CURRENT BOOKS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24986, 21 September 1946, Page 5

CURRENT BOOKS

PIONEERS, TARANAKI AND AMURI

of a Taranaki Surveyor. Skinner. Thomas Avery and Sons Ltd. 122 pp. c - Maefarlane. Printed for the author by Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. 133 pp. 2?. years a g° in New 2?£?k Ut S’ Mr Skm ner recalls from Cvjiahood’ youth, and a working life mostly spent m Taranaki but partly, in Rav r ?«5 rs >- in Marlborough, Hawke’s Bay . and Canterbury, much that is worth permanent record. A map shows how much of Taranaki assisted to bring under ori£3 nal u . and his record or this long and widespread work contributes largely to the history of an unmense transformation of subtropical forest tp pastoral green. It is a record diversified by incidents from history of a different sort. On the Mokau survey Mr Skinner worked with a full party of Maoris, of whom two had taken part in the horrible Waitara massacre 10 years before—Wetere. the actual leader, and the one who had felled poor Mrs Gascoyne. Mr Skinner had no trouble: he never forgot a wise warning to stop survey work as soon as a chief objected. A strange figure who more than once^crossed Mr Skinners path is Kimble Bent (Tu-nui-a--tlo*?.’ i e re negade of the Maori wars, in the last section of notes on Maori traditions Mr Skinner traces that of the Rangi-ohua Pa, Established by the 4 airoa Maori, who settled in Taranaki ???n yea E s before the ’great migration of IJSO, when the Tainui people expelled them. Mr Skinner found the ruins of Rangi-ohua, abandoned 450 years before

Mr Macfarlane’s book on the Amuri d A s * lw bich begins with- a set of sketches of the country as the Maoris, the whalers, the surveyors, the cattlemen, and the first sheep men knew it, packs into a diary of four generations of a pioneer family a good deal of history, a kind of dramatic reconstruction of a century’s life on the land and its steady change. Part 111, a “modern journey,” is a gossipy survey of the district, every point of interest on the r jj d ’- every halting-place, prompting additions to a very pleasant narrative of settlement and development and of persons memorable for their service or the salt of their character. JOURNEY The Sirens Wake. By Lord Dunsany. Jarrolds. 128 pp. Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd. Lord Dunsany doubts whether a writer should write autobiography: he may be misusing the raw material of his art. ... It is fortunate that he has not allowed his doubt to palsy his hand; for this book, the third long piece of autobiography he has published, is very good reading. The span of it is not long: a few years before the war and the first years of it, during which he made the roundabout, eventful journey that feeds many pages. This—odd yet apt war-time mission!—was undertaken to fulfil an engagement to lecture from the Byron Chair of English Literature at Athens. Before he was home again he had dodged torpedoes in a Polish freighter, criss-crossed Africa, and reached Athens by way of Ankara and Instanbul. Scenes, incidents, encounters and conversations, associated reminiscences: this is a full book, but the abundance is that which flows rather from a quick and copious njind than from one that absorbs wholesale and retails its store. No reader can miss seeing, very soon, how much this book owes to passages like this: Of the audience I chiefly remember the military Governor of Thrace, a very I pleasant fellow with the look of a sportsman, and not. so unlike an English general. But I have noticed in my travels that one soldier gets o look very like another : Mars seems to grip. them all in much the same manner, as a sculptor might make the same sort of face out of different kinds of clay. RURAL The Countryman’s Week-end Book. By Eric Parker. Seeley Service and Co. Ltd. 416 pp. The sort of house to build in the country; garden and orchard; birds, animals, insects, and pond life; trees —with some notes, in the house section, on the ones that make the best fuel; country crafts and industries; wild flowers; weather forecasting; the sky and the stars; hunting, shooting, fishing; a small anthology of rural literature; and some pages of statistical information, with a lirft of recommended books. The New Zealand reader will be surprised, perhaps, to find how much thoroughly practical information he can draw from a book which, under these main headings, deals with the very different rural conditions and life bf England. (How mafly New Zealand farmers or gardeners can make a really good twig broom?) Practical profit, however, is not the only reward of a book in which Mr Parker, as always, presents the flower as well as the fruit of his long service of country life; and the flower does not lose its scent as it crosses the sea. A NATIVE PROBLEM Vocations for Maori Youth. By H. C. McQueen. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research. 186 pp. Mr McQueen’s report naturally covers a much wider field than the title of his book indicates. He could not discuss the possibilities of career employment for Maori boys and girls without at least sketching their environment and showing how it impedes their being assimilated into a community of mixed races, where each, nominally at least, enjoys equal social status. He could not ignore the apparent psychological differences between Maori and. white man, born of their historical ways of life, nor prejudices, on both sides, which still must be broken down. And he has not forgotten that his is inevitably a pakeha approach to the problem and that any workable schemes for guiding Maori youth in the selection of vocations and training for them must be worked out in association with the Maoris* themselves. Those who are concerned for the future welfare of the Maoris — and it should be the concern of every New Zealander of either race—should study Mr McQueen’s survey with care; for while it is primarily intended to give an account of the problem, it offers many practical suggestions towards solving it. ANOTHER GOLF BOOK Golf for the Middle-aged and Others. By George McDonald Bottome. Faber and Faber, Ltd. 66 pp. When the game begins to slip because the years are robbing the body of its resilience, the middle-aged golfer must resort to low cunning to maintain his prestige in the scornful eyes of confident youth. Mr Bottdme gives in this useful small book hints which, duly noted and followed, will enable the ageing player to keep his score within reasonable limits and so exact a full measure of enjoyment from this fascinating, exasperating game. And even the younger golfer will find tips worth remembering and testing on the practice fairway. PLIGHT OF JEWRY Wanderer in War. By Norman Bentwich. Gollancz. 196 pp. Professor Bentwich knows the problems of the Jews as few other men do. Most of this book is devoted to it. Opinions, conclusions, proposals, certainly, are voiced in it; and they have great weight. But what is weightier still is the concrete evidence about the plight of millions of Jews — the ordeal of years, not yet over. Professor Bentwich describes what was done in England, before the war, to harbour and relieve refugees, and then describes an extensive relief mission that took him early in the war through much of Europe. and America, and later to the Near East. This matter-of-fact narrative is painfully impressive. There are interludes in which other activities and themes are pursued; but the calamity that has befallen the Jews and the problem it leaves to be solved —these give the book its substance and its urgency.