The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Parts Men Play, by Arthur Beverley
Baxter, et al

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Title: The Parts Men Play

Author: Arthur Beverley Baxter

Release Date: January 9, 2006 [eBook #17481]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PARTS MEN PLAY***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE PARTS MEN PLAY

by

ARTHUR BEVERLEY BAXTER

Author of "The Blower of Bubbles"

With Foreword by Lord Beaverbrook

McClelland & Stewart
Publishers ======== Toronto
Copyright, Canada, 1920
By McClelland & Stewart, Limited, Toronto

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER

JAMES BENNETT BAXTER

WHO BELIEVED THOUGHT TO BE MORE IMPORTANT
THAN THINGS, AND WHO WENT THROUGH THIS
WORLD DISPENSING GENIAL PHILOSOPHY
AND KINDLY HUMOUR TO ALL
WHO CAME WITHIN
HIS CIRCLE

FOREWORD.

Mr. Baxter is my countryman, and, as a Canadian, I commend _The Parts
Men Play_, not only for its literary vitality, but for the freshness of
outlook with which the author handles Anglo-American susceptibilities.

A Canadian lives in a kind of half-way house between Britain and the
United States. He understands Canada by right of birth; he can
sympathise with the American spirit through the closest knowledge born
of contiguity; his history makes him understand Britain and the British
Empire. He is, therefore, a national interpreter between the two
sundered portions of the race.

It is this role of interpreter that Mr. Baxter is destined to fill, a
role for which he is peculiarly suited, not only by temperament, but by
reason of his experiences gained from his entrance into the world of
London journalism and English literature.

I do not know in what order the chapters of _The Parts Men Play_ were
written, but it seems to me that as Mr. Baxter gets to grip with the
realities of his theme, he begins to lose a certain looseness of touch
which marks his opening pages. If so, he is showing the power of
development, and to the artist this power is everything. The writer
who is without it is a mere static consciousness weaving