BOOKS AND-AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 232, 25 June 1921, Page 11

BOOKS AND-AUTHORS.

(By

Liber.)

(rive a a pipe he can smoke, * 6ive a man a book he can read; And his home is bright with a calm delight Though the room be poor indeed. —James Thomson.

BOOKS OF THE DAY "The Merchant Navy in ths: War.” It was only fitting and just that the Official History of the Great War as it was carried on at sea should, include an account of the important and splendid role played by the British merchant navy in the groat drama enacted on the ocean—on, indeed, practically every ocean. To Sir Julian Corbet, that distinguished authority on British naval history, was allotted the task of recording tho noble effort, and splendid achievement of the Royal Navy. The task of recording the part played by 'the British merchant service has been entrusted to the equally competent hands of Mr. Archibald Hurd, the first volume of whose work, "The Merchant Navy in tho War,” is now to hand from the publisher. Mr. John Murray (per Whitcombe and Tombs). The author has had placed at his disposal the records at tho Admiralty, the Board of Trade, and the Ministry of Shipping, and has thereby been enabled to- place before his readers full information on. many sensational events a detailed and accurate account of which is here made public for the first time. Mr. Hurd commences by giving us a condensed but useful account of tho part played by merchantmen in earlier periods of tho national history. Tim story of the merchant adventurers of Elizabethan <l«ys. of British rivalry with the Butch, of the experiences of British merchant seamen in the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, is all set forth in a fascinating narrative which is followed by n compressed but useful account of the development of the merchant navy in the nineteenth century. The last, great war al. sea, as it specially affected British merchant vessels, is ths subject of several chapters, the first dealing with tho exploits of the German cruisers Konigsberg, Dresden. Karlsruhe, Leipzic and Prince Bite! Friedrich) the second being devoted to the doings of the famous cruiser Emden, the destruction or which by the Australian warship Sydney caused such a sensation in November, 1911. Mr. Hurd next describes tho measures taken for tho protection of British maritime commerce, and comes to the first submarine campaign, a specially interesting account being given of the formation of the famous auxiliary patrol and the methods of Its operations, Later chapters deal with tho rapid development of the submarine menace, especially the advent of the ocean-going submarine, and tho sinking of the Lusitania, the record coming to a temporary close with a description of the gallant "tackling” of a heavily armed IT boat (in June, 1915) by a small armed trawler. The trawler’s bottom was actually ,r scrapcd* - * by a torpedo discharged by the enemy, who. nevertheless was driven off and chased by her plucky little opponent, whose inferior rate of speed, however, proved too heavy a handicap. At first, so Mr. Hurd admits, the commanders of tho German cruisers displayed some regard for the laws of humanity, but a s the submarine campaign continued it seemed to develop with it quite another type of officer—the Hun, ynre and unadulterated —and the captains of captured vessels were subjected to gross personal outrage, and had to witness Fjtudied insults to the. Britis'h flag. Evon quite early in the war the U-boats did not have everything their own way. Mr. Hurd gives a graphic account for instance, of the experiences of U-boat 18, which in November. 1911, camo out With tho intention of' seeking out the Grana Fleet and attacking it, no matter at what oi-ist. her commander’s special ambition being to torpedo the Iron Duke. Tzird Jellicoe’s flagship. First her penscope was rammed and bent over by «. tiny minA-swceper, the Dorothy Gray, an second she w-.s rammed by a larger vessel the destroyer Garry. What then happened has boon described by a German officer, the Oberleutnant Neuerborg, second in command of the ill-fated üboat:

The boat shot upwards and downwaids the men rushed forward and; “H- V 1 ® flooring became slippery with the oil oi) ried out of the engine-room by the fnen e feet: the men nVpped. Me shot, uowaids eo violently that I gave iip all hope., From tho con nine-tower camo the report. Steer iog gear jammed: man the hand-wheel And then from the enrine-rocm. The motors have broken down! The boaeventually heiran to ri / e ’, Rn< * clenly the contain nuahed open tne. oon« ninsr-tower hatch. -She had a heavy list, a hole torn in her starboard tanks, rudder crone, propellers badly damaeed. As I came on deck' I sw the Tjs almost broken off short. Suddenly there was a. smell of burning. Someone shouted. "The battery is on fire! The c-'Pteln gave orders that the boat was to be Tank W" drifted helplessly in the currents of Pentland Skerries.

Eventually she foundered, all the officers and men, with the exception of one man, a Stoker, who had been drowned. being nicked up by the destroyers Erne and Garry. Mr. Hurd is justly severe upon the inhumanity displayed in connection with the sinking of the Lusitania .and other vessels. It is well that he has thought fit to reproduce some of the disgraceful comments made by certain German papers on the Lusitania crime—lest we forget! Even the usually temperate, and for a German paper, fairly decent "Kolnische (Cologne) Zeitung” proclaimed that "the news will be received by the German people with unanimous satisfaction” "Unanimous satisfaction over the coldblooded - murder, for it was naught else, of no fewer than 1198 men women, and children! Of such a crime the "Kolnische Volltszeif.ung could write: "The sinking of the great British sfeainer, a success tho moral significance of which is etill greater than the material success.” To talk of the "jnoral significance” of such a dastardly crime is surely the most odious cant.. Mr Hurd’s book contains many interesting ’ illustrations end several useful ocean maps; M hen Hie wort is completed this fine story of tho achievements of the officers and mon of tho merchant service during the war •will constitute a specially valuable contribution to the history of the Groan War. Seaborne Trade During the War. Mr C Ernest Fayle’s "Seaborne Trade" (London, John Murray]i necessarily overlaps, with regard to certain events, with Sir Julian. Corbet’s Official History ot Ihe War at Sea, towhjch Br.lay ie b £ may bo considereda supplement. lb® present is the firet of three volumes in which tho effect of the war on Britain s oversea trade will be set forth and discussed. Mr. Earle hero confines Ins attention to the operations of the enemy and their effect upon British, oversea commerce during the cruiser period, that is from August, 1914, to January. 19U It is true that the lost of the original raiders was not accounted for. until April, 1915, but the force of this particular form of attack was broken nt the Battle of the Falklands in December, 1014, Mr. Favlo's book is a very valuable contribution to what may be called ihe commercial and economic side of the war. To Now Zealand end Australian leaders it should prove specially interesting in that it shows how stupendous was tho value of tho service rendered by the British Navy to tho producers or these outlying parts of tho Empire in keeping the trade routes open during the' cruiser period. Until the imoan going submarine ctano on ■ scene the loss, thr/ngh nnrui fllly irritating!) was relatively very

small —"seventy merchant steamers, a steam dredger, and thirty-six B toam trawlers, with a total tonnage of 282,000 tons," about 1.37 _>er cent, of the then total. As Mr. Fayle proceeds with his special task the losses, of course, will increase enormously, but during the first year of tho, war the enemy was very far from realising his ambition of driving British commerce off the seas. Mr. Faylo’s book is accompanied by a supplementary volume of maps, showing tho various spheres of activity of tho enemy’s cruisers, the locality of their mam captures, and of their own final destruction. LIBER’S NOTE BOOK The Best of Conrad. A correspondent (J.R.W.) asked mo last week to express an opinion as to what are "the brat works of Joseph Conrad." "By best," he adds, "I mean the best so far ns literature is concerned.” Much depends, after all, in literary appreciations, upon personal tastes." One man’s meat may be, if not exactly poisonous, at least very unpalatable, to another. But if 1 may presume to dictate,” to use Mr. Alfred Jingle’s words when referring to the possible menu of a certain famous dinner at the Bull -at Rochester, I should, in point of sheer literary artistry, place "Nostrorno,” "The Nigger of the Narcissus,” and Conrad’s latest novel Hie Rescue,” in the very front rank of this author's work. Romantic glamour my correspondent will find in p.enty in those two very early books. "Almayers Folly” and "The Outcast of the Islands. I should, by the way, reverse that order in reading these books. For ‘ lord Jun. notwithstanding the high favour in which it is held by Mr. Hugh Walpo e, whose little book on Conrad should be possessed by everyone who has a set. or {his author's works on his shelves 1 care lies than for most ot the longer Tirivels. Mr- Walpole. I notice, counsels all beginners in Conrad to mske a commencement with ' the Mi> >Ol <t Sea," which, says the younger novelist, "attests more magnificently than anything else that he has written bm-tai H and his devotion to the sea. Many people, so I find, who do not eale very muth for the earlier stories, prefer Chance and "Victory.” But. indeed, all Conrad L worth reading. One has «ne s pre er ; rx- v and " ’'Under Western Eves”—there is too much of the Do. toev sky influence in the latter for my taste -but Conrad, even at his second best, he is not for those, who hnd plen=uie good souls, actually vote him dry . Stray leaves. , As n confirmed nnulication made for a patent— Line is interested in some recently-dmeovere unpublished letters from Thoma" Cai Ivie to his friend Miss ,ls ° n ’ »hw "< ua s I will advise you at least to B The Hon W. P. Reeves’s book, “The and Co. now announce the work i r early publication. Mr. Reeves has -C • brought his book quite up to dnto Ut If this sapplira 5 applira io tho chapters oTgovelnrnent oM polities these should prove very interesting in tho new edi-well-known London wine merchant, who is also the author of «e v eral we 1wrltten booklets on winos and el - his torv had a curious experience the othei day. He is a firm supporter of a movement in the wine trade to prevent any wine being called port which does not come from Oporto. Judge.of h ’« Jnd ’ g ™" tian when he receive! from the PiMS cuttings agency to which, he is a sun scriber and to which bo had given instructions to send anything and c thing on the subject of P° r k * from "The Times' headed Firot claJamaican Port." He read on. A pro ject for making f hJ I- C C X port has been submitted to the Legis tature.” Another press cuttings yaw, this time from America, is to tho « feet that a well-known American pu >- lulling firm, which , bi ' d S “Vr new and choicely printed edition of Sn Thomas Brownes Religm .1 Ik ' ligio Medici" with press review.": of that work, and "any future book.-, you may tribute to the pluck and efficiency of the British aviators during the Great War is paid in a German nook on the work of the Teuton A Force, by Major Georg Paul Neumann. Referring to the first introduction by the British airmen of "contact patrol and low-flying—it was at the first of th Somme battles-Major Neumann says. “The irritation of our infantry found its expression in such remarks ns God punish England, our artillery, and our Air 1 Apropos to Lord Bryce’s great achievement in producing, at .the ripe old age of eighty-two. such a monumental voile as his recently-published "Modern Democracies," a correspondent of The Jin ’*® Literary Supplement reminds us of the wonderful industry and courage of the German historian, Ranke, who, in lb at the age of eighty-three, when weakness of the eyes made him almost entirely dependent upon renders and sec, e dries began a Universal History, oi which he had actually completed seventeen volumes before his death in I* B *- "Inspired Golf" is the curious title o. a recently-published book by ■ Townshend. . In Ills book of reminiscences, »tra. Thoughts and Memories,” the late Judge Rentoul tolls a story of a Scotch Presby tcrian who

fete E w way trough I thought it was no place for me. for though I m quite wdlins: to give somethin® to one collection. I don r want to be 'collected' half a dozen times In the course of an hour or two.

A very similar story was told to “Liber” some years ago by the late Air. James Inglis, sometime Minister of Education in Now South Wales, and author of those two most entertaining book’ “Dor Ain Folk” and "The Humour of the Scot,” both of which well deserve a place on every -bookshelf which contains a copy of Dean Ramsey's famous work. "Scottish Traits and Reminis-