BAUME ON BAUME

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23394, 30 July 1941, Page 10

BAUME ON BAUME

JOURNALIST

1 Lived These Yeats. By George G. Harrap and 285 p.p. (10/6 net) Mr Eric Baunje, a former New'jEte, 'c land newspaperman and now mSJtpA pondent in England for an * and New Zealand weekly has here put himself on Baume, who modestly allows lishers to describe him as V foremost war correspondent,” to he honest with himself. The'dawKil is sustained; his book is a self-revealing documents Whetb&ltiln readers will like all that is revealed®* a matter for their personal can be said: the book is always' esting, whether Mr Baume with naive enjoyment of his escapades, of bomb-stricken and its people, of his in Australia, or of his impressiohglffilP Hollywood or Mexico— and this haßm' withstanding his constant use of dKS first person pronoun, and his ■ tiffll dency to dramatise himself amrevSKp and to see a nigger in everywbWnfipl He left school to study law, |Bl gave up law for newspaper workjtei a copy-holder and subsequently a porter on the “New Zealand HeraUp 'A Mr Baume was taught some eyrpiijL I lessons. He learned at least to ad. ; mire “the staid respectability .which, to [his] mind, still characterises the best of the world’s daily newspapers.” ; But Mr Baume was not to be moulded ; to the “Herald’s" pattern. He was ob- i viously more at home on the Sydney ‘ “Daily Guardian.” of which he later became chief , sub-editor. Fierce cor. ,■ petition raged among those Sydney' newspapers which had no particular use for “standards." Newspaper r®. •' porters were asked to do, and dli • some extraordinary things. The managing director of Baume’s paper, to obtain information from the proprietor.of an- , ; other, hid thfee reporters in a room '. to overhear and record a conversation ■{ between the two. Baume was one <4 '; the reporters.. And there were plenty',! of similar incidents in' the crazy days between 1923 and 1929, when the I “Guardian” flourished and some news- ■ I papers were'propaganda tools in a par- .■< ticularly unpleasant period of Austral- 1 ian political history. , Mr Baume subsequently became \ editor of the Sydney “Sunday Sun," in which capacity he travelled to the ' • United States and Mexico. He became •] in Sydney; a radio broadcaster of some ! prominence. As. such he . waited . l against “appeasement’* and ardently : and persistently warned .- Australians to be prepared for war with Genumy and possibly -Japan, until he W ; “taken off the air.” He Sydney “Truth" representative j in ; v England: He was a war correspondent ! in France before the German push he- 4 gan and has since been in' England, where he has seen what he did not see v in France—“shots fired in anger.” He ' has some penetrating things fo ,'sgy * about the censorship of newfpapen. -1 and the comparative freedom the ■ s 8.8.C. from similar restriction*.! When , the King arrived in r paper correspondents were.fopbidden. ’ v for reasons of safety, -to• release'the -1 news until six days later; , but the - , 8.8.C. announced the event .on the ; night of the King’s arrival. , Since then Mr Baume has been wnting dispatches, urging violent action pn 4 many fronts, and telling the ■ fighting ■ services what to do about it, especially i in the matter of bombing reprisals. He ; thinks that ethical considerations = stand in - the way of the unrestricted ■» bombing of "Germany, and should not He is boundless in admiration lor England and the English; but he foresees : that, to survive..England must.in fu- , : - tiire think in terms of the since she is “but one, branch of a grown-ijp family.” And ‘ wil] be.with;him. - VviTS ' 1 NEW NOVELS GOING ALONE . Love Girl. By ? Chester Mordant : . Geoffrey Bles. 265 pp. (V« mU Accustomed to liver.in -the lapjpfjmkj. ury. Virginia, aged 20, was dropped..' out of it with a bump. Her English mother died; her American was shot by gangsters and left-tip’ estate rich in nothing hut could have married Jim ’ secretary of Lord Shropshire’s wwr mission in New York, arid been “prefer hard-up in a refined English way; or she could have married Robert nedine, “Groton and Yale, with all the! money in the world, and a family that, goes back to the Mayflower.” She decided to go alone. , . . Mr MordanfS. narrative carries Virginia into the grin , but glamorous jungle of business aid the stage, and into conflict with its beasts of prey. She does not escape into romantic safety—under “an archway of swords” —before the testing;of her courage and her luck and the mpst. faithful lover’s heart in the book has given the reader plenty of reason to join the “hurrah party.” CAROLINE AND CONSTANCE Tom Tiddler’s Ground. By Ursula Orange. Michael Joseph. 317 pp. (8/9.) Through Whitcombe «M Tolnbs Ltd. Caroline, 22, excessively pretty, excessively indulged, was not yet past the stage at which it seemed rather a joke but a bit tiresome to he so sober- , ly married to good John Cameron. ' (“He’ll be 38. Nearly 40. Fantastic, isn’t it?”) It more or less naturally followed, when she took her two-year-old; daughter from war-threatened; London , into rural Kent, that .she. threw'herself with some abandon into what diversions she could find or contrive. Risks and complications also followed, more or less naturally, in part because her friend and hostess. Constance, was tied to a very deplorable Alfred. But the story never carries these beyond the pleasant tensions of comedy. CLICK—CLUNK! The Little Captain. By H. C. Bailey. Gollancz. 216 pp. (7/G liei) Josh Clunk, the wily, oily lawyer whom Scotland Yard always hopes to catch pn the wrong side of the law but whom Mr Bailey’s readers generally find on the side of the angels, reaches top form in the case- of “Tb® Little Captain.” Urging, prompts, and reproaching the half resentin', half grateful Lomas and Bell—P 0 *" chaps, if it isn’t Reggie Fortune it « Clunk harrying them!—he works them through to the solution of the singular mystery that links the sale oi Aoniualty plans to Germany with me equally odious traffic conducted unoe cover of Sister Martha’s gilded or phanage. Beautiful plotting, terse, lively writing, nice work all Cpno . to the occasional music of Ciun hymns. ’ THE SLAVERS Hell’s Acre. By F. Horace Rose. Duckworth. 28G pp. (8/-.) Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Commander Edgar Jardith, °f JJ*® gunboat Isis, looked for no more ring business, on the Zanzibar coa . than the checking of a little o°° band. Contraband it was. indeed. he ran up against, but in the hj“ e( ijy form of the traffic in slaves seer W organised by the Goanese, da ** ore the Greek Katoira. and the ev o n n ffl ?ii repulsive scoundrel, Ibrahim ben Mr Rose writes a very good w whack thriller, all the more we com for a change of scene which su tutes Arab dhows for gangsters can.. CAUTION your Deal, My Lovely. , Cheyney. Collins. 2dl PP> 9d.) Through Whitcombe Tombs Ltd. rkuThis new adventure of Lemmy tion carries him to England R® . the blitz. Here it is the G-man’s business tu trace a mISS Jr: aeroplane-designer . and prevent; plans of his new dive-bomber fr falling into Nazi hands. Drawing. , Scotland Yard for little more t j.e cloak-room service, Lemmy P !a y s „.. game his own rough, resourceful •: to win. The style of the story is f ; ; clous, the plotting very neat. *_v