SAD DESTINY

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21198, 23 June 1934, Page 15

SAD DESTINY

ONE MAN'S STORY Letters of an Indian Judge to an English Gentlewoman. Lovat Dickson. 254 pp. (7/6 net.) There are sad moods in this book. It will leave sad, despairing reflections. It is the story, told in Jiis letters, of the domestic and official life of an Indian who became judge of the High Court and a delegate to the Round Table Conference. The saddest feature is the dreadful, unconscious humility, especially in early life, with which he showed gratitude for the casual attention of an Englishman. It is true that he was in some respects nai've, but not with the heavy-footed naivete of the famous Babu. His eminence, achieved by hard work, native ability, and strict probity, could not have been won by an industrious fool. Arvind Nehra (an attributed name) was a man of keen observation and fine sensitiveness, able to express himself with humorous ease, loyal, tolerant, and far-seeing. In India, in the past two decades, he could see only the drunken staggerings of a giant beset by little men, some lazy and boorish governors, some restive from oppression, others, like Garuihi. bnnct leaders of the blind. He saw in his wretched wife the follies and disasters of ineradicable superstition; in his son, the bewilderment and madness of political frenzy; in his associates, timid venality. He saw that the "colour" question, which saddened but did not embitter him, was really a matter of sex, deeper than prejudice or ignorance. He could not see why Englishmen, so kind and humorous in their own land, were so pompous and inhuman in India. He could blame only the heat. The publishers profess themselves satisfied about the authenticity of these letters. The acceptation of this confidence is unimportant, for whoever wrote the book has done his work with complete and charming success—to make Englishmen think about India and to show the difficulties of Indians who have learnt, like Nehra, to love Cambridge, little London shops, English ways, and English loyalty. (However, the book begins too aptly and comes to a too dramatic and finite end to seem natural, and Coincidence's long arm is stretched out so often, and Nehra on his recent visit to England saw and reported so much, that it is hard to share the publishers' credulity.) A book like this is more effective than a shelf-full of "Mother Indias," and, in justly exciting compassion for an individual, it causes that receptive mood in which more general wrongs and sufferings may be appreciated. The quality which most encourages belief in its genuineness is the natural development of Nehra's character, the growth of independence and tolerance, and the decline of zest and hope. As a young man he stood in a Burmese street, and, recalling the insistence upon the Middle-class Backbone of the Empire, observed that the backbone of Burma was bamboo and coloured paper. This light-hearted youth had to travel far and suffer much before he came to threatening death and declared, still not without humour: "For us there is held out no promise of green fields, no crystal seas beside which we may sit, harping continuously."

WARNER'S GUIDE TO CRICKET The Book of Cricket. By P. F. Warner. J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd. 233 pp. (7/6 net). This is a new, thoroughly revised, and amplified edition of Mr Warner's excellent book, first issued in 1911. The chapters on the technique of the game have the great virtue of being really clear; that they are sound in substance goes without saying. Ten pages sketch the history of cricket; then 15 more eive a summary account of the long contest between England and Australia, up to the tests of 1932-33. Of this unhappy series Mr Warner says:

Cricket has meant much to me—perhaps too much. It has been a joy and a delight to me. and has brought me uncommon happiness; and to be "pitchforked" into a tornado of trouble in the winter of one's cricketing life was something of a shock—and a bitter disappointment.

But his views on the controversy are very moderately expressed. The most valuable section of the book, however, consists of his reviews of the best cricketers of his time— English, Australian, South African, West Indian. (It is vain to search the index for any gratifying New Zealand reference.) Such has been the range of Mr Warner's experience and such is his authority as a judge that these 70 or 80 pages will always be referred to as a sort of Cricketer's Burke. It will generally be found, on comparison, that Mr Warner has not only carefully distinguished between the good and the great but has discriminated in his praise of greatness. Take his notes on Spooner, Palairet, Woolley, Bardsley, Hill, and Ransford as examples. The book is very well illustrated; and of the fine photograph on the jacket—a panorama of the first test at Sydney, December 3, 1932—the publishers offer a duplicate, unfolded copy to all purchasers.