STREETS OF ADVENTURE

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21744, 28 March 1936, Page 17

STREETS OF ADVENTURE

The Tumult and the Shouting. By George Slocorabe, Heineraann. 437 pp. (15/- net) [Reviewed by R. G. C. McNAB]

This book must be reviewed at length because it is interesting. It is not important and it will be soon forgotten, but it sums up in cinematic fashion the dramatic episodes of post-war diplomacy and it exhibits intimately many personalities, that are news. George Edward Slocombe was born in 1894, educated at Merchant Venturers College, Bristol, and by 1914 was married with two children. He served with the Royal Air Force, was News Editor of the “Daily Herald,” and subsequently Chief Foreign Correspondent. He covered the great conferences at Genoa, Locarno, Geneva, and The Hague. He was several times a go-between for the politically great, initiated gaol negotiations with Gandhi, chaffed Mussolini, and returned to London to become Foreign Editor of the “Evening Standard.” He now lives in France and has written eight books. All this shows Mr Slocombe to be a young man of enterprise. He has the ideal news gatherer’s talents, and, in addition, willingness (to use no stronger word) to intervene personally when an impasse has arisen; he has also natural and acquired social aptitudes, an almost inevitable irreverence towards many eminent men, and an exacter knowledge than most of his colleagues. Contact with the solemn has imparted a touch of ambassadorial solemnity to his style. “Thither, with ruffled dignity, Curzon and Poincare finally decided to repair.” What he reports and surmises seems for the most part to be true, but his acquaintance is so gigantic (he addresses hundreds of men as “my friend,” among them Hannen Swaffer), his travels and hospitalities are so extensive, that it is perhaps unkind to seek minute accuracy. But within a page or two he speaks of Bonn Byrne’s “Blind Raftery” in terms of great praige, he deducts from a famous fourvolume biography one of its volumes, he makes a slip over a title, he uses phrases like “dashing brio,” and he displays that certainty of literary judgment in matters still vexing the expert which is at least confusing in a man so busy. Mr Slocombe is at his best in characterisation. He names his men, describes features, frame, clothes, mannerisms, and speech. Thus, Coolidge. “His voice was cold, metallic, and rasping. The words fell from his thin lips like husks of corn, with a dry, pattering sound. His pale eyes peered suspiciously from time to time over the paper from which he read the written questions furnished him by correspondents.” (Mr Slocombe was one more of that countless horde of auditors who, with their own ears, heard the story of the million dollars spent each year on pencils by the United States Government.) After the physical man has been described, Mr Slocombe describes his work, its effects, and the man’s fate. These political portraits are brilliant, especially of Tchicherin, Briand, Curzon, Rathenau, Mussolini, Sir Austen Chamberlain, and Prime de Rivera. Chamberlain is greatly admired for his achievement, character, honesty, and untiring industry; there is a charming story of Lord Curzon coming to terms with his valet, a man whose majestic port was little inferior to his master’s, but who ventured to attend a fashionable party in the diplomat’s trousers; there are some good tales about Mussolini, most of them based on that inspired flash of observation which marks the great journalist. Mr Slocombe had, as a youth in London, had dealings with a club of anarchists whose ambitions and habits of thought habituated him to such political theories as Mussolini expressed before he came to power. Mr Slocombe knew Mussolini when he was preparing himself and his party, and Mussolini has not forgotten the Englishman. There is a fine account of Poincare, Curzon, and Mussolini leaving the conference chamber at Lausanne. “Mussolini came first, in ill-fitting morning-dress, rolling his great staring orbs over the serried ranks of spectators, enjoying the occasion like an actor leaving the stage. His eyes at length lighted on me, and as he came abreast of me he smiled recognition and placed one hand familiarly on my shoulder.” Other good portraits are those of Gandhi and Alphonso XIII. of Spain. It is surprising that King Alphonso ruled so long, so shameless and selfish was he in using and discarding his friends. , , - It is more pleasant to read of the artists and journalists whom Mr Slocombe knows. Strange and irregular as the lives of some of them may be, they are happier than the statesmen, and lead a more interesting existence. On the roll of Mr Slocombe’s friends or acquaintances are Gaudier-Brzeska, a schoolfellow, George Lansbury, Malatesta, inveterate, kindly anarchist, Brand Whitlock, William Bolitho (his biography should be written), Anatole France, Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Max Beerbohm, Rickett, “the Lawrence of Abyssinia,” Zagloul Pasha, and James Joyce. All these men will be better known for the fresh view or judgment that this book affords. One specimen of Mr Slocombe’s reporting style may be given—the scene at the cremation of a young journalist. “(In the little chapel of the crematorium) were representatives of the Quai d’Orsay and of the AngloAmerican Press Association of Paris. A shy young Russian from the Soviet Embassy sat next to a lifelong friend of Hamilton [the dead man] arrived overnight from Manchester. Suddenly, in the uneasy silence, an unseen organ crashed into a funeral dirge. After a long spell of this dreary music, in that small and tomb-like, cementwalled room, a French Socialist deputy made an eloquent but somewhat bewildering speech about our dead colleague. A Canadian journalist, well-meaning but even more ignorant of Hamilton’s career and capacity, incongruously recited Kipling’s Tf.’ Then the mysterious French organist, unseen and unseeing in some inner cell of the crematorium, and apparently obeying only his own caprice, boomed out again. When he had finished, or seemed to have finished, the lifqlong friend from Manchester moved nervously towards the platform. The organ crashed out again, and nervously the mourner resumed his seat. At the next halt, he stood up again, once more to sit down, exhausted and baffled by the unequal struggle. At last the adversary gave up or retired in triumph. The patient, grief-stricken friend, overcoming his nervousness and his dislike of speech-making while the mortal remains of a much-loved man were being consumed in the roaring nace before us, stumbled through his tribute .... Hysteria threatened more than one of us.”