OPEN CONFESSION

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 21

OPEN CONFESSION

"People: A Short Biography." By ■ Sdgar ' Wallace.' London: Hodder • and Stoughton. • ■'-'.• ' ' • ' i Mr. Edgar Wallace, journalist, war correspondent^' and novelist, comes straight from ' the 'people, and of ' his social origin he makes full, open confession."Hi« .autobiography is, as.he writes —essentially, a; story of the poor and of- "one atom 'that climbed out of •the '.thick/ mud which..clogs 'the feet of ! the: battling' nullioiiß;'*- He .was 6ne j of ''the .poor; who ' not'satisfied with.;oufvpqyerty;; »e:lawty who grew

to toe stature of <mr faith and are growing still." Then Mr. Wallace tells how he was adopted by a Billingsgate fish porter—a man of strong character and deeply religious instincts, who read his Bible regularly except when he broke out and "went on the drink," about twice a year, and then he would light any man of any size and beat him. London is Mr. Wallace's birthplace, and the city of his upbringing, and it is of this city and its masses that he writes with deep insight and sympathy. He knows it like a book, a book filled with illustrations. He sold newspapers as a boy, ajnd his choice was. the long defunct, but exceedingly popular and well-con-ducted, "Echo." At that time he read Shakespeare, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving were his idols. He always, even as a small boy, had a passion to write. There was not much prospect of making a living out of it, however, for Edgar Wallace, when he worked in a printing house, sold blacking, and waa labouring in a rubber factory. But he never lost sight of his literary ideal, not even when he went to sea on a Grimsby trawler, and later sold milk. Keir Hardie was instrumental in young Wallace asking for a rise in pay while employed on a roadrepairing gang in London. Then be took the Queen's shilling and was sent out to Cape Colony. There he met a Rev. Wni. Caldecott, a Wesleyan chaplain, who helped him towards achieving his ambitions; but it was Mrs. Caldecott who was bis. literary fairy godmother., Service sent him on the Benin Expedition, and there Mr. Wallace gathered much West African material, later to be profitably utilised in his novels. He met Kipling in Capetown, and this distinguished writer was kind to him and gave him a few literary wrinkles.

Mr. Wallace did work for Cape papers. Then came the South African War, and its journalistic opportunities, also meetings with Gwynne, Steevens, and Winston Churchill. The, author has much to say on the South African War, even at this long date, that is of historical interest, if not of importance. Ho worked on the "Daily Mail," and came into close touch with Alfred Harmsworth (not yet Lord Northcliffe). Tor the "Daily Mail" Mr. Wallace did some fine journalistic work, and not' the least; distinguished of his "scoops" was outwitting the Spanish authorities in cabling the attempted assassination of King Alfonso on the day of his wedding. Mr. W.allaee does valuable service in his attempt to enlighten, and reassure the. public on the real attitude of the poor' towards law and order. He knows what he is writing about— and. the fiasco-,of the General Strike of May, 1926,. proves him to be right when, he says:—

The truth is that, if working people are decently housed and can earn sufficient to supply their families with the comforts to which they aro entitled, they care precious little about those who are doing better than themselves. Class hatred is an invention. The British poor aro too sentimental to resent the romance of success, too high-principled and too intelligent to find a grievance in the prosperity of their neighbours. They are ' decent people, clean-spoken, clean-thinking. They hold the sealed patterns of national behaviour. It is the habit to think of the poor in terms of slumdom, but there is a poor which lives in shabby streets and cleans its windows and whitens its doorsteps. A poor whose horror is charity, and whose haunting fear is that it may be buried by the parish. A proud, self-reliant poor, that scorns relief and guards tho secret of its poverty most jealously. And these are tho vast majority.

Mr. Wallace) thoroughly Knows the working peoplo of England—he sprung from tliem—and is not ashamed of the fact;,, he. has worked with them as one of them. What he says about them may be regarded ns authoritative.—Z.