NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20056, 11 October 1930, Page 15

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

TWO GREAT COUNTIES. SuJTo:ic and Norfolk. A Perambulation of this Two Counties with Notices of their History and their Ancient Build.ngs. By M. R. James, 0.M., Litt.D., F.8.A., F.S.A. Illustrated by G. E Chambers, F.S.A. J. M. Dent and Son, Ltd. (Bs net.)

Dr. James's plan in perambulating "these two great counties," as he calls them, recognises the impossibility of even naming, within a single volume, "every object of interest." He calls attention, therefore, to the most beautiful or curious remains of old times, especially mediaeval, and explains what needs to be explained; he gives by the way a little of the "human history" of the two counties and a more connected account of it in his first thirty pages. He leaves it to the traveller himself to detect natural beauty and explore natural history. This produces excellent results. A book crammed as full of facts as this generally seems unwieldy. Here they seem always to be the right facts, rightly disposed, and so do not crowd each other and weary the reader; and they always leave room for such quietly personal and pleasant remarks as those with which the treatment of Bury St. Edmunds is rounded oft':

On the whole I take Bury to be the most attractive town in Suffolk, perhaps because I know it so w-ell as the shopping-town of my childhood. Therefore 1 have been prolix.

It is disappointing to hear that the "judicious visitor'' who seeks in Burv for the Ladies' School, where Mr Pickwick's midnight errand of chivalry ended in comic disaster, is not likely to find it. Another reason why the book carries its cargo easily i 3 this: The ample page and the large type greet the reader much more kindly than the small page and close type of most guidel ooks. Finally, there are the pictures photographs, very skilfully taken and reproduced, and excellent line-drawings. Certainly this is not a book for the walker's pocket or knapsack;- but it is hard to. think of anv other defect. The price is astonishingly low.

A GREAT SOLDIER. Tnrenne, Marshall of France. By General Mar Weygand. Translated by George B. Ives. George G. Harrap and Co., Ltd. (10s 6d net.) The Chief of the French Army General Staff takes an excellent subject in tho great soldier, whose campaigns Napoleon urged military students to study and whom he praised as the greatest of Generals before him, perhaps greater than any to follow him. But what might have been expected from a soldier, writing about a soldier —that is: a close analysis of his strategy and tactics and description ot his application of them —is not supplied. The book is a fairly full but not elaborate account of Turenne's life and of the military and political events whi h in: lude it. It is therefore of less interest to the student of war and purely military history than to the general reader, who will be touched by many signs of a Staff Officer's capacity for quite sentimental hero-worship. The best chapter, because the material is. best, is thit in which Turenne's campaign of 1074 is described. There are no maps, only two or three major sources are given, but there are some portraits, of Colbert, the Prince ot CSond6, Richelieu and others, and of Mazarin, Turenne's great partner in the grandiose schemes which it is history's jest to reveal as the folly of children.

SOUTH AFRICA. Oomplex South Africa. An Economic rootnote to History. By William Miller Macmillan. Falter and Pater, limited. (12b 6d net.) The author—he is Professor of History at Johannesburg—does not offer to show the way out of South Africa's racial difficulties. He attempts only "'to call attention, as far as I am able as a lone investigator, to some of the essential facts." "Lone investigator" sounds an arrogant phrase; but its justification lies in this, that Professor Macmillan does show how South Africa —"Government and people"—is neglecting and even defying the facts in the attempt to frame and apply -'what they are pleased to call a 'native' policy." The asperity which the writer allows himself in the Preface does not betray the scientific spirit in which such a book ought to be written. He knows the meaning and the value of evidence, and the book is crammed with it. There is scarcely an opinionstive sentence but the conclusions which the evidence authorises so clearly emerge from it that nobody can miss them. One of them is that, if there is any hope at ail of a successful solution, it cannot be found along the segregative line adopted in the policy of General Smuts. "By our own act," Professor Macmillan writes, "the blacks are part of us and segregation is impossible. Sheer domination may serve for a season—for twenty, fifty years, haply for more —though in the twenty years since Union native self-consciousness has grown as it never did in a century preceding The blacks must have a secure place in the country, peacefully and easily at once, or later by violent contention. Their problems cannot bo 'solved' at a blow or without their own help." The antecedents of the present situation and its nature now have not been more closely examined than in the?e pa fe es and in those to which they are complementary, "The Cape Colour Question" and "Bantu, Boer, and Etriton."

PEACE OR WAR ? That Nest War? By K. A. Bran. Translated SJ S? se s" Wltl > a foreword (lOa ***** and UDWIn - The author, a Swedish staff officer, has a strong sense of fact and a bold imagination. They do not always cooperate perfectly, but his book "about war and against war" is extremely interesting, both as a statement of facts and as an argument. He takes a positive view of peace—that "non-war" is not enough; that the world must discover what it is to make of peace and through peace. But, of course, the first step is to guard against war. If it is to be abolished there must be found "a lever strong enough .... to influence events in the direction of progress," and in order to find it we must "fix the meaning of historical events in our epoch." Major Bratt claims no novelty for his faith in democratic power: "in end it is the struggle between reaction and democracy which will determine the future of war." In another sentence he says, "Peace cannot be achieved against democracy, but only by its help." These are good generalisations, but, as the writer says, the great problems are really problems of power—power to. enforce a decision. His thesis from this point onwards raises many highly debatable points, about the federation of peoples and its nature, the use of an international armed force, and so on.

A SCHOOLMASTER BREAKS OUT. Apples Be Ripe. By lilewelyn Powys. Xiongmans, Green and Co., I>td.

This is the ..trangest mixture ot poetry and balderdash, of genuine passion and melodramatic nonsense. It is coarse beyond all the requirements of candour, and ends, so far as the plot is concerned, in a merely silly meas. Yet it will not bo wholly despised by those even who read well, since the author like his much bigger brother, loves the earth, has an eye for its sights and an ear for all its sounds, and an uncanny faculty for directing sensual attention to them. Besides, there is always interest in a schoolmaster who goes wild and » university man who turns moral troglodvte. it is almost a shock to discover that the hero is called Chris Holbech and not Robert Keable or S. P. B. Mais.

SELECTIONS FROM LEACOCK. The Leacock Book. Selected. With *n Introduction by Ben Invars. The Bodley Head.

All that is new in this book is the introduction, and there could not very well have been a better introduction without risk to Leacock himself. Mr Travers says some extravagant things—as. for example, that "no publication from Holy Writ downwards would not be brighter for one or two tactfully classified Leacock reflections." But he says also that when a writer is funny no sensible reader is going to_ waste time in theorising about him. Hitch-brows and humbugs began by screwing up their faces; then they began to laugh. Leacock "not only gained access to the awful throne-room of Culture; he tickled her ribs for her when he pot there." To ask how ho does it is like asking a drank man how lie manages to look so droll. Mr Travers does not ask. He announces the world's funniest professor. THE FORERUNNER. The Voice of One. By John Uadser. Chapman and Kail. Mr Lindsey's novel is the story of St. John the Baptist. The problem of characterisation, is of course that of filling in an outline, the bareness and burning simplicity of which constitute its power, and this is a dramatic poet's task. Mr Lindsey does the best he can, which is much but not enough. Few people will feel that he has not -wronged this majeßtical spirit., by imaginative impertinences, however respectfully meant. The setting is better drawn. There remains the problem of style, which has also defeated the author. He never achieves the harmony he strives for, in verbal tonj and movement, and most obviously fails in such attempts as that, for instance, to assimilate modern to Biblical prose by the frequent use of sentences beginning with "And." But the book cannot be denied one - great merit: it is hard to stop reading it. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. The Pavilion by the Lake. By Arthur 7. Bees. John Lane, The Bodley Head. Where Altamount found a man's body one day, his own lay, with a bullet in the back, the next. At the same time there disappeared a miniature of Mary, Queen of Scots, Altamonnt's gift to his wife. Mr Bees's stories are always well turned. Smoke-Haze. By Alice Eustace. Mills and Boon. From Sands and BfcDougaJl. The Eddershaws, father, son, and son's son, each in turn spend their strength and skill in the . Good Hope coal-mine, fighting Nature, economic forces, and human selfishness. A good story is made out of the connexion between this struggle and their private lives.

The Beloved Adventuress. By Edmund B. D'Auvergna. Bveleigh, Nash and Grayson. From Dymock's Book Arcade, Ltd., Sydney. The taste stimulated by "period" painters like. Feuchtwanger and George ['reedy in "Jew Suss," "General Crack," and "The Eocklitz" will find in Mr d'Auvergne's novel a similar romantic flavour.

The Censorship and Public Morality. As Australian Conspectus. By Brian Lloyd and George Gilbert. Angus and Bobertson, Ltd., Sydney. (25.) The writers oppose "this fatuous censorship" and ask whether it can "seriously and honestly be claimed that [it] is effective, or whether it does any good, and to whom," what it is doing and why, and by whom it is conducted.

Criterion BXlsceClauy—No. 19. Bscape from the Dole. By A. S. Comyns Carr. Faber and Faber. (Is net.) Mr Carr's theory is that the Government shonld "offer to eD+«r into an agreement with any firm which fulfils certain conditions to be laid down, by which they would guarantee to pay out of the Unemployment Fund the loss (if any) up to a fixed limit, which may result from the firm either undertaking a specific contract or working to full capacity with a full staff for a specific period. . . . ." WAAC Demobilized. Her Private Affairs, 1918-1930. By the author of ' 'WAAC —llm Woman's Story of the War." T. Werner Laurie, Ltd. The heroine of ffAAC," reviewed here some months ago, inherited a fortune from the "Rupert" of that book; she travelled; and this is a record of her "curious amatory and other experiences," set down in the same manner, which curiously mingles raw simplicity and sophistication.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is about to issue a handbook giving the pronunciation of 1500 English place names. Incidentally it contains the only known English word that rhymes with "walrus," namely "Alr«was," John Drink water confesses to as interviewer that he once tried to write a novel but completed two chapters only.