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CURRENT BOOKS

Richard Halliburton. His Story of His Life’s Adventure. Geoffrey files. 433 pp. (15s net.) Halliburton was driven about thd world by the demon of energy within him. It never rested or gave him rest. The marvel is how he found,"time to write his books, his articles, his lectures'. And he wrote to his father and mother, besides, the .letters, hundreds of them,' from which this book is chosen; letters so full, so detailed, that with a lew connecting, explanatory words added they make his biography. He wrote as he ran—or climbed, or swam, Or sailed, or flew—unflaggingly, devouring space, racing time. It is a fact, perhaps a little comic and’ a little pathetic, that Halliburton was really a thyroid case; the demon that drove and empowered him. the exuberant lust for experience, adventure, and triumph that he gloried in, was a glandular abnormality. The fact does not lessen’ his achievement or dull;: these pages. Anybody, the most sedentary of creatures, mentally lazy, imaginatively torpid, can be a globe-trotter, Halliburton was no such poof thing. Byron swam the Hellespont: so would he, and the Panama Canal, too. Hannibal had.conquered the Pyrenees, riding an elephant: so would he. „He repeated the wanderings of Ulysses, marched after the Spanish conquerors through South America, ran the, course to Marathon. He searched out Haile Selassie at Addis Ababa and 4he assassins of Ekaterinburg, camped with the Foreign Legion, hob-nobbed with Chinese pirates, Moroccan slave-trad-ers. and the head-hunters of Borneo, and flew round the world. On the move, he clattered out his books, “New Worlds to Conquer” and the others, dashed off his copy for the greedy newspaper syndicates, lectured at universities, clubs, and schools, fitted in a Hollywood screen contract... on the move until he died. He was sailing a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to the Golden Gates, early in 1939. The liner, President Coolidge, heard the last word of Richard Halliburton by radio in mid-ocean: “Southerly gales rain squalls lee rail under water ~. having wonderful time." t THE NEW WORLD , The Crisis of Civilisation. By Alfred Cobban. Jonathan Cape. 272 pp. (12/6 net.) Through Simpson and# Williams Ltd. Mr Cobban’s study of the problems of international order, and in particular of the problem of escape from the old, war-creating conflict of sovereign national rights, is a realistic one. This, appears, to give a single in his grasp of two facts, his recognition of the dilemma they represent, and his resolution of it. Thus, all; hopes for the future of civilisation depend bn ceasing to think in terms of absolute sovereignties or totalitarianisms of any kind.; Bui, in conditions when •power is increasingly centralised, the only hope of peace is that the process will continue till “effective armed power is concentrated under a single control/’ There is the dilemma. But imperialism and federalism are not now so violently opposed as they have been. Both are,- or cyi be, directed to the . “actualisation of the rights of individual men-ahd women.” The way of escape argued by Mr Cobban is, in. fact, along the line of their combination, relatively clear and relatively limited functions. The imperial , function, as. isto maintainlpeace; the federal ’function, as such, is;, to de? velop it for the ends of human welfare. "In the British Commonwealth and in the American hegemony of the New World there already exists thg foundation for such a the ~ military unity of empire with tHte political freedom of a federal system.” 7 Mr Cobban does not fail to fee, of course, that hew institutions -run in the old spirit are doomed: they call for a change of spirit and for changed conceptions, among peoples, itr their leaders. His object is to showfwhere and how such a change can, without impossible risks and Impossible Straihs. give the Western world.l’a newstart.’* GLANCE — ’ ■ Look at the Child The camera studies by Mr Harold Burdekin, a ’ thoughtful photographer and an artist, in Little Children^J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 59 pp. 6s* net.) have a strong, immediate' appeal'to eye .andjMart/and ppe that needs ho reinforcing. perhaps: but It is reinforced, unobtrusively well. Opposite- each photograph Mr Burdekin prints -a few lines of poetry, beautifully chosen to suit with it- Sometimes they are no more than qvjiappy comment oh what >, is explicit ,ih the camera’s statement; sometimes they touch its implicit significance, a child’s innocent hands are filled by Shakespeare's lines —“Be just, and fear not. Let all the ends, thou aim’st at be thy country's, Thy God’s, and truth’s”—with the promise and the peril they inherit Equality or Collectivism? The Lothian Publishing Company Pty., Ltd, issues for a group of writers who use the joint pen-name of “Gamaliel” a short political study entitled Equality Now (63 pp, 1/-.) . “Either we believe in democracy or we db not. If we believe in it we must pursue it to - its logical and necessary conclusion,” which is described as “a humane equality.” The alternative, according to “Gamaliel," is “a heavyhanded collectivism.” This inquiry, covers most aspects of national and international order. Some suggestions are made for war measures in accordance with its aims., Liberty Handbooks . No. 5 in the series of Liberty Handbooks issued by J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. is Dr. Hugh Clegg’s War-time Health and Democracy (64 pp. 1/- net.). It reviews the steps taken to organise the medical profession to meet the demands of a nation at war, the specialised health problems that the war has produced, and the measures devised to deal with them. Under this last heading Dr. Clegg writes informatively : about the development of food control to maintain dietary standards qualitatively as well as quantitatively adequate. He states that the introduction of the Food Ministry’s “fortified" loaf has been held up by a "technical breakdown in the manufacture of vitamin Bl.” Reprints Messrs Hodder and Stoughton have added to their half-crown reprint series Ruby Ferguson’s charming novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, and Mr John Waller Hills’s A Summer on the Test. This leisurely record of a busy season of dry-fly fishing on a celebrated river is like other first-class books on fishing: it is as attractive to the uninstructed reader as to the expert disciple of Walton. The publishers have been kind in retaining in this cheap issue some woodcuts by Robert Gibbings.—From W. S. Smart. Pretty Booklets The Courage and Friendship Booklets, produced by Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. (Auckland), are enveloped ready for post, a very attractive means of conveying a Christmas greeting. The five titles issued are Bracken’s Not Understood, Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, some songs and poems of Robert Burns gathered as Sprigs o’ Heather, ran anthology of Great Thoughts from famous books, and Golden Threads drawn from Trine’s “In Tune with the Infinite.” The booklets are prettily designed, two being printed in a decorative letter. Fun and Games Messrs A. H. and A. W. Reed (Wellington) inaugurate the Raupo Scries of Handbooks with "Harlequin’s” More Fun at Your Party <A pp. 19), J a very good collection of games, quiat J or noisy, competitions, idiotic or in- J tellectual, “surprises and stunts,” and m so on. ' m