Treasure Chest was a column of short, philosophical selections from classic writers. One selection that week was from Heretics in which G.K. Chesterton asserted that sentimentalists had the best sense of humor. A selection from White Nights by Feodor Dostoevsky, in the translation by Constance Garnett, argued against the commonly held theory that man was at his noblest when he acted out of his true, enlightened self interest. On the contrary, Dostoevsky wrote, man was at his best when he acted consciously against his own best interests. Walter Bagehot wrote in Literary Studies that "there is hardly a human life which would not have been different if the idea of beauty in the mind of the man who lived it had been different."
In Speaking of Books, J. Donald Adams, former editor of the Times book review section, expounded further on Chesterton and Heretics, which was published originally in 1905 and is still in print today. In the essay from which the quote was taken, Chesterton dismissed the witty epigram spouters of his day, a style that Adams wrote reached its peak in the 1920s among the smart set but was still commonplace in 1946. Chesterton wrote that the "men and women who exchange the repartees may not only be hating each other, but hating even themselves." Apparently, Adams was no Dorothy Parker fan. He also agreed with Chesterton that the fear of being sentimental was “the meanest of all the modern terrors" because it is an arrogant denial of the heart. Chesterton was a transitional figure of the Edwardian age between the Victorians and the modernists. He quibbled with much of his contemporaries like Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. He converted to Catholicism. He had been dead ten years in 1946 and belonged to an earlier era, but was close enough in time to have considerable appeal to the Old Guard Conservatives who imagined that life had been more orderly in the past.
The Poets Corner had two short poems this week. One was from Poems of Ireland by Freda Laughton. The other was excerpted from The Time Piece by Frank Kendon.
Queries and Answers was a section of questions submitted by some readers and answered by other readers. For the most part the inquiries were about some partially remembered lines of verse.
Latest Books Received was a list of books recently published that were not chosen for review. For the most part they were academic or written for limited audiences, or were reference or how-to books. Several books on the theater were listed including the latest edition of Theater World, covering the 1944-45 season. There were also a few travel books among those considered not important enough for a review.