LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 78, 1 April 1922, Page 22

LITERARY.

I No apology is needed for a statement of Einstein's theory of Relativity in plain language and condensed within such brief compass that the average man ■ can grasp something of its bearings. This want has been supplied in a little bro- ! cliure by Herbert Dingle, B.Sc, entitled i "Relativity for All," which Methuen and Co. publish. The author states that "the dominant aim throughout the book has been to make the ideas definite and intelligible to the ordinary mind." In the "Empire Review" lor February, the Hon. F. C. Wade, Agent-General for British Columbia, shows the immense change in the oversea trade of Canada, which has been effected by the construction of the Panama Canal and the enhanced importance which it has given to the Pacific Ocean in the world's commerce. He contends that a considerable proportion of Manitoba's wheat crop will ultimately be sent to Britain via Vancouver instead of via Eastern ports.

In a recent lecture on the songs of Burns, the Rev. Boyd Scott, of Glasgow, indulged in some criticism which may attract attention. He said ho had no very fierce hatred against Sir Harry Lauder, but he confessed ho bore him a grudge when he found, as a result of the world-wide devotion for this irresistible droll, that Scottish song was taken by the multitude in England and Australia, and even in Canada, as the equivalent of a thing like "Roamin' in the Gloamin'." He declared that nearly everything that Lauder sang was the veriest shoddy, and fifty years hence there would not be a line of it repeated, except, it might be, on some patched-up, clattering gramophone in the hands of a Patagonian.

Mr. H. G. Wells went to Washington during the Peace Conference as representative of a number of leading English and American papers. His observations were embodied in twenty-nine papers, and these have been published in book form by W. Collins and Sons. The author, in his preface, 6tates that he does not profess to give a record or description of the Conference, but merely the impressions and fluctuating ideas of one visitor. "They show the reaction of that gathering upon a mind keenly set upon the idea of an organised world peace; they record phases of enthusiasm, hope, doubt, depression, and irritation." He claims, however, that "in spite of the daily change and renewal of mood and attitude inevitable under the circumstances, they do toll a consecutive story; they toll of the growth -and elaboration of a conviction of how tilings can be done, and of how they need to be done if our civilisation is indeed to be rescued from the dangci-s that encompass it and set again upon the path of progress. They Tecord—and in a very friendly and appreciative spirit—the birth and unfolding of >lie 'Association of Nations' idea, the Harding idea of world pacification; they note some of the peculiarities of that birth, and they study the chief difficulties in the way of realisation." Mr. Wells gives his personal impressions of leading men who took part in the Conference, supplemented by characteristic Wellsian comments on the worlds disorders and how to remedy them. Our copy from Whitcombe and Tombs.

"A Gentleman With a Duster," whose vigorous efforts to clear "the Mirrors of Downing Street" gave rise to a good deal of speculation regarding his identity, has extended his operations from the sphere of politics to the Church. In "Painted Windows" (Mills and Boon) he gives personal sketches of Bishop Gore, Dean Inge, Father Roland Knox, Dr. L. P. Jacks, Bishop TJenslow Henson, Miss Maud Royden, Canon E. W. Barnes, General Bramwell Booth, Dr. W. E. Orchard, Bishop William Temple, Dr. VV, B. Sellbie, and Archbishop Randall Davidson. Hi 3 criticisms are as frank as those which he applied to the men upon whose Bhoulders has fallen the government of the British Empire at the most critical time in its history, lie regards Bishop Gore as the chief reHtraining influence which prevents ritualistic extremists from losing in the follies of excess "the last vestiges of English re?pect for the once glorious and honourable Oxford movement." A wide gulf separates the traditionalist bishop from the philosopher Dean Inge, for whom "it is what Christ said that matters, what He taught that demands our obedience, and what He revealed that commands our love." General Bramwell Booth, the author declares, was the real founder of the Salvation Army. "The father was the dramatic showman of this movement, the son its fire. The mother endowed it with the energy of a deep and tender emotion, the son provided it with machinTy." His concluding chapter the writer devotes to the question, "If Christianity is from heaven, why does it exerciso so little power on the human race?" He endeavours to supply an answer; and in the course of his dissertation observes: "Something is wrong with the Church. It is impious to think that heaven interposed in the affairs of humanity to produce that ridiculous mouse, the modern curate. Mo teacher in the history of the world ever occupied a lower place in the respect of men." His resume of current tendencies in religious and scientific thought, and the outlook for religion in the future does not throw much practical light on the problem.

"Disenchantment," by C. E. Montague (Chatto and Windus), consists of war pictures and reflections thereon by a (brilliant literary man, who saw things at first hand. His caustic remarks on the training of the British officer in prewar days are depressing, and probably somewhat overdrawn. He declares that at Loos, the troops had "gone foredoomed into a battle lost before a shot was fired, and charges it apainst bad staff work, due to the fact that "the fashion in our Regular Army was to think hard work 'bad form'; a subaltern was felt to be a bit of a scrub if he worried too much aibout discovering how to support an attack when he might be more spiritedly employed in playing polo." He contrasts the steadiness of the Dominion troops with the unrelia'bleness of the English Tommies—perhaps undersized boys from our slums and the under-witted boys from the "agricultural, residential, and sporting estates of our auctioneers' advertisements." While the overseas troops were exclaiming "They have let us down again!" they forgot that these men could only draw on such funds of nerve and physique, knowledge and skill as had been left to them from the conditions under which they had been born and reared. The race of profiteers receives severe handling. Mr. John Masefield, in a review of "Disenchantment," says:—"The book is written in that most apt, happy, witty style which all readers of the 'Manchester Guardian' know. It is one of the very best of the books which have been written about the war."