Books In Review What London Reads

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 159, 6 July 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

Books In Review What London Reads

AT a time when the eyes of the world are turned on momentous events in the West it is almost with relief that we can turn to another theatre of war— this time in the Far East. The

By - - Charles Pilgrim

Sino-Japanese war, which has been going on for four years, has now been overshadowed by the war against Hitler, but Mr. Gerald Sampson, a free lance journalist, spent some time in Japan and China, and the result is an interesting new book, "Warning Lights of Asia" (Hale). Mr. Sampson had visited the Caroline Islands, previously part of Germany's colonial empire, but ceded to Japan under a League of Nations mandate after the 1914-18 war. His activities there evidently aroused Japanese suspicions, for lim ing succeeded after much difficulty in landing in Japan he was arrested and thrown into prison, where, he had to spend a whole day sitting 1 crosswise on the floor, and could only stretch his cramped limlie when the sentry was not looking. However, Mr. Sampson had been long enough at liberty to ge.t some good

material for a book. He found the social progress in the Japanese factories and the disciplined order of their lives worthy of praise. But he seemed to have a genius for getting into trouble. Deported from Japan, he went to Shanghai and thence to Manclm'uto. Ja;>anese suspicions deported him from there., and he returned to China, which he found to be still full of resistance after many years of Japanese aggression. He was very- greatly impressed with tho versatility of Mine.. Chiang-kai-Shek. He Fays of her: "I have seen her running up soldiers' uniforms at a sewing machine, and in a military hospital ward expertly changing the dressings of the seriously wounded." Here is a personality who will spur on her countrymen to defend themselves and their native soil indefinitely. Miss Storm Jameson is a powerful writer and in he.r latest novel, "Europe to Let" (Macmillan) this power takes the form of a sharp knife piercing our in difference of the past 20 years. The story is told by "an obscure man," a

company commander in 1014, and later a writer and traveller. He was in Cologne in 1923, during the occupation of the Ruhr; in Vienna in 1938; in Prague and Paris in the same year—before Munich; and in Budapest between 1936 and 1938.

1 here is no real artistic unity in this Look. The four episodes are really isolated, but there is a unity of mood, of sorrow and of anger, which gives unity to the whole. Czechoslovakia is the centre of the book, that tragic country whose people were the first of alien race to feel the heel of Nazi oppression and cruelty. Europe is paying the penalty for her own national" selfishness, anil German paganism and diabolical barbarism is flooding that continent of Christianity and culture. Miss Jameson spares no one, except the Czechs, least of all herself, and the result is a passionately sinee.re and strikingly impressive book.

Observer At Sea Mr. Bernard Stubbs has recorded many despatches of the work that our Navy and mercantile marine have been doing round the shores of Britain since the beginning of the war. His accumulated observations, containing more than he would craiji into his three-minute dispatches for the 8.8.C., he has collected in book form under the title "The Navy! at War" (Faber and Faber). Mr. Stubbs is a good observer and he has great admiration for the men whose work he has been observing and a gift of expression which conveys his observations to the reader without undue emphasis. The book contains many aspects of the Navy's work —convoying, mine-sweeping, mine-laying, patrolling, etc., and it is admirably illustrated.