This is a peculiar novel, an artifact of a time distant in memory. It was a contemporary novel when written, but now reads like the quaintest of historical romances. And odd. Let's not forget odd! For the author, who usually contented himself -- indeed, strictly limiting himself -- to romances at some remove from Ideas and Causes, gets caught up in the idea of political philosophy and action. Near the end of the novel, Crawford regales us with the speech his politician gives to a crowded auditorium, prefiguring the John Galt speech, perhaps, that crowded into the pages of "Atlas Shrugged." And there is a liberty theme here, too: "The contest is between political passion on the one hand and universal liberty on the other." "Liberty in some counties is a kind of charade word, an anagram, a symbol representing an imaginary quantity, a password invented by unhappy men to express all that they do not posess. . . . In these United States, liberty is a fact." Hmmm. This from the author who, in other novels, took time to pillory the ideas of Herbert Spencer. He had some respect for individualist liberalism, that's for sure. Though how much? You read, you judge.

Well, there's romance in the novel, too; not just political preaching. And there's an interesting conspiracy angle at work in the book, an angle that Crawford takes as almost obvious, but which many American commentators found (in the book's heyday) twisted and European.

I suspect Crawford had something going for him on this ground. There are indeed men who work behind the scenes. This book is political in that sense too.

But in America today, it is impolite to mention such machinations. You are called a "conspiracy theorist" and laughed at.

Those secretive men, though, they laugh, perhaps, behind our backs. ( )