The Two Saplings

Two baby boys are born on the same day; one American, one English, their futures spread out before them safe in the arms of their affluent parents. Miss de la Roche’s novel is not an addition to her Whiteoaks series, but a story of two families, on whom circumstances have played a strange prank which might have had unhappy consequences. Subduing mere emotion to good sense and good will they make an experiment with their sons, by which each of the boys sees something of the other’s country. When the exchange has been made, the war brings its special difficulties and perils, and the story of the Wyldes and the Rendels often seems to illustrate, on a miniature scale and without any didactic purpose, the problems and the promise of Anglo-American relationships now and for the future.-