Englishman Philosophy

ACTION--C. E. Montague--Doubleday, Doran ($2.50). Director and constant contributor to the Manchester Guardian, the late C. E. Montague is better known in this country for his mercurial newspaper idyll, A Hind Let Loose; for his satire on Englishmen at war, Right Off the Map and for the War-novel Rough Justice. In spite of his admixture of Irish blood, his philosophy is essentially, exceedingly English. To play the game, to accept one's fate and carry on--these are the "fiery particles" that compose the unvarying pattern of his thought. The present volume of posthumously published short stories falls short of grade-A Montague. Nevertheless it holds to the pattern. The title story concerns a middle-aged Manchester merchant who is threatened with paralysis. Determined not to live in half measures and die a lingering death, he hurries to Switzerland while his resolution is still high, there to climb his favorite mountain by an almost impossible route. If he should slip a foothold, or lose his ice-axe, while making every honest effort to climb, it would be fate, and not cowardly suicide. Perched perilously on a vertical boulder of ice, exhausted, he is on the verge of loosening hand and toe grip when he hears a call of distress from above. In such a crisis a Montague man can do only one thing--keep on climbing.