ETC Werner Reviewed by Bertrand Russell in The Athanaeum Magazine, 1919

Posted: April 14th, 2023 | No Comments »

The Athanaeum was published between 1828 and 1921 after which it was incorporated into its younger competitor, the Nation. The Athanaeum is also a private members club on Pall Mall founded around the same time. Here below a review of ETC Werner’s China of the Chinese from August 1919. As well as being reviewed in The Athanaeum, Werner was also a member of the Club (though I don’t think he could have visited more than a few times as he rarely furloughed to England and not at all (I think) after he retired around 1914. Still he was accepted and was proposed by no less a figure than the author Rider Haggard who he had known as a young man at Scoone’s crammer school for the Foreign Service on Garrick Street, near Covent Garden. Both enjoyed their studies, both had an early interest in spirtualism but then Haggard went into business in Africa (and eventually obviously novel writing) and Werner into the diplomatic service in China. Yet they obviously remained friends….

The review “BR” is none other than Bertrand Russell, who was of course fascinated by China and reading up on the subject in 1919 before departing to give his series of lectures there (and in Japan) in 1920 (where it is quite possible he would have met Werner – though I have no evidence they ever did meet) eventually writing his own book, The Problem of China, published in 1922.

Werner

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