LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XCVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1919, Page 14

LITERARY NOTES

"The.ftoad to Muritai" is a small collection of verses by 0. S. Gillespie. The verse is not sublime, and does not pretend to be, but it is eloquently truthful 4 in describing the unpurchasable joys of a happy home life. And yet was there ever a more homeless or lonelier man than the author of "Home, Sweet Home?" 0 S. Gillespie, however, would seem to be different, .finding a joy even in that most mundane of tasks— washing up. This evokes! "Evensong,'" beginning—

Sing a song of washing up—shining

clean plates, — Chattering together like a crowd of old

mates; Buxom cups and saucers, and little white

bowls, Purely and demurely bright like little girl-souls. Hear the hymn to cosiness The tinkling dishes chime, i-Ringing in the doziness Of evening time. "The Boad to Muritai" is that which the writer is in the habit of taking day by day. He has selected it for the title of this modest little offering'to the Muse, the verse having been written on board the ferry-boat on its homeward run across the harbour. "Flowers of War" is a powerful piece of word painting, in which the poet sees all the flowers on the battlefield, red-petalled, red-leaved. Only one spot of brightness in this scarlet field was to bo seen, and that the aura of gold around -white crosses where men, or what was • found of them, were buried. Most of the verses have already appeared in the Sydney Bulletin. They aro published by Wright and Jaques, Auckland.

The last chance of maintaining peace, says Lord Lbreburn in "How the War Came" (Methuen), was when the crisis came in July, 1914. A plain, timely statement to Germany that if she attcked France we should be on the side of France and Russia would, "for a -certainty," as President Wilson said, have prevented war The military masters of Germany would not have faced the fearful risk. One thing, at all events, our recent experiences have proved, and that is the failure of the old traditional diplomacy.

"Secret diplomacy has undergone its 'acid test' in this country It had every chance. The voice of party was silent. The Foreign Minister was ' an. English gentleman whom the country trusted and admired, who was wholly free from personal enmities of every kind. ■ and who wanted peace. And secret diplomacy utterly failed It prevented us from finding some alternative for war, and.it prevented us from being prepared for war, because secret diplomacy means diplomacy aloof from Parliament. Let us have done with it for good."

"Thome, a Kempis de Imitatione Christi Libri quattuor quos denuo. recog_ouit Adrianus a Fortiscuto prebyter ritus Latini." This js a reprint by Methuen, edited by. Br Adrian Fortescue, of the first Latin edition by Gnnther Zainer at Augsburg.in 1471 or 1472 Dr M J Pohu having reproduced the so-called autograph Brussels manuscript of 1441, it seemed desirable to edit rather the source of the printed editions, which is the basis of the textus receptus, in which the third and fourth books follow in the usual and more logical order

"Mr. Dooley" (otherwise Mr. Peter Dunne) makes some timely remarks oh questions of the hour in "making a will" and other "Dooleyisms " "Rellijon is a quare thing (he observes>. Be itself it's all right. But spjdnkle a little pollyticks into it an' dinnymite is bran flour compared with it. Alone it prepares a man f'r a betther life. Combined with pollyticks it hurries him to-it i D'ye suppose th' ol' la-ads who started all these things cinchries ago had army rellijon? Divil th' bit th' likes iv thim iver had thin or iver. They wanted to get a piece iv land or a bunch iv money an' they knew they cudden't get anybody to lave home an' fight just be sayin' T want land an' money.' So they made a rellijous issue out iv it They said to the likes iv you an' me. 'That fellow over there thinks ye ar-re goin' to hell whin ye die. . Ye take his life an' I'll take his land n' his money.' " And tho conclusion of the whole matter is, that spite even of the direful combination of politics and religion, "no rivoluchion iver succeeded that didn't have the polis with it"—a conclusion . that events occurring since the writing of the chapter have proved thoroughly sound

The "Nineteenth Century and After," which has been acquired by a syndicate headed by the Duke of Northumberland (who will act as editor), and including tho Duke of Sutherland, Mr Walter Long, aud Majoi WaJdorf Astor, wasfounded by the late Sir James Knowles iv 1877. Knowles, says the Manchester Guardian, was by profession an architect, but his mental activities carried him into other spheres, particularly literature, and he became intimate with such leaders of thought as Buskin, Tyndall, Fronde, Gladstone, Manning, Lubbock, Bagehot, and Tennyson, most of whom he met. through the Metaphysical Society, which he and Tennyson founded m 1869. Knowles became editor of the Contemporary Review, but disagreement with its proprietors led to his establishing his rival review and taking with him most, of his leading contributors. The Nineteenth Century hasthroughout its career been an influential periodical, and its collection of articles in opposition to the Channel Tunnel scheme had a groat deal to do with the abandonment of that project in 1882