NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18551, 28 November 1925, Page 15

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

MUSSOLINI. The best thing in "The Life of Benito Mussolini," by Marghoriti. G. Sarfatti, is the photograph on the cover, which shows a smiling natural Mussolini instead of the Man of the Hour. And after that the best thing is the preface by Mussolini himself, which shows that whatever else he is the Dictator is a journalist. This preface Mussolini calls u confession, and although it is a vain-glorious confession, it is refreshingly frank and sensible. Mussolini is pleased with himself, with his job, with his prospects of a permanent place in history. Although 'he agrees • • that his life is "less interesting than, for instance, that of the late Mr Savage Landor," and professes a strong detestation of those "who take him as a subject for their writings and discourses," he confesses that he likes the book under review because it "presents him with a sense of the proportions as regards time and space and events." He has no doubt also that he will have "biographers of to-morrow," and as for the Signora Sarfatti, it is clear from the tone of her book that she expects him to inspire biographers for all time. She is a capable woman, and like himself a journalist, but her heroworship is too abandoned to leave any place for judgment. Her usefulness is that she tells us many things about Mussolini the man which most of us do not know. Thus we get a quite definite impression of his blacksmithinnkeeper father, with his leaning to internationalism, and of his pious, nervous, admirably discreet, and restrained mother, to whom he obviously owes most of the finer qualities in his character. To her also more than to anyone else he owes his education and present worldly success, since she was herself the village schoolmistress and the person responsible for his transfer from the village school to the Collego of the Salesian Fathers, which made him a reader and thinker. ■ The rest of his life until he became a dictator was a mixture of school-teaching, "episodes reminiscent of Gorky," journalism, politics, and imprisonments, and then: the Great War. How long he will remain in his present position no one knows. But he has reached it through more blood and tears than most people know about, and the chief value of Signora Sarfatti's study—over and above its most excellent photographs—is the fact that it supplies the human and historical foundations of her adoration. (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd.) TO AUSTRALIANS. Those who succeed in getting through the first chapter of Mr < Seymour Hicks '» "Hullo Australia!!!" will probably read riglit on to, tho end; and if they do they will know some things about Australia that they did not know before. But it takes some hardihood to get through that first chapter. When you get used to Mr Hicks you forget his puns, vanities, and vulgarities, and realise that a cheap punster can be a very ardent patriot, but it is getting used to him that is the trouble. However, when Mr Hicks is not punning, which is not very often, he is brooding about the emptiness of Australia, and the more people who brood on that problem the better. It is probably true as he says that "John. Bull at home has not the vaguest notion what the words 'White Australia' signify," but Mr Hicks knows, and it may very easily be the case that his cheap, smart, affected, and often quite ridiculous book will awake England more rapidly than the words of people with better judgment and taste. It ought to be said also that Mr Hicks's devotion to Australia is a genuine thing, end warm enough to atone for all his literary shortcomings;' even for his poorly disguised snobberies, which are the most disagreeable feature of thi3 somewhat extraordinary study. (Duckworth's, London.)

NOVELS. When, a prosperous business man loses his memory so completely that his past life is a wall of blackness, the chances are that his business and his domestic happiness will suffer in consequence. It is not every hero who. could handle the difficult situation as Harry Tavlor does "in Joan A. Cowdroy's latest book, "A King- of Space." Taylor helps to rescue people from the wreckage of a railway accident and the shock impairs his memory. He falls desperately in love with his wife, whom he cannot remember to have seen before, and he determines to return to. work. From, then his life becomes a bluff, attended with severe mental strain, for he suffers from hallucinations and senses blurred pictures of the past. The author has made a clear and logical study of a harried mind which is not spoiled by the touches of romance and mystery. Harry Taylor, land agent, is a 'meat perfect gentleman." (London:- Hutchinson and Co. Christchurch: Simpson and "Williams.) One of the time-honoured tricks of the novelist is to re-shuffle the married' people in the last chapter and then show how inevitably and indisputably Mr A's wife was made for Mrs B's -hueband. Helen Prothero Lewis uses it convincingly in "The Hill Beyond," the romance with which she has followed "As God Made Her'» and "Love and the Whirlwind." All through, one has a suspicion that pretty Susan Seagrave is just the.girl for Walter Wetherbee, and although at one period it seems that they will have two marriages between them, the thirtieth chapter leaves them sympathetic and clinging. . There is nothing very dramatic about "The Hill Beyond"; it is just a pleasant tale of good people made happy and or malicious-minded people made miserable. (London: Hutchinson and to. Christchurch; Simpson and Williams.)

The case of Anthony Sorel in "When the Play Began," by Bmmeline Morrison, may arouse sympathy, but it will certainly provoke smiles. On a voyage to India Anthony becomes engaged to Beryl Carlyle, a worldly young woman. Shortly after his return to Qigland he sends for his fiancee in order to fulfil the contract. On the trip Home Beryl has as a fellow-passenger Onysanthe Paull—her "double" —and as she desires to iilt Anthony for another ma* l , a pact is made with Ctirysanthe to impersonate her. Anthony, though at first unsuspecting, becomes pulled concerning "Beryl"; there is charm where formerly harshness obtained. "Chrys" decides to sp through with the plot to the ringing of the wedding bells, when the real Beryl again seeks her - Anthony. Then the play begins in melodramatic earnest. (London: John Long, Ltd.) "The Falcon's Eyrie," by A. G. Hales, will remind some of the joy they had in the famous McGlusky. Much of the action takes place in Wales, and the characteristics of the Welsh people—their independence, hotheadedness, superstitions* soul for song, and .clan-

niah fealty—are truthfully limned. There are also strong whiffs of the sea breeze, since the period is of the days when smuggling was rife, and Iyor Gwynedd's schooner, Falcon, has many brushes with, and shows a clean pair of heels to, the resolute guardians of the King's revenue. There is some lore making, of course, and some treachery, but in all its episode the book has. reality and thrill. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd.). NOTES. Some can spell and not pronounce, some pronounce and not spell, but those even who can do both with reasonable accuracy will find a use for "Everyday "Word-Traps," by Harold Herd. This litiJe book is not so much a guide to spelling and* pronunciation in the ordinary way as a warning against the. pitfalls into which most of us Blunder at sometime or other if we have no guide. . It is perhaps not quite certain that the Derby is the Darby or that Pall Mall~is Pell Mell, but it is beyond question that kir-koo-bree is not Kirk-cud-bright. Again, if we shrink from saying Wool-idge instead of Wool-itch we must not be conservative enough to say Wool-witch; and what is trne of place-names is far more true of the names of people—Beanchamp, Bethune, Mainwaring, Wemyss. But the real humiliation is when we blunder over common nouns — when we accent the first syllable of "hdraon," give "epitome" three syllables instead of four, or "fiends" two instead 'of one. From these and all sucn errors this good little book wiU deliver us. (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd.) It is pleasant to have the late Lord Milner's "Questions of the Hoar," available in the excellent two shilling Edinburgh Library of Thomas Nelson and Sons. These essays appeared in 1921 and 1922, and in book form for the first time in 1923. But the book was no sooner, out than the author felt dissatisfied with it, or, rather with himself, and began reading up his subjects again.' In this edition, therefore! the reader gets a chapter of emendatoxy notes as well as the original five essays, with a short concluding "Key to My Position" in which Lord Milner described where he stood immediately before his death, economically, politically, and internationally. To say that he was a vivacious writer would be ridiculous, but he was certainly a very earnest and deep thinker as politicians go. with the unusual advantage that he always knew the ground-work of his subject at least. (Thomas Nelson and Sons. London and! Edinburgh.)