LITERARY COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIII, Issue 129, 1 June 1907, Page 13

LITERARY COLUMN.

NSW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS. "Ths Evolution ot Katherice." By E. Templo Thurston. London : Georgo Ball and Son.?. (Whitcombo and Tombs, Wellington.) Mr. Thurston's " Traffic," with i»s unrelieved tragedy, was nevertheless a strong book, and had a definite purpose. The purpose of his latest novel is loss easy to discover. It may be, that as tho heroine of tho former story was forced to ruin by a practically irresistiMo environment, his object this time has bacn to show how one while- in completo freedom may wilfully take the wrong path with slight excuse and out of mere perversity. Katherino, introduced to us as an infant whoso portrait has been painted in undras3 at the age of eighteen months, grows up and weds a wealthy and worthy man for whom she has high esteem and respect, but no love ; yet sha looks for demonstrative affection on his side, grudges him the time and thought devoted to his duties, and indulges in a hazardous flirtation with a i military officer. Disaster is averted only at tho csst of great sacrifice of probability, lv other respects, tho book is artistically faulty, and thn author is j conscious of the fact. At the outset of ths tenth chapter he asks : " How many are left of them who started out with j visionary hopes of an enthralling history, when first they saw tho baby personality upon its craw!ing-rug ? A breathless few perhaps, exhausted with their exertions of floundering through the sloughs of psychology." This is not our criticism, but we cannot deny its juEtica. Katherine's husband, John, in tho end rises to a height of noble forgiveness, bit almost to the last he is distressingly tiresome. He is possessed with a sort of aggressive pagan philosophy, negative and incoherent, and fee writes a "great" book, "The Anatomy of Change," from which the author gives a few sample passages. Here is one:— "Morality, immorality, are merely terms — symbols. They contain tb.9 truth j but are not the truth in themselves. There are no constant laws of morality, no invariable ideas of im : * morality. A deed is moral or immoral which thwarts and binders the great scheme of evolution. A thing moral today may bo immoral to-morow. Change is the only factor of stability." And other solemn nonsense, which the judicious reader will skip. Nor arc the author's own dogmas any more illuminating. Any reliction which offers hope or comfort, he holds, is a delusion. "When ! a religion comes to be a comfort on the .lips of its most ardent adherents, its day is on the horizon ; before the night falls it will have vanished behind tho edge of time." John proclaims a like doctrine, with the result that his wife contemplates suicide. Here is some more equally questionable psychology — " Love is the inspiration of tho intellect — passion the impulse of the v senses. You will find, perhaps, a combination of the two in most ; but no law makes them inseparable. The power to perceive the good, tho ability to recognise the beautiful ; that is intellect — it is also love." A writer who confounds essential faculties so distinct as the iutelxect and the affections is a very doubtful guide. The principal characters, though possible enough, do not appeal to us as types ; on the contrary, they seem to have been built up to fit a theory in itself obscure. Tho forms of selfishness are innumerable, and in Kathcrine and Can■tain Seyd we have two. unattractive examples. Katherine's friend, Barbara, is the one redeeming figure in the story — the only one who seems to have any guiding principle in life, or any due sense of proportion.

"Closed Doors." By the author of "A London Girl." London : Alston Rivers, Limited. (Gordon and Gotch, Wellington.) This is the second of a series of "Tales from the Great City," by an aaomymous author, who sets out with a preface comprised in a single sentence : "To the reader so far under the spell of a dishonest literature and a fiction which fears the truth of life as to feel that this story needs a justification, the author makes the reqneat that he will read the introduction to this series of tales which appears in the first volume, entitled "A London Girl." That introduction, however, is not before us, but we find that the Bishop of London — who at least in one other occasion took occasion to call attention to a work of fiction — spoke of "A London Girl" as "a story which interested and impressed me very much indeed." "All you men," he said, j "ought to read it — it is all too true." And "Closed Doors" may be described in like terms. Intensely painful in its tragedy, unrelieved in its gloom, it ii> all too true. Moreover, the author docs not cumber his book with metaphysical disquaintions, sound or otherwise. Pitilessly and relentlessly the story un-, folds and points its unmistakable moral. The first lapse from the path of safety seems so trivial and insignificant — the danger seems so remote — it is "a way that seemeth right unto a man," but the hopelessness of recovery of lost ground — the compound interest with which the penalty is exacted — the rain that falls on the innocent — these are brought out with a power the more terrible because the reader realises that there is % no exaggeration. Strangely enough, a married woman of immaculate reputation is the real evil genius of the book — coldhearted, self-righteous, intensely selfish, she is really on a lower moral plane than the sinners who pay so dearly for their transgression. In brief, only the more sordid aspects of the story can appear. Lieutenant Medlay, thirty-two years of age, a Victoria Cross hero from Egypt, marries a wealthy woman who persuade him to leave the Navy and live on an allowance of two hundred a year. She is absorbed in her investments and occupies her time with fashionable friends ; he is lonely, idle, and longing for occupation. After some years of irksome and purposeless life, he finds pleasure in the society of Nina, a sympathetic maid-servant from Cornwall, and the association, at first innocent enough, in the end leads to the young woman's ruin, He sets up a separate establishment, and carries on his doublelife under difficult conditions, finding the chief outlet for his affections in a beautiful and loving little daughte) ; But the young woman finds that she ha 3no true home life nor place in tho world, and becomes morbid and loses i her attractions. She has concealed horself from her own family, and her father, coming to London to seek her, gives way to despair and drink. Nina follows his example, and after an attack of delirium tremens, becomes hopelessly insane and is sent to an asylum. Little Jimmy, the child, carefully brought up by her mother, | is passed on to the care of a dissolute ■ouple, who persuade her that she . ould adorn the music-hall stugc, and •uvc her photographed in tights. Sec- i •lg that the child is in the verge of turn, the father, in desperation, takes hjr to a convent. The mothor super- j io.' stipulates that he shall not set hci again till she is twenty jreara of age, and not the least terribh passage in the book is that in v.h eh the girl, j frantic with terror, is <f!ra;g-ed from 1 her father and consigned to her living !

tomb. Incidentally, the writer gives Borne insight into tho methods of tho men and women infesting great cities whoso solo business it is to search out and entrap unprotected and unsuspicious young women. True, terribly true, as the book is, the question arice3 whether this class of literature is profitable. If it has a real preventive caluo it is justified. But havo such books ever effectually warned any one against deception or temptation?

"Tho House of Rest." By Mrs. Fred. Reynolds. London: G. Bell and Sons. (Whitcombe and Tombs, Wellington). "Hazel of Hnzeldean," the only other of Mrs. Reynolds'* books known to us, exhibited tho author's skill as a storyteller, though it was marred by one cardinal defect — the absolute incredibility of the main feature of tho phjt. "'Tho House of Rest" has no such flaw, and is a charming study of varied and contrasted characters. "Wealth had come suddenly to Leonor Lorraino, but — the pity of it! — had come top late." She and her mother, after their broken fortunes, had lived in privation, and now that the mother, to whom she has been devoted, had gone, wealth was here once DRain But there wa'j a shadow on her mother's memory. In her desk Leone had found an intercepted letter, written long ago by ono David Lytham, who had about that time joined an outward-bound regiment, none knew why. It told of his affection, and indicated that her silence would be interpreted as refusal. All unknowing, she remained unw«dd6ci ror his sake, and in time tidings had come of Lib life kid down in far-away Tibet. Now, lonely and desolate, Lcoue cast about how to turn life and wealth to best account. Caning to her counsels a kindly and eccentric old doctor, 6he decides on opening a "home of test" for ttse poor, the weary, ana the convalescent, and at last finds in en old mansion at Arnside in Kendal, on the eea-coitst, au ideal place for her purpose. The reader is introduced ct Arnside to a curiously mixed company, whoso characters are delineated with both skill and humour. Arnside itself— its hills, it 3 coast, its village homes, iia fields of daffodils — all are depicted ivitli loving touches, showing that tho author has the eye of an artist as well as the descriptive faculty. It comes with no shock to the reader to find that David nimself becomes in time one of the cornpan" but years have brought change to boui; he is poor and eelf-distrustful, and Leone half thinks she is forgotten. But it is the author's business to Btraighten out tho tangles, and, the threads being all in her own hands, she succeeds, and leaves the reader well content. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL. '"Orthodox Socialism. A Criticism." By James Edward Lo Rossjgnol, Ph. D., Professor of Economics in tho University of Denver. • New iTork : Thomas Y. Crowell and Co. Karl Marx's "Capital" ha 3 b-aen described as "tho Bible of Sociolism," and as i-egards the avowed socialists of Australia and New Zealand the term is not exaggerated. For instance, the Brisbane Worker, criticising Shnllard, an English writer, who had referred to "Socialism emancipated from Marxism," said : "He might as well talk of a mensuration emancipated from arithmetic. Marxism is the science by which iocial problems are correctly stated, rightly understood, and accurately worked out." In a pamphlet publL-hed a few w«oks i ago by the Socialist League in this i city, it is said, '"To the great German economist, Karl Mnrx, ... is due .our i principal knowledge of the system of production for profit in which tho worker becomes a mere profit-making machine." To the orthodox socialist, ] 1 Marx is both the Law and the Prophets ' — the final and infallible authority It j is this supposed infallibility that Pro- ] fessor Rossignol challenges in a very I able and convincing book — a book which I no elector, perplexed by pressing social evils and the conflicting methods . of treatment advocated, could read attentively without profit. Tho author doe 3 not attempt to question the motives of socialists, nor to minimise the evils' of which they complain ; but he declares that the fundamental principles of socialism are by no means scientific, and require radical revision — that then tendencies are in the wrong direction, "calculated to divert Gociety from its efforts to secure a gradual improvement of existing conditions to the dung-eroua pursuit of an intangibb and impracticable; ideal." "In fact, socialism io not a science at all, but, a faith, a religion, j In these days, when .»_e have a psycho- | logy without a soul, let it not be thought j 6trango that we have a religion without I a God." But the later ochool of socialt kts, Bernstein of Germany, Jaures ot France, and other?, have been applying the "higher criticism" to their infallible authority until there is little difference between them and the unbelieving reformer or the unconverted professor of political economy. They are aware, for oxample, that "tho labourcost! theory of valu* ia utterly untenablo; they are disposed to admit that men and women are at times actuated by other than* economic motives ; they suspect the accuracy of the orthodox theory of industrial crises, and concede the possibility that their frequency may bo diminished, and their worst effects prevented, by a better organisation of the capitalistic system" — and so on thr.ough a long category. _ The admissions of socialist authorities themselves serve to simplify the professor's ta.sk. * Marx, he says, was a man of original genius wao fhould havo been capable of working out a theory of value of his owj But no man can rise far above his intellectual environment, and Marx was unable to emancipate himself from Ricardo's labour-cost theory of value. The book, however, is not only critical, but constructive. The professor examines in successive chapters tho socialist creed, tho labour-cost theory, the iron law of wage 3, surplus value, machinery, industrial crisec, the economic interpretation of history, tho class struggle, a*d the social revolution. It is something of a drawback for the student to bo shut up to obsolete text-books; yet many trust to sixpenny reprints not only' out of copyright but long out of date. To such, "Orthodox Socialism," dealing as it does with "the living present," can not fail to bo of value. " The Beginnings of an Imperial Partnership : A Suggestion," is the title of a pamphlet by Lieutenant Hordern, It.N., published by William Clowes and Co., 23, Cockspur-street, London, S.W. Tho author deals with tho broad problems of Empire, especially thoso that have lately forced themselves to the front. ' Wanted, i>. Policy," is tho title of his first section. Room, ho says, must be found in tho Empire for various national ideals. "Of the other racos i 6 includes, it must bo made possible for tho French Canadian and ths Boer to bo proud of belonging to it, and to bo ablo to feal that tnoir individuality is respected, and that no attempt is mado to coerco them into Anglo-Saxon ways. ... To organise the British Empire on truo lines needs not only tho greatest loleranco and goodwil 1 all round, but an immense amount of enquiry and an aci cumulation of facts, both of which must ha co-ordinatod and directed with scien- : tific caro, and not simply thrown haphazard into a scrap-heap.' His suggestions, briefly, are tho institution of a special Intelligence Department and of an Imperial Office, and he enters into considerable elaboration of detail.' - I