THE BOOKMAN

Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 86, 9 October 1915, Page 16

THE BOOKMAN

"The Prussian Terror." By Alexandre Dumas. Translated from the French by R. S. Garnett. Stanley Paul and Co., London. It is remarkable that nearly half a century has passed before "La Terreur Frussienne" has been presented to English readers. Written within three or four years of the novelist's death, it is not, perhaps, a novel of the highest class of the works of Dumas, but it undoubtedly has a special interest now. It deals with the war of 1866., when Prussia suddenly declared war against her old ally, Austria. Dumas, who had never forgotten a scene of his boyhood days, when he saw the victorious Prussians chasing French soldiers in his native town near Soissons, was horrified by the barbarous treatment meted out by the Prussians to the free city of Frankfort, and it is with Frankfort and its sufferings that the story chiefly deals. Its value lies on the pictures it draws of the ruthlessness which characterised the Prussian method in those days^ — a ruthlessness which, while it did not go so far in the arts of abomination as that of the present war, shows full promise _of the deadly fruit. There figures in the novel an innocent baby bayonetted for repeating a rhyme distasteful to a Prussian soldier. Thei army which was "billetted in the open and undefended town of Frankfort ripped its houses to pieces and abused its hosts in a way that fits exactly with what I we have read in the recent war news. Frankfort itself was made to pay an indemnity of seven million crowns in gold, and to disgorge supplies to the same amount ; and a new general who came along put on a fresh fine of twentyfive millions, which was countermanded by the King's- order, on the Queen's intercession. As a study in the persuasive Prussian methods the novel is almost a text-book. "Golden Glory." By F. Horace Rose. Hodder and Stoughton. This is "the South African prize novel in Hodder and Stoughton's all-Britieh £1000 prize novel competition." It is a most readable and unusual story, strong in interest, sustaining power, and relieved with a broad and deep humour, which, effectively reflects the vices and idiosyncracies of the white man against the background of his black brother. For scene, the author has taken Basutoland, in the daya before it was known by that name, and has pictured a negro Napoleon (significantly named Napo the Dwarf), organising and drilling the tribes of the kraals and uniting them into a power strong enough, to repel even an army of Zulus sent over the Drakenbergs by the bloody conqueror Chaka, the Zulu king. Napo, a dwarf of great brawn power and physical strength, is aided by the Giant (r huge warrior with an amusing weakness for wizardry) and the Bushman, a diminutive but cunning member ofHhe small nomadic Bushman people, perhaps the lowest human breed in South Africa. All three are types, and, but for the Bushman's lack of military prowess, might be called an African version of the Three Musketeers. The identity of brain with small stature, in the person of Nafo the Dwarf, recalls the Little Corporal and also Allan Quartermain, but the author of "Golden Glory" has absolutely no white blood in his pages. To make good the disadvantages arising from that omission he has to charge the black men's talk with abundant allegory ; but that, however much it may depart from nature, is the charm of the book. .Of Homeric combat and veldt generalship there is sufficient to rival even Rider Haggard. Of course there is a woman, who falsifies all Tecords by loving the Dwarf instead of the Giant, and who also indulges in the well-worn strategy of tears. " Women," observes the author, " have tried this sudden tear-burst in all ages since the world began ; and in the coura* of centuries men have learned how to take it, according to circumstances" — perhaps with a " don't-cry-dear " speech, or a little cheap sarcasm, or a pretence of indifference, or even a sledge-hammer rating. But Letika did more than cry. While the tears were flowing she looked out sharply (between her out-spread fingers) to observe their effect; and from this circumstance one must conclude that the gap between the veldt and the conservatory is not so wide after all. LITERARY NOTES " Tie-re are in the United States not more than three light essayists of the first rank, and Hichard le Gallienne is one of them; nor is he, with reverence to Dr. Crothers and Miss Repplier, the least of the three," says the New York Times. " England has her Chestertons and Bellocs, but this is a form of literature that has seldom been attempted successfully in this country, a fact which gives additional distinction to the few who try it and succeed." The earth is full of flowers; the sky is light. Nature is sweet ; be sweet to Nature. Love. Believe in the fairies. Love. They are the ones who make roses grow on graves. Everything passes. Except pleasure all is illusion. Believe in your eternal youth. Love. Nothing in the world is worth a sacrifice. We are the thrills of the leaves, the rays of the moon, the perfume of flowers, the voluptuousness of things/ the intoxication of the senses, the troubles of -the flesh and blood. You are beautiful. Your youth is in bloom. Love! — Anatole France. "There are still a few members of the House of Lords who have never written a book," says "Solomon Eagle" ia the New Statesman. "Lord Northcliffe has not yet, as far as I know, produced the monograph on Higher Edu- ' cation for which we have all been waiting; and Lord Murray's 'Travels with a Donkey on the Stock Exchange,' Lord Devonshire's eloquent treatise on the Living Wage, and the Duke of Northumberland's exhaustive survey of Rural Housing are still gestating in the brains of their authors. But authors on those scarlet benches lie strewn like leaves in Vallombrosa ; and many of I them at some time or another have committed volumes of verse. Lords Byron and Tennyson are not, I think, among these; but Lords Latymer and Howard de Walden are quite prolific, Lord prewe has a skeleton of the 'nineties in his cupboard, and Lord Curzon has now emulated Lord Cromer in showing that the well-known prance of the proconsul may be combined with the dance of the Mystic" Nine." Miss Gertrude Corby, whose published poems have earned a handsome sum for the Belgian Relief Fund, is proba.bly the first domestic servant to gain literary laurels, but there are many working men, or women, poets. To Matthew Tate, the pitman, Lord Ridley recently granted a free house /or life; Mr. Alfred Williams, of Swindon, works at the forge by day and studies the classics and writes poetry of quality at nights. Mr Patrick M'Gill, since famous as a novelist, published his first volume of poems whilst still a working navvy, and a well-known publisher told me the other day of a brilliantly gifted young scavenger whose verses he will shortly be issuing. On the female side we have quite a notable poet in Miss Ethel Carnie, whose " Songs of a Factory Girl," written whilst working as a Lancashire millhand, have reached a second J3£Mz. fitironislo.

"To sneer at contemporary literature, whether' native or foreign, because most of it must disappear in the test and trial of time, is more than ' ridiculous — it is dangerous," writes H. S. Canby, Professor of English in Yale University in Harper's Magazine. "We are partners in the literary speculations of our own age — mere investors in the established enterprises of earlier periods. In the works of our best writers the speech is our speech, the mode of thought our mode, the clothes, the streets, the events, the philosophy, our clothes, our streets, our remembered history, our philosophy. If it is to the so-called I 'classics' that we must go for eternal human nature and perfection of expression tried and sure, it is in the 'newest books,' in the newspaper on its way from the press to the kindling-box, in the supposedly ephemeral magazine, that we must seek a record of ourselves as : others see us, and find the self-expression of our age." What is the value of a stolen manuscript of an unproduced play? The author had to set a value in a recent London law suit. In such a case the bias is naturally in favour of the play "But," comments a Daily Chronicle writer, " I once (in search for a lost umbrella, at New Scotland Yard) encountered a friend who had lost the only copy of hie play in a cab, and had come in search of it. It -was produced, for the cabman was honest. What was the value by which fco fix the cabman's remuneration? My friend's bias swung to modesty. He fixed the worth of his play at the cost of typewriting. The cabman got a shilling — more than my friend ever got from his play."