editor of literary pages that go far and wide, who has held down that
job now for over a year. That man is troubled: none has ever stood in
his shoes for much longer than that.

"Don't fool yourself," I heard a successful young journalist say the
other day to a very conscientious young reviewer. "Good work won't get
you anything. Play politics, office politics all the while."
Doubtless sound advice, this, for any gainful employment.

Now about that prime department of the press called the business
office. Many people firmly believe that all book reviews--and dramatic
criticisms and editorials--are bought by "the interests." One of the
principal librarians of New York holds this view of reviews. I never
knew a reviewer who was bound to tell anything but the truth as he saw
it. Nor have I ever written in any review a word that I knew to be
false; and I believe that few reviewers do. Because, however, this or
that publishing house was "a friend of ours," or because the husband of
this author used to work for the paper (pure sentiment!), or that one
is a friend of the wife of The Editor (caution!), it has been suggested
to me by my chief that I "go easy" with certain books.

The good reviewer does go easy with most books. It is a mark of his
excellence as a reviewer that he has a catholic taste, that he sees
that books are written to many standards, and that every book, almost,
is meet for some. It is not his business to break things on the wheel;
but to introduce the book before him to its proper audience; always
recognising, of course, sometimes with pleasant subtle irony, its
limitations. It is only when a book pretends to be what it is not,
that he damns it. All that is not business, but sensible, sensitive
criticism.