LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 141, 17 June 1922, Page 15

LITERARY NOTES

Received.—"The Clash," by Storm Jameson, from W. Heinemann; "Sacrifice," by Stephen French Whitman; "Towards," from D. Appleton; "A New Social Order," by A. Schv*n.

Mr. Johns's "Who's Who in Australia" is avaluable work of its kind. The new edition contains 3000 geographical references. There is an interesting reference in his preface to medical men. Members of his. profession, it appears, requested him to omit all reference- to doctors—a request which, as the author implies, is unaccountable. Any man who issued a biographical book and left out all mention of the healers of the sick would be apt to be denounced by distant • readers as one having a prejudice against the doctors. The average man in the streetis quite unable to account for the singular attitude adopted by the profession towards publicity, particularly as the disciples of Aesculapius may reasonably be presumed to have a fair proportion of human nature in their composition. Equally it would, not be just to accuse them of a desire to pose; so that the only rational conclusion which remains is that they object to advertisement. If so-, why ? Certainly not because they are inferior or superior to the rest of the community—what then? AnyJiow, Mr. Johns has acted "on the. presumption that even if doctors don't like •people to- read about them and their achievements, the people like to do in this respect what they do not like them to do. and so medical men take their fair share of the space in this valuable manual of reference. "After a surfeit of neurotic novels about modern women, I return to the easy peace of the Victorians with a wonder if, with all their formality and sentiment, their women were not, after all, of the texture which belongs to every age in all parts of the ■world," writes Marie Harrison in the Daily Chronicle. The characteristic of our own age is its fatal cleverness, she holds, and goes on: "We have little reverence for beauty, and less for intellect. But we have an enormous veneration of mere cleverness—in our children, in our dramatists, in our preachers, in our novelists, in ourselves. We are so cursed with cleverness that we see nothing beyond. And so our age will bequeath less to succeeding generations than the Victorian age bequeathed to us," When Sir Oliver Napier, 54 years ago this month, captured Magala, King Theodore of Abyssinia was found dead. He had committed suicide, and under his pillow was found a book, "Kebra Nagast," or "The Glory of Kings." This was sent to the British Museum. In August, 1872, King John IV. of Abyssinia wrote to Lord Granyille, who was then the British Foreign Secretary: — "There is a book^ called 'Kivera Negust' (i.e., 'Kebra'Nagast'), which contains the law.of the whole of Ethiopia, and the names of the Shums (i.e., chiefs), Churches, and provinces are in this book. I pray you will find out who has got this book, and send it to me, for in my country my people will not obey my orders without it." The book was accordingly sent to King John, but it has not been lost to English readers. .It has been translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, the keeper of the Egyptian and' Assyrian antiquities'-in' the Museum, and published under the tole.of "The Queen of Sheba- and Her .Only Son Menyelek" by the. Medici Society. Apparently the book is worthy to rank with the apocrypha. Interest centres upon the story of Her Majesty of Sheba, whose name was Makeda. Makeda, after hearing about Solomon's wisdom and glory, went to Jerusalem. When Makeda arrived in Jerusalem she lodged in the splendid quarters which Solomon prepared for her, and she had frequent opportunities of conversing with the King. The more she saw of him the more she was impressed with the handsomeness of his person and with his piety and wisdom, and with the eloquence of his speech, which he uttered in a low, musical, and sympathetic *ofce. She spent several months in Jerusalem as the King's guest, and one night, after a great and splendid banquet which Solomon gave to the notables of his kingdom in hei honour, he took her to wife. When Makeda knew that she was with child she bade farewell to Salomon, and,, having received from him a ring as a token, she returned to her own country, where her son Menyelek, or Menelik, was born. . . . When the boy reached early manhood he pressed Makeda to allow him to go and see his father Solomon .in Jerusalem, and his importunity was so great that at length she gave him the ring which Solomon had given her, and sent him thither under the care of Tamrin. ... Father and son fell into each other's arms when they met, and the son had no need to prove his identity by producing the ring which his father had given to his beloved Makeda, for Solomon proclaimed straightway the young man's parentage, and made him to occupy the Royal throne with him, after he had arrayed him in Royal apparel. Tennyson once g paid a visit to Greenwich Observator during the late Sir . William Christie's term of service, and made a characteristic l-omark on being shown the latest discovery in stardust. "Well," he said, "after seeing that, one doesn't think so much of the county families." Tennyson seems to have discovered the value of astronomy as a remedy for self-con-sciousness much earlier. On hearing his brother Frederick, then an Eton schoolboy, say that he felt shy of going to a dinner party, Alfred advised him to "think of Herschel's great star-patches, and you will* soon get over yolir shyness."

Of "Einstein and the Universe," a popular exposition of the famous theory, by diaries Nordmann, astronomer to the Paris Observatory, Lord Haldane writes in his preface : "I know no book better adapted than the one now translated to give the average English reader •somo understanding of a principle, still in its infancy, but destined, as I believe,, to transform opinion in more regions of knowledge than those merely of mathematical physics." The work is, in fact, the most successful attempt to date by a mathematician to explain the theory in terms suitable to the non-mathematical reader. The translation from the French has been done by Mr. Joseph. M'Cabe.

Max Beerbohm, in dedicating his new book of caricatures, "The Sur%Tey," to Britannia, reminds her that sho has always frowned at some of his drawings: "A satirist instinctively goes for what is very strong: the weaker things he derides with less gusto, or not at all. But- you, madam, have a great respect fov strength, and it is the weaker things that are aptest to tickle your sense of humour. ! myself have n respect for strength, but also fam inclined, in my f.-illcii nature, lo look for tlic weak puinis that *11' strength has, and to [joint them rudely out. I used to laugh at the Court and at the pcreouji around it; and

this distress you rather. I never laughed with you at Labour. Labour didn't seem to me quite important yet. But Labour is very important now, very strong indeed; as you have found. And I gathered, this year, from a certain mild downward curve of your lips when I laid out for you on the yellow sands those of my new drawings which referred to Labour, that you thought me guilty of not the very best taste in failing to bow my knee to your new Baal. Perhaps I ought to exclude these few drawings from a book dedicated to you. Do I compromise you by their inclusion? I hope not. I think not. You have but to say to Labour, 'Oh, honoured and darling and terrifying Sir, I know you're perfect. Don't blame me for some drawings done by an utterly absurd man who lives ever so far away in a country shaped live a jackboot.' Captain C. A. W. Monckton whose book on New Guinea and Papua, was so well received, in 1920, has written another on the same subject—"Last Days in New Guinea." He low.d and was much beloved b}' his men, tamed Papuan savages. Of the care which these men took of his person, Captain Monckton tells two good stories : — I well remember, he writes, od jne occasion camping near a mission station in Collingwood Bay. The missionary sent and asked me to stay with him at the missiore house; accordingly I went, <k> the displeasure of my men. When the time came to go to bed my orderly appeared and remarked : — . "I have' loaded a revolver and put it ■under your pillow; your rifle is loaded and alongside the bed. Privates Kovi and Arita sleep on the verandah." The Rev. Percy Money remarked; to my man : — "This is a. mission station; your precautions are uncalled for." The worthy orderly looked at the missionary and said :— "No one can see into the belly of a man." Then to me, "Your arms are there, sir, and Kovi and Arita. on guard." The moment war breaks out, the intelligence departments of both sides Tely upon the Jew; and they rely upon him not only on account of his indifference to nationalism, but also on account of his many languages, his travel, the presence of his relations in the enemy country .... Before the Great War, one could say that the whole of the Socialist movement, as far as it's staff and direction were concerned, was Jewish.—From Mr. Hilaire Belloc's new book, "The Jews."