LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 116, 17 May 1924, Page 18

LITERARY.

Mr. Ben H. Morgan, chairman of the British Empire Producers' Association, has written "A Short Introduction to the Study of Empire Economic Problems." to which he has given the title, "What Every Briton Ought to Know." He says that few people realise that the British Empire covers nearly a quarter of the earth's Burfaee, and tbat its citizens number nearly a third of the world's population. He contrasts the methods by ' which this vast confederation of people baa been created with the great Empires of the past. The constitution of the Empire necessarily gives rise to many difficult problems, and the purpose of Mr. Morgan's treatise is to formulate the issues, more especially with reference to governance and defence, industry, trade, credit and finance, distribution of population, and transport. Preference is made to such subjects as exchanges, and a chapter is devoted to the recommendations of the Imperial Conference, 11)23. The lit. Hon. Stanley M. Bruce, Prime Minister of Australia, contributes a preface. Books designed to explain to (he lay mind the meaning and significance of Einstein's theory of gravitation continue to flow from the Press. One of the latest is a translation by Henry L. Brose of an essay on the subject written byEdwin L. Freundlieh, Director of Einstein's Tower. The book is commended, in a preface, by Einstein himself. It is doubtful, however, whether any reader who does not possess something more than an elementary knowledge of mathematics will be able to follow the author in his exposition of the subject, although it is admittedly clear and logical and will probably be readily followed by all who are, to use the words of Professor Einstein, "to some extent conversant with the methods of reasoning of the exact sciences." In "Rare Luck," by Mr. Pett Ridge, (Methuen), we have a novel of middleclass London life, dealing, in a semisatirical but kindly way, with love, and modest, but successful finance. The author has chosen as hero a newly-rich young man and the story reminds us of Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year," but in this case the young parvenu is shrewd and business-like, the exact opposite of Warren's spendthrift fool. Mr. Pott Ridge keeps throughout to his familiar staccato style, the abbreviated jerky sentences, and quick humorous mode of expression common to a certain typo of Londoner, being well rendered. There are many smiles in "Rare Luck."

I "The Second Wife" by Lilian Arnold I (Thornton Butterworth) a vitally modern story, concerns Courtenay Blake, [ whose past life has been seared by an : episode of grim horror, and two women i of different types on whose lives ho ! exercised a magnetic influence. The contrast between Alison Seymour, an old-fashioned, clinging typo of girl, and Judith Borrowdale, modern Amazonian, and undersexed, is skilfully emphasised. In the development of a woman in the difficult role of second wife the real drama of the story centres. There is , also involved the question should a man before marriage always reveal the secrets of his past life. The importance of the Singapore naval , base for the defence of Britain's Easter trade and of Australia and New Zealand, is ably reviewed in an article iby Professor L. W. Lyde in the "National Review" for April. He shews that the distance from Singapore to Tokyo is greater than that from Devonshire to Massachusetts, and very little less than from Yezo to Vancouver Island. To describe the fortification of this port as a menace to Japan is ridiculous. In the same issue of the "National" is an article by the Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery on "Imperial Economies," in which the author shews that the colonial policy of England is mainly responsible for her commercial and industrial greatness. The "Justice of the Duke," Ivy Rafael Sabatine (Stanley Paul), ia practically a collection of short stories connected by the part which one man—Ccsare Borgia—takes in each, and so welded into an agreeable whole. In the period of which the author writes. Ttaly—or that portion known as the Romagna—was subdivided into many States, the ruler of each at enmity with others, and many refusing to acknowledge the over-lord-ship of the Pope. It was the task of Cesare Borgia to break the power of the independent nobles, and that with insufficient force at his disposal. Each of the seven chapters serves to illustrate by what shrewdness and strategy Cesare succeeded in making himself feared, and how cleverly he used discreditable means to obtain most desirable and worthy ends.

"The House of Prophecy," by Gilbert Carman (Thornton Butterworth) is a study of temperament, which mainly concerns a giri—charming, incalculable, impulsively sympathetic—and the three men who are in love with her. A practical idealist, Matty Boscaren seems to have learned wisdom during the War. Penrose she loves; and she loves the strange, crude little Jew, (Sembal; but if she married either she feels his love would not last. She loves, too, the highminded, maturer, stable professor, Melian Stokes, and is ready to marry him, but just before the day fixed for the wedding realises her mistake, changes her mind, and runs away to join the persistent, baffling Sembal after all. The importance of the story is, as always with Mr. Carman, that it Berves as a medium for the development of his own philosophy of life and character. E. V. Knox and E. Y. Lucas have constituted themselves the poet laureates of Wembley Empire Exhibition, in default of an ode from llobt. Bridges. Their effusion, in 13 stanzas, appears in the April issue of the "Empire Review,'s and is amusingly descriptive of the elements that make up tbe great show. The second series of letters from Mrs. R. L. Stevenson to Sir Sidney Colvin give an intimate picture of their life in the South Seaß, and throw new light on the character of R.L.S. The most important paper in the April issue of this magazine is an article by Mrs. Philip Snowden, describing her visit to Palestine and the results of a searching investigation into the conditions prevailing there. Her criticisms are moderate and well considered. They arc generally favourable to the administration of the mandate by tbe High Commissioner, and hopeful that a better understanding will ultitnately be established between Jews and Arabs. Withdrawal by Britain she regards as wholly undesirable in the interests of the inhabitants of Palestine, of tbe British Empire, or of civilisation. Mr. John Murray has added to his edition of popular novels at two shillin'-'s net "The Treasure Cap," by Bennett Copplestone. and "The Return of Sherlock Holnies," by A. Cocau Doyle.

"Lip Malvy's Wife," by George Agnew Chamberlain" (Mills and Boon, per Dymock, Sydney), is a love story, in a setting of African adventure. Lip Malvy, Hell Bentwood, and Longwan Cochrane, a triumvirate of ivory buccaneers, went one after the other into the forest of bull elephants too but for a bullet, and never came out. Beatrice Malvy went in, too. When she confided her plan to Bruce Liscomb, as they neared the ominous green wall at the edge of the Dark Continent, the blued started suddenly pounding through his veins. This plan invulved grave risks and disastrous consequences, which, however, worked out for ultimate happiness and peace. -OVE LETTERS OF GREAT MEN AND WOMEN. (By DR. C. H. CHARLES.) The woman must indeed be friendless who has no one willing and ready at her decease to collect the faded flowers, the locks of hair, and love letters from her personal treasures, and commit them kindly and reverently to the flames. T_is is, perhaps, the reason why such private and intimate correspondence, as may by chance be published for all to read, is mostly but a libel upon the character and ability of the writers. In all this great and painstak-ingly-collected assortment of letteredited by Dr. Charles, there arc very few which contain sufficient evidence nf feeling and emotion to bear worthily the title of "love letters." It has been said that men "make love." We think that women "make" love, and man is left to express it when it is made. As the makers know most about love, it is in women's letters that we I find the finest sentiment and purest poetry. A poet seldom wastes a passionate poem upon any woman—unless Ihe also keeps a copy for his publisher, and so it is we see more love in volumes •of poetry than in volumes of corresipondence passed between man and maid. In the love letters selected by Dr. Charles there is little that has beauty or poetry. Napoleon alone seems to i have had passion and energy in writing, I but even he is selfish in expression. ; Condensed, his is all aery of "Josephine; I want you! " I Carlyle is prosy—more prosy than in his writing of Bluraine in "Sartos , Res-artus." It is little wonder that I Jane hesitated so long. Carlyle was explicit, however, "We may nearly starve, but come to mc," is not attractive to many Janes. There are few men lof any nationality who can put to paper a flowing pen and let their thoughts run from it freely. This is I what any woman can do. She is only I troubled that the mechanical limits of , pen, paper, and ink, so hampor her i expression of feeling. | Dr. Charles in his introductions and : remarks is slangy and ultra-modern, j but this may be his indention, to increase, by comparison, our admiration 'for the graceful nnd finished phrases of the love letters. Such are to be found, but graceful and finished phrases ■are not common in the necessarily 'reckless correspondence of a lover, and it is the fire and flame of love that is missing in all but a very few of this collection. No, we shall never see what Nelson, when most deeply moved, wrote |to Lady Hamilton, nor the lament I and creed that Byron must have i written to one or other of all his many loves. To see into the hearts of lovers j through these letters Dr. Charles has set before us is not possible, but we may gain some idea of the character of each writer and imagine how he or she might have written in those letters '.long ago returned to dust. : "Love Letters of Great Men and Women," by C. H. Charles, PhD., ; Stanley Paul, London. BOLSHEVIK PERSECUTION. ■| (By CAPT. F. McCULLA'GH.) j When an American or other trained I journalist sits down to write a book, j when, moreover, he is a scholar and an i earnest Bible student, he brings to liis I task qualities which ensure not only j good clear English, but methods of dc- | scription which arrest attention. Since the publication of Stanle3''s last work upon his leadership of tbe expedition for the relief of Emir Pasha, we have not met with any combination of verbatim report, and personal opinion thereon, so thorough and bo full of interesting details as portions of Bolshevik history. The sitting of the Soviet "Court" and the "trial" of the Russian Patriarch and a score or more of Russian priests, recalls the "Court" of the Revolutionists and the "trial" of the French aristocrats as related by Dickens in "The Tale of Two Cities." The Russian priests— men of education and refinement —were brought before a tribunal consisting, of course, of illiterate ruffians, who had, before the "trial" commenced, already decided upon and privately recorded the sentence to be pronounced. It was no restraint upon the part of the Soviet | which spared the lives of all but one lof the unfortunate prisoners, mid reI dueed their punishment to terms of im- ■ prisonment of from three to ten years (one priest lost his reason at the time), and this for no worse offence than guarding consecrated church vessels from j seizure by the Soviet. With the Pope, ■ canon law, and their loyalty to thoir religion, upon one hand, and the revolutionary Government upon the other, the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church had no option but to act as conscience directed. Captain Francis 1 McCullagh makes his readers give their sympathy to the priesthood, and that without any form of special pleading. It is, indeed, wonderful that the Quakers I were the first to agree to conduct their services under the supervision of the atheistic Soviet, and that the majority ! of the Protestant sects were able to 1 square their religious ideas with the ' dictates of their rulers.

For the general integrity of the Christian religion we are tempted to think it would have been as well if tbe exceptional persecution and outside pressure bad forced a union of all Christian churches and so produced a force beyond even the powers of the Soviet to crush. Pilate, himself, was nearer conversion than the Russian tyrants of this day. However, out of such evils may come good, and, if so, Captain Mc.Cullagh's book will not be the smallest influence to that end. Lenin is said to have regarded Christianity "as philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally abominable,'' also as *' a vast secret society. which the State has tho faculty to judge and the duty to suppress." On the prisoners' side, the Russian Patriarch said, "They taught the divine truth, which now for near two thousand years has been the light of the world, has been hailed as the truth by the greatest of human intellects, and has led humanity to attain its highest development." Can we doubt which opinion will prevail? "The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity" by Captaiu Francis McCullagh (John Murray).