Yet there are striking differences. While Irish Gaelic is today the official language of a small state of 3,000,000 people, many of whom are acquiring the language in school with reluctance and difficulty, Ukrainian is the cherished mother-tongue of nearly 50,000,000 Slavs in Eastern Europe. Regardless of all political considerations, the cultural dynamic of so large a group cannot be permanently disregarded by the scholar and the general reader. Professor Clarence A. Manning, of Columbia University, is rendering a service to international letters in making available, in English, a brief but comprehensive history of Ukrainian literature. It is a timely task, courageously carried out. WATSON KIRKCONNELL _Hamilton, Canada._ INTRODUCTION Ukrainian literature offers perhaps the best medium for studying the aspirations of the Ukrainian people and their mode of existence. In many ways it presents a sad picture for Ukraine has suffered much during the last thousand years and the efforts of its people to develop an independent state which could give them freedom and happiness have been thwarted again and again. We have the almost unique example of a nation of forty million people that has not been able in the last centuries to become the master and the director of its fate, that has been doomed to undergo every form of humiliation and yet has held firm its resolve to try again at the first opportunity that offered any hope of success. It is the task of history to explain this anomalous situation and historians, whether friendly or hostile, have not been slow to take advantage of their privilege. The narrators of the story of Ukraine have approached the subject from every conceivable angle. Some have denied stoutly that there ever was a Ukraine. Others have declared that the nation met its fate because of its own errors and defects. Still others have challenged these unfavorable views and have laid the blame on better prepared and grasping neighbors. There are many more of these explanations but we have little to do with them. Literature explains the results of history. It shows us the effects that history has had upon the masses and upon the individual. It gives us in artistic form a picture of the reactions of the people to the conditions under which they are compelled to live and even more than history, it mirrors their ideals and their dreams for the future. Yet it does even more than this.