NOVELS OF VARIED MERIT.

Evening Post, Volume XCV, Issue 41, 16 February 1918, Page 10

NOVELS OF VARIED MERIT.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF THE HOUR

"The Dwelling-place of Light."- By Winston Churchill. Macmillan and Co., London.

"In this modern industrial civilisation, of which wo aie sometimes wont to boast, a certain • glacier-like process' may be- observed. The bewildered; the helpless—and 'there are many—are torn from the parent rock, ■ crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places." This is the opening paragraph of Mr. Winston Churchill's latest novel, and it aptly epitomises the story which concerns, primarily, Janet Bumpus, stenographer in an American factory, and secondarily "modern industrial civilisation," and the coming revolt against it. Janet Bumpus comes of an old New England Puritan family—pious, self-respecting, upright, and soundly American, and of old English origin. Janet is swept by circumstances, which there was no resisting, into, the unlovely manufacturing town of Hampton, which was peopled, as so many of such towns are, by Germans, Slavs, Latins, and other mixed peoples.- Having.a personality of her own, together with good looks, and great capacity, Janet attracts the notice of Claud Ditmar, her employer. Ho falls in love with her. Of the genuineness of that love Mr. Churchill does not leave his readers in any doubt. The man truly and purely loves —according to his lights. But his lights are low, and they are dimmed by his absorption in business.-, "The mills" dominate him in every way. ; They and their business are his god, his religion, his sole object of existence. Even his love is conducted on business lines. He is shrewd enough to sco that Janet's heart is not to be bought with wines, rich foods, diamonds, and fur coats, but he does not know how else to win it. As a business 1 nian he understands that everything can be bought: it is all a question of price. Janet's price ia, however, .beyond him. He does not possess it; because men of '-his type—a common one, too—rarely do. Nevertheless Janet does not entirely repel him, because he is an extremely difficult man to repel. His competitors and employees know that, to their cost. So, under protest and with much reluctance Janet Bumpus partly yields, accepts many of Ditmar's favours, and—becomes the mother, of his child. That he honestly intended to atone by marrying her the reader is left in no doubt; but an "Italian workman assassinates him during a strike before he caD arrange the legal formalities. .

Mr. Churchill describes with all the skill of the consummate artist, life as it is for the myriads under the "modern' industrial civilisation" of America today.) He shows quite plainly the highly dangerous combustible material which is accumulating under that civilisation. From time to time fires break out in the mass, and are "got under by the local brigades," so to speak. But until all this material is removed, the grievances, both real and imaginery, redressed, or at least seriously and intelligently approached, the risk of a world-wide conflagration will remain. Russian revolutionary excesses are » serious reminder of this fact. . '„■.

There are-weak parts in "The Dwelling Place of Light" where probability is stretched overmuch; but taking the book generally it is a notable addition to Mr. Churchill's works dealing with the problems of our time. His character drawing is masterly in the novel under review. Incidentally, referring to a great strike, Mr. .Churchill utters a grave warning. He writes :, " Despite the feverish assurances in the ' Banner' extra, that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces hitherto unrecognised and unknown. Who was to tell -these solid, educated business men that the,crazy industrial Babel they had helped to' Tear, and in which they unconsciously dwelt, vwas no longer the simple edifice they, thought it? That Authority, „ spelt with a capital, was a thing of the past?. That human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the strata of 'civilisation and change the face of the world? That conventions and institutions, laws and decrees, crumble before the whirlwind of human passions? That their city was not of special but universal significance? And how were these, who still believed themselves, to be dwelling under th© old dispensation, to comprehend that environments change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies? " There are many passages of power- in "The Dwelling Place of Light," and the work all through is that of an artist as well as of a thinker. ' • .