that they are written in M.
Anatole France's prose. One sketch entitled "Riquet" may be found
incorporated in the volume of _Monsieur Bergeret a Paris_. "Putois" is a
remarkable little tale, significant, humorous, amusing, and symbolic. It
concerns the career of a man born in the utterance of a hasty and
untruthful excuse made by a lady at a loss how to decline without offence
a very pressing invitation to dinner from a very tyrannical aunt. This
happens in a provincial town, and the lady says in effect: "Impossible,
my dear aunt. To-morrow I am expecting the gardener." And the garden
she glances at is a poor garden; it is a wild garden; its extent is