A MAKER OF GOLD

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 68, 21 March 1931, Page 21

A MAKER OF GOLD

HILAIRE BELLOC S FUN

Mr. Charles Lexington, professor of electro-chemistry, is the hero of Hilaire JBelloc's joyous tale, "Tho Man Who Made Gold." Incidentally, "Mr. Lexington was truo to typo. He was gentlemanly, tall, thin, wore a pinch-nose, pale, hair rather long, and his moustache drooped.- His collar also was soft." The Homo Secretary, John Huggerley Mills, whoso name had "through the exigencies of public life been reduced to Jack Mills," was a Communist ol: the more orthodox sort, "a Communist of tho right wing, who had risen through his trado unio: by the regular steps, first as secretary organising the two great strikes, then as unquestioned dictator of that great body of men. Ho was worth perhaps £300,000 at the most... the very typo which our new political conditions arc producing, to the permanent advantage of the country." When Lexington learns how to make gold, he is up against trouble in trying to dispose of it. But finally a conspiracy with the Home Secretary straightens matters out by turning over the transmutation of metals to the League of Nations, with high salaries and positions for all. Hilaire Belloc plays fun with science and scientists, twits the universities, twists the tail of the Government, and satirises the League of Nations. G. K. Chesterton helps him with comic drawings, tho whole being excellent fooling.