A PHILOSOPHICAL NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 154, 27 March 1937, Page VIII (Supplement)

A PHILOSOPHICAL NARRATIVE OF TRAVEL

Ford Madox Ford’s Vivid Presentation

"The Great Trade Route," by Ford Madox Ford (London: Allen and Unwin).

On the surface a narrative of travel, Mr. Ford’s latest work is probably unique in its treatment. To outline the philosophy that runs beneath the surface could not be done adequately in a few hundred words, for it is inextricably bound into the movement and texture of the story. A short analysis of it could not help but be distorted apart from its text. The author has a message of good counsel for a sick and ailing world, and his manner of presenting it, with the evolution of all civilisation as a back-' ground, makes fascinating reading. The Great Trade Route is the path traced by the merchants of long ago, who set out from Pekin to travel to the Cassiterides, keeping always near the fortieth parallel of latitude. These caravans carried with them the seed of Western civilisation. The dealings of these merchants in the Golden Age did more than foster trade, they educated the peoples visited in the arts and enjoyments of the older civilisation, and as a result of their influence traders were regarded all along the route as “tabu”; their goods and their persons were immune from attack. The author refers to the “Machine." which, with its accompanying philosophy, he says, is the most harmful influence’ in the world to-day and to the “Wall," the wall which features in the cry heard on all sides—“ Put ’em up ergenster wall anr) shoot ’em down The author has no time for politicians, not unreasonably, for to him Geneva is tragic.

We have to consider (he says) that we are humanity at almost its lowest ebb, since we are humanity almost without mastery over its fate. I sit in Geneva and the whole world trembles at the thought that to-morrow our civilisation may go dowu in Hames —tremble will-lessly’ and without so much as making a motion to preserve itself. Our leaders of thought are despised and our leaders, in material quests are as degenerate, physically and mentally, as any body of men the world has ever seen. Physically almost more than mentally,. since they are at least capable of a sufficiency of mental activity to plunge a world into war. But if you took all the Cabinets of that Western world and set them, provided with enough tools, in any rural solitude, they would starve and freeze and soak to death without the physical or mental imagination to plant a brussels sprout or to gather reeds for the thatching of a primitive shelter. ~ . . And those men govern ... Us!

It is in such passages that Mr. Ford states bp, case. Interspersed in a wealth of/.escription, and humour, is a brilliant/discussion of a host of ideas sources, all presented in a styM** is the peak of prose artistry. It 5s , rovocative, amusing and excellent rending. Its perspective includes all the history of mankind in an imaginary band round the globe about the fortieth parallel of latitude that is today the focal point of cultural civilisations.

From these factors there emerges the beauty of the work as a whole, an appeal of outstanding brilliance to a mad world.