There are some books whose line of approach sets up a train of thought in the reader’s mind. Quite apart from their intrinsic value, their very existence calls attention to some great problem, and only the more urgently when the problem is as obvious and the method of approach as honest as the day. In I Took Off My Tie Mr. Massingham has written a book of singular integrity and clarity of purpose; a book which has some of the clumsiness arising from profound honesty. Few writers succeed in attaining to such perfect unselfconsciousness as this author. The subject described is the life of a group of tenants in two or three houses in a side street in the East End. The book, as was almost inevitable from its subject, has suffered extensively at the hands of reviewers and has received a good deal of rather treacly praise. By some papers it has been regarded as a document or a sign and as other tiresome things. Mr. Massingham’s treatment of his subject is non-sentimental rather than unsentimental, and a writer of less integrity would have suppressed the character of little Annie Morgan knowing how the childhood of the poor throws the British Public off its balance. I Took Off My Tie is a record of actual experience and the author shared, in so far as he was permitted, the lives of the people he describes.