LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 150, 25 June 1921, Page 15

LITERARY NOTES

Books received:—"The Prince of Wales' Book," from Hodder and Stonghton; "The Truth about Ireland," from John Tj.' Bennett; "The Countess of Lowndes' Squai-e" and "Reality," j from Cassell's. . ■..,.■ "Dnlike n«, the Americans seem to love and enjoy hotel; life, for its own sake. It is not beautiful scenery, but the. good hotel in the foregwund, that attracts them everywhere."—From "The Master Spinner," by Keighley Snowden. ■ . ■ . ': ..

In Hm '-Wanderings in Arabia," just published, Mr. Charles M. Doughty giveq'tth Arab's advifcc to his son regarding 4 the habit of. early rising :— "It is good to rise up-j'my.son (as the day is dawning), to the hour, of prayer.It is then the night angels depart and the angels,of the day arrive; but those that linger and Asleep on still, Satan enters into them. Khowest thou I' had once in my hou«e ■ a servihg'-lad', a Nasrany, and, altliough .he washed' liis head with soap, and had: combed out his haiiyyeb then his visage always appeared swollen and discoloured, wallah as a. swine; and if you markthem of a rraorhing you may see the Nasara (Christians) to be .'all of them as swine."%

Mrs. Sheridan in '"Mayfaif to Moacow,'* after relating het experience at modelling bottional busts of Lenin and' Trotsky, describes, how at Stockholm fhe Woke up suddenly to the fact that !)er unconventional journey had made her f?mous. .■ ■ ; '. "Reporters besiege.me. They even walls up to my room without being announced. .'. . One ; paper, a conservative one, says I declared Tvotsky to be a perfect This, if it fcots back to' Moscow, is most embarrassing. Never in my wildeaf moments would I use so mediocre a description to apply to Trotsky. I might say he was a genius, .1 superman or a devil, Anyway, in Russia we talk of men and women and not of ladies and gentlemen." Mrs. ■ Sheridan: was quite, astonished at the amount of prejudice which (•he found in Sweden against'her Bolshevist acquaintances. But it was as nothing to what she found in England. It is difficult to see why one brought up-as she had beeii, amid the men_ ana women of English society, should hav^ expected anything clue—but expect It she did. She was quite upaet by the nasty . things people said vnd thought about;tho3e who had bean her hosts m Moscow.;. "When I etavied off,to:Moscow without' a word to -attyotie (*ne writes), I could hot surmise what would be the outcoaic of it, nor mat the atii- |

tude of my family and friends woul' | be. I have returned to find a revel tion of surprises. It is a bitter world— the world to which I once belongedand i they do me the compliment of tak ing me a good deal more seriously than I have over taken myself. In fact very seriously."

Recently the English firm which issue most of "0. Henry's " books received a letter addressed to him from Santiago Chile, by a Norwegian broker .there. Thi broker wrote to say that " 0, Henry's amusing "Options" had made him laugh, a thing he had not done for long. He also expressed the sincere hopfe that he would meet "0. Henry" in England thi spring. , .

Discussing Bolshevism as a Jewish movement, Mr. Israel Zangwill writes in "Tile Voice of Jerusalem" : "The red rotid is not the path of Zion.: Nor has it. been cut out by Jews in particular.1 Its inhumanly rigid straightness is the work.of the Russian ddealogue, Lenin. - And .if there is an. excessive, percentage!.of Jews among the commissaries it is due partly to the disproportion of Jewish figures in everything and anything, but more to the general illiteracy of Russia, the vast ma-, jority of whose population '• is analphabetic., Jewry produces great revolutionary leaders, as it produces great mathematioians or groat actora'; but its proletariat is tho least revolutionary of all the proletariats, as is proved by its meekness in accepting revolutions impejsed; by the .environment." .' ' He then points*out that the first generator of Bolshevism was the fleet at Kronstadt, into which not a single Jew was admitted.