LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 244, 12 October 1918, Page 14

LITERARY.

Mr. Kerensky has completed the writing of a book giving full explanations and details of hie relations and disagreements with General Korniloff. It is ■understood that the book will be published shortly in English.

John Galsworthy resents being labelled pessimistic, and when a profeseor of English told the author that students reading his books were struck by their pessimistic note, Galsworthy said he could not see why people should consider hia looking at things ac they are as a form of pessimism. ir Lf my <works have any moral value at all it is that they teach toleram-e, sympathy for the viewpoint of other people; they try to do away with stiffness, useless conventions, abuse of authority. I am rather distressed to hear that my readers think mc pessimistic"

A book puWiehed in 1914. "Democracy]! and the Wiur," :by several wrttere, remains i one of the 'best of the many works on the causes and issues of the war. One of the contributors to thie notable volume, Mr. Alfred E. Zimmorn, lias just published, under the title of "Nationality and Government,' a collection of articles on war subjects. Readers of the "Round Table" will be interested to find that some of the striking articles that have appeared in that indiepeneable quarterly —eirch as "Three Doctrines in Conflict" (March, 191S)—were written by Mr. Zitnmern; they appear in this volume. It ie a great pleasure to read Mr. Zimmern. He is Bacon's "full man," he has evidently had wide experience of men and things, and 'he has a very readable style. We can recommend the book strongly to ell students of war settlement questions, and particularly to those interested in nationalism and internationalism. Mr. Zimmern has some brilliAnt chaptere on these two subjects. He begins by setting out the evil side of nationalism, and quotes that great lover of freedom, Lord Acton, as saying that "the theory of nationality ie more absurd and more criminal than the theory of Socialism," but just when the internationalist is Tubbing his hands with delight, he turns to a vigoioue condemnation of internationalism and cosmopolitanism. "The vice of internationalism," he says, "ie decadence and the complete eclipse of personality," and "the political Prueeianism of a militarist Government ie far lees dangerous to the spiritual welfare of its subjects in the long- run than the ruthless and pervading pressure of commercial and cosmopolitan standards." The internationalist is apt to be a prig , , and Mr. Zimmern well says that it ie not easy to handle a collection of prigs from wm ; m "tho health-giving winds of nationality and tradition have been withdrawn." Keenly ailive to the dangers of nationalism, he likens "'cosmopolitans or Bolshn-j viks" to cut flowers, in that they draw no nourishment from their native soil, and declaTes that the road to internationalism lies through nationalism. Very l able, too, is Mr. Zlmmern's preface, in which he defines liberalism, and points out how essentially different is the. spirit of English liberalism worn the Socialism of the Continent, with its adherence to "the materialistic conception of history," and "the doctrine of the class struggle." While "to liberalism spiritual forces are the centre of life, and the supreme aim is tie application of moral and spiritual principles, both in politics and industry"; to socialism "economics ie the centre of life, end the conquest of wealth and power by the oppressed claee the supreme aim." The book is published at 10/6 net by Chatto and Windus, whom we congratulate on its admirable form in days when there is much inferior printing and binding in the production of war books. A GREAT SCIENTIST. Those interested in the scientific renaissance of the nineteenth century, and especially in the botanical section of it, will enjoy the official biography of one of its great figurea which Mr. John Murray has just published. The two handsome volumes of " The Lifu and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton. Hooker," ■by Mr. Leonard Huxley, tell the 6tory of the long life of the greatest British. botanist of his age, and one of the greatest botanists in history. Tli« career covered the whole of the scientific renaissance, and as a friend of Darwin, Huxley and other giants of the time —he was the confidant and helper of Darwin in the years he was working out the theory of evolution —lie was in the thick of things. Hooker was born in 1817; in 1837 he discovered three new species of mosses, and in 1911 he established several new species of the genus iropatiens. He never really grew old. In the span between these dates Hooker did an enormous amount of work. He was a scientist in the Ross expedition to the South Seas in 1839, and his monumental work on the flora of Antarctica, New Zealand and Tasmania, laid the foundations of his world-wide fame. In his maturity he compiled his " Flora of British India," a seven-volume work dealing with 16,000 species. The " Genera Plantarum," produced in collaboration with George Bentham,iwas a codification in three volumes of the Latin diagnoses of all the known genera of flowering plants, and the "Kew Index," the compilation of which lie directed, contained 375,000 specific names. The list of his works at the end of this biography fills twenty pages! It is to Hooker and his father, Sir William Hooker, that the value of the famous Kew Gardens ie largely due, for during their rule it became the great scientific establishment that it is. But Hooker was no narrow specialist. He was a scientist of wide interests, and to the average reader probably the most interesting parts of this bio"graphy will foe those dealing with his work with and influence on Darwin. He was the first confidant to whom the Species Theory was entrusted, and excepting A. R. Wallace, its first wholehearted adherent. Professor Bower, who contributes a chapter on Hooker's position as a botanist, says that among botanists he was the protagonist of evolution, and that he was "Darwin's constant and welcome adviser and critic, drawing upon his unrivalled knowledge of botanical detail as evidence for, or check upon, the advancing theoretical position." There is a great deal in these volumes about Hooker's relations with Darwin and other great men of science— some of the many giants of the oft-de-spised Victorian age; where are their I equals to-day? We may mention a lively account of the historic encounter, in the infancy of the Darwinian theory, between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley, when the Bishop asked Huxley whether it was from ■ his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that he traced his descent to a monkey, and Huxley smote him hip and thigh in one of the most crushing of recorded replies. On that dramatic occasion Hooker, hot with indignation, contributed to the discomfiture of thf bisherp.