BOOKS ON THE TABLE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22491, 27 August 1938, Page 20

BOOKS ON THE TABLE

Our affairs have come to such a pass that there is no escape without running risks. On every, ground of prudence as well as of duty I urge His Majesty's Government to Proclaim a renewed, revivified, unmncning adherence to the Covenant of the League of Nations. What is there ridiculous about collective security? The only thing that is ridiculous about it is that we have not got it. Let us see whether we cannot do something to procure a strong element of collective security for ourselves and for others. We have been urged to make common cause in self-defence with the French Republic. What is that but the beginning of collective security? I agree with that. Not so lightiy will the two great liberal democracies of the West be challenged, and not so easily, if challenged, will they be subjugated. But why stop there? Why be edged and pushed farther down tht slope in a disorderly, expostulating crowd of embarrassed States? Why not make a stand while there is still a good company of united, very powerful countries that share our dangers and aspirations? Why should we delay until we are confronted with a general landslide of those small countries passing over, because they have no other choice, to the overwhelming power of the Nazi regime? .... Before we cast away this hope, this cause and this plan, which I do not at all disguise has an element of risk, let those who wish to reject it ponder well and' earnestly upon what will happen to us if, when all else has been thrown to the wolves, we are left to face our fate alone.

From the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill's speech on the annexation of Austria, House of Commons, March 14, 1938, one of a collection of his speeches on foreign affairs and national defence, printed in "Arms and the Covenant." (George G. Harrap and Co. Ltd. 466 pp. 18s net.) These speeches, about 40 of them, cover the last six years and very well exhibit the advance of Mr Churchill's thinking. His earlier pleas Were for detachment and for armed power sufficient to maintain it and to make Britain's moderating influence effective in Europe. There follow the speeches in which he sounded a strong alarm against the inertia of British policy in the face of Germany's rapid rearmament. Finally, he reaches his latest position, in which, while still urging the need to strengthen Britain's defensive arms and to reorganise the direction of the programme, he makes collective security the corner stone of policy. Mr Churchill's force and wisdom have never, perhaps, been better illustrated than in the last phase of this development. The speech on the resignation of Mr Eden, for example. is not likely to be forgotten in history.

In the year when my eyes first fell on words written by Norman Douglas, G. H. Tomlinson, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and otliers amongst whom was Stephen Reynolds, who died too young and is much too forgotten—upon a day I received a letter from a young school teacher in Nottingham. I can still see the handwriting—as if drawn with sepia rather than written in ink, on grey-blue notepaper. It said that the writer knew a young man who wrote, as she thought, admirably but was too shy to send his work to editors. Would I'care to see some of his writing? In that way I came to read the first words of a new author:

The small locomotive engine, Number 4, came clanking, stumbling down "from Selston with seven full waggons. It appeared round the corner with loud threats of speed, but the colt that it startled from among the gorse which still flickered indistinctly in the raw afternoon, outdistanced it in a canter. A woman walking up the line to Under.wood, held her basket aside and watched the footplate of the engine advancing.

I was reading in the twilight in the long eighteenth-century room that was at once the office of the' 'English Review" and my drawingroom. My eyes were tired; I had been reading all day so I did not go any further with the story. It was called "Odour of Chrysanthemums." I laid it in the basket for accepted manuscripts. My secretary looked up and said:

"You've got another genius?" I answered: "It's a big one this time," and went upstairs to dress. . . Before the evening was finished I had had two publishers asking me

Some Open Pages

for the first refusal of D. H. Lawrence's first novel, and . . . Lawrence's name was already known in London before he even knew that any of his work had been submittal to an editor. . . .

From "Mightier Than the Swonfc : Memories and Criticisms." by Foal- 1 Madox Ford. (Allen and Unwin. pp. 10/6 net.) Mr Ford—whom sea?' readers will still remember best as Hueffer —writes of Henry Jama Joseph Conrad, Thomas Hardy. H. G. Wells, Stephen Crane. John Galsworthy, Ivan Turgenev. W. H. Hudson t Theodore Dreiser. and Algernon Charles Swinburne, besides D. H. Las. rence. The criticisms are less valuable than the memories: and the memories, lively as they are. amusing, and marked by touches of obviously acute perception, suffer from Mr Ford's rather overwhelming presence. He cannot forget or efface himselt The capital "I" inscribed hugely over the passage about Lawrence is chaiae*' teristic. Nevertheless and ho'.rever aid J ail. this book stands out. among books " of literary reminiscence, for the strength and illumination of one sen* tence, one page, in five.

"What in the devil's name," htfe [John Ruskin] wrote to a student who had asked him whether his would support Gladstone or Disraeli, "have you to do with either Disraeli or Gladstone? You are * students of the University, and have no more to do with politics than you have to do with rat-catching. Had you ever read two words of mine with understanding, you would have known that I care no more for Mr Disraeli or Mr Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones ! going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that with Carlyle I stand, we two alone, for England, for God and the Queen."—Oxford Chronicle, October 31 1919. 22 Aug., 1705.—Yesterday Mr Gilby, Bach, of Law, Fellow of AD Souls Coll., and one of the proctors in the Vice-Chancellor's Court, died of a consumption, which he said a. little before he died he thought verily to have proceed from a piece of cherry stone which some time since went down his wind-pipe, and caused a corruption in his lungs. Which though it might be one cause, yet 'tis said the chief was hard drinking N. B.—l have been since informed that .his throate was cut by some atheistical! people of the college." Thomas Hearne.

From "Anatomy of Oxford.* an anthology compiled by C Day Lewis and Charles Fenby. (Jonathan Cape. 318 pp. 8s 6d net.) This is the scat of anthology that everybody likes: fun of character and characters, anecdotes, oddities, and shocking trifles, villi enough of "sweetness and light" to keep all in balance. The genius of th» place, visiting Oxford, the Oxford manner, crimes and punishments, the emporium of all sciences, the dons; strange and original characters, the first-class mind (see Ruskin, above). undergraduate follies, decadence, soap famous men at Oxford, rags skfcn"* hoaxes, scandals (see Mr Gilby. BagagßJT of Law, above), and curiosities; are headings under which the compilers have drawn their extracts, fnaa John Aubrey to Bernard Shaw.

Both boats were making for th« whale on the lee of the pod when another broke water oroadside on to the mate's boat. Black Larsen, in a rage at this, disturbing behaviour, drove his iron into its side right up to its hitches—as Mac had done once before, to the annoyance of Corrigan. But this time the whale was too near for such liberties to £»e * taken with it The great tail-flukes were thrown skyward, and in descending struck the boat heavily on the starboard bow. stripping the planks to the keel. The sound of the blow could be heard in the Waterwitch. But Copper-top was not upset. He coolly ordered the men to trim the boat in order to keep the bow up, set them bailing, and told Larsen to scull the boat with the long steer-oar, close up to the whale. This Larsen did cleverly, not getting near the tail, and the third killed the whale with two lance thrusts. Then, while the great beast. was still in its flurry, he raised the signal "In distress" for those on the ship to see.

But they read it as "Whale dead,™ the signals being the same, and the ship continued to follow the other boat which was pursuing the now frightened whales. . . .

From "Harpoons Ahoy!"* by WM Lawson. (Angus and Robertson Ltd. 219 pp. 7/6.) This story of "fighting the great sperm whales," in the later years of last century, is based on the experiences of Captain McKillop, "practically the last of the old-time whalers," as narrated to the author. Mr Lawson has done the work of a first-class journalist, organising and animating the facts set before him: and his readers have the pleasure of following a chapter of authentic history in dramatic form.