BOOKS OF THE DAY

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17933, 2 November 1918, Page 4

BOOKS OF THE DAY

... LIBEE'S NOTE-BOOK. TOM PAINE ON WAR. Before the war Tom Paine, the famous American patriot and freethinker, who wrote "The Rights of Man," "'Common Sense," " The Age of Reason," and who was a prominent figure in the French Revolution, would have been one of the last authors to be quoted with approval in an American official pamphlet. To-day, however, the name that was once anathema is being officially honoured, for extracts from certain of Paine's writing have recently figured very prominently in the "Liberty Loan" posters. One extract (from Paine's pamphlet, "The Crisis") reads as follows:—Theso are tho tiraos that try men's srnl'g. The Summer soldier «nd tho sunshine ratriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that smncU it now deserves the love Mid thanks ol man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet wo have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict tho moro jilorious tho triumph. What we obtain too cheaply we esteem too liphtly i it is clearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its coods; and it would bo strange indoed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. And from tho same hook wo road:It is the object only of war that makes it honourable. And if there was ever a just war since tho world began, it ia this in which America, is now engaged. . . . We fight not to enslave, but to set « country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in. And again, in " Common Sense,'' we read:— Tho oauso of America, is in a great measure the oauso of all mankind. Tom Paine was one of the "best sellers," as the current phrase goes, of 1113 own day. Within a fow weeks of its publication more than 120,000 copies of his "Common Sense" were sold. It is said to havo exercised no small effect in stimulating the spirit which led ( to tho Declaration of Independence. For many years 1 havo had on my shelves a nicely-bound copy of Tom Paine's " Common Sense," bound up with which is Paine's yet more famous "Rights of Man: An Answer to Mr Burke's Attack on the French Revolution." Tho book has .a special interest for me, as on its title-page it boars, in a microscopically small but beautifully clear hand, tho inscription, "Georgo Augustus Sala; Brighton, 188-1."" I bought it in Liverpool one horribly wet day in 1903, when I took shelter in that haven of delightful refnuge for a bookman, a second-hand bookshop. And now, lot me make the confession that in all these fifteen years I have never read more than the titlepage! Ths first spare evening 1 havo I really must "dip" into the pages of my long-neglected purchase, into which, I observe. I havo pasted an article (from "T.P.'s Weekly") on tho Thomas Paino centenary, which was celebrated in 1909. This article I have just reread, and am glad to see that Paino was the spokesman of the fow leaders in the French Revolution who recognised that to send Louis XVI. to the guillotine was not only a crime but a blunder. Paine's plea for mercy for tho unhappy monarch whom all historians agree was a very well-mean-ing man, resulted only in his being denounced as a "Quaker" and thrown into prison. Ho was marked clown for tho guillotine, but escaped in (a manner so extraordinary that it is worth recounting, in Paine's own words, aa quoted in tho interesting article just mentioned: — * One hundred and sixty-eight persons were taken out of tho Luxembourg in one r.ight, and * hundred und sixty of them guillotined next day, of which I knew I was to be one; and the manner I escaped that fate is curious, aud has. all the appearnnco of accident. The room in which I lodged was on the ground floor, and one of a] long -range' of rooms under a gallery, and the door of it opened outward and flat against the wall, ho-that when it was open the inside rf the door appeared outward, apd the contrary when it was shut. I had three companions, follow prisoners with me —Joseph Vanhuilo, of Bruges, since president of the municipality of that town: Michael and Bobbins Bastini, of'Louvain. When persons by (cores and by hundreds were to be taken tut of tho prison for tho guillotino it was nlways done in tho night, and thoso who perbrmed that had a private mark or sigTial by "hich they knew what rooms to go to and what number 1o take. We. as I have said, .were' four, and tho door of *ror room was mariwl, unobserved by us. with that' number ;n chalk; but it happened, if happening is proper word, that the mark was ran when tho indde door was open and f:-it aeaiust the wa'.l. and thereby came on the • inside when wo shut it. at night, and tho Destroying Angel massed by it.

It reads like an account of Bolshevik methods—all of tho present times. In the same article Mr Mpncure Conway, who edited a complete edition of Tom Paine's works, and wrote what is the standard biography of Paine, is quoted as saying that Paine refused to make money out of his pamphlets or take what ho considered to be the wages of a hireling. He donated the copyright of his pamphlet, "Common Sense," to America for the causo of Independence, likewise that of his pamphlet, " The Crisis." In the words of Mr Conway, "peace found Paine a penniless patriot, eating his crust contentedly when he might easily have had fifty thousand pounds in his pocket." He died almost a pauper and friendless, in a Paris garret, a miserablo end for tho man who, whatever his faults and mistakes, was unquestionably a true and disinterested patriot, tho value of whose advice to his fellow-countrymen ii now being proved by his eloquent appeal for staunchness against tyranny now receiving so honourable a twentieth century application. "THE PRETTY LADY." Arnold Bennett* has always prided himself upon being tho most businesslike of novelists, ,and I am therefore not surprised to find, in a New York paper, tho following letter, written to his publishers, tho George H. Doran Co.:— "My Dear Doran: I suppose vou are about to publish, or have publishod, 'The Pretty Lady.' Hero a few of the lower clues papers havo gone for it rather heavily as boing pornographic and unsuitable for v:nrtimo, etc., etc. Tho higher class wnners, however, with the exception of the ' Star. have treated it ,vorv well indeed, and I expect that next week it will have rencß >d a salo of 20,000' copies at least. Some cf the . good reviews have said that it is decadent and cynical, and that it tdves tin rntire.y ruthless picture cf heartless pennie in London. This is not 00, and I particularly want you to note that the war' has a. ;;ood effect on the throe principal characters, namely, Christine, Copeovicion, and Or. J., all of whom do what thev ran. The book ;s emnhatically not cynical. Nor does it rcr* tray heartless nccmle, ' and I should l.ke this to be insisted upon. I havo Hiet taken charge of British propaganda for France, so that I have rather moro than I can do. Evidently tho novelist was afraid that 'the American Press might find tho story rather too strong, and was anxious "that the novel should be considered to convey a wholesome moral, whilst dealing, 'as it certainly does, with people who aro at least " unmoral." D.-foo made much the snme defence, or excuse, for "Roxana" and "Moll Flanders." "THE KAISER"—BY HIS DENTIST 1 Oh, dear t "Will thero never, come an end to the ever-growing crowd of books on the Kaiser? The latest, the very latest addition to a class of literature) which has been somewhat overdone, is entitled " The Kaiser I Knew," by Arthur N. Davis, tho dentist (an American), who looked after the " All Mighti(#t's" "tussles" during tho fourteen years from 1904 to 1918. It is said that tho "Knight in Shining Armour," the " Wielder of the Sword of Wotan " the- " Vice-Regal of God on Earth," tho " Inheritor .of tho Sacred Heritage of the Hohenzoilerns," tho "Admiral of tho Atlantic," etc., etc., e|tc, was in the habit of freely discussing with his dentist the varying topics tof tho hour,

especially during the war years, and also openly "expressed his opinions of King George, President Wilson, the late Czar of Russia. Mr Lloyd George, and other leaders among the belligerent nations." And so Mr Davis, being no longer ablo to make money out of the Kaiser's teeth, is to make it out of the Kaiser's small talk. When I read all thfo I am irresistibly reminded of tho late Eugene Field's essay, on the Napoleonic craze (in his " Love Affairs of a Bibliophile"). Alluding to the deluge of books having Napoleon as their subject, Mr Field writes :

1 thinis the supgiy will, lite tho demand, never ,bo Tae women oi tii* Uourt have supped us with their memoirs; so have the diplomats el that period; so nave the wives 01 ins generals; bo have the iom-l3ick-and-Jtlarry spectators of those kaleidoscopic eoones; bo havo his keepers in exile; so has his barber. The chamboruiaida will b« heard from in good time, and the hostiors, and the soudions. " Already there are rumours that wo are soon to bo regard with memoirs of the Emperor Kapoloon, by the lady who knew the Tailor who Onoe Sewed a Button on the Kmporor's Coat, edited by hor loving grandson, the Duo de Bunco.

Tho difference, pf course, is that whereas Napoleon, with all his faults, was a, peculiarly fascinating personality, the Kaiser —well, the Kaiser is the ivaiser I and I for one have read all I ever want to read about him. save the one piece of news which would bo welcome, namely, that he has beau sent into exile— say, tj Devil's Island, or some such fittingly unwholesome and dreary hole, there to repent, if repents mice be possible to such a warped aud wizened soul, of his innumerable crimes against humanity. STEVENSONIANA. A hitherto unknown (to the general loading public) Stevenson item croppeu up in a lied Cross sale held in London ih September. This isi a'play entitled "The Hanging Judge,", printed at Edinburgh in 1887 for private circulation. Tho copy sold was the property of William Archer, upon whose shelves it had remained ail those years undiscovered. Stevenson made a warm friend of Archer, who wrote in the long-defunct magazine, " Time," an entinisiastio appreciation of the novelist's work at a time when Stevenson was living at Bournemouth and his name was far from being widely known. A privately printed edition of tho play was circulated in 1914 by Thomas J. Wise, tho famous English bibliophile, but the play is not included in the latest and professedly complete edition of Stevenson's work, tho " Swanston." There is also a short novel, 'Maggie Arnott," a story dealing with life in tho underworld of Edinburgh, which Stevenson, in his early Edinburgh days, loved to explore. The play lias so far never seen the glory of print. Then, again, there are numberless letters which, have come to light from time to time and are not included in the four volumes of "Stevenson's Letters," edited by Mr (now Sir) Sidney Colvin. Evidently thero is material enough for a couplo of supplementary volumes to the Swanston edition. Whether Sir Sidney Colvin, who acts as Stevenson's literary executor, will ever give his consent to printing this new " Stevensoniana" remains to be seen. Meanwhile, as was tho caso with tho Beatlnall and Knollo letters of Charles Dickens, the play and the story will no doubt bo printed in a pirated edition by some enterprising American. CHESTERTON, MAN. "New York Sun" is publishing, in the "Books and the Book World " section of its Sunday issue, a regular weekly letter, mainly concerned with literary topics, from Mr G. K. Chesterton. In an introductory article on tho great (in more senses than one) G.K.C., and his work, the "Sun" editor gives his readers a little pen portrait of "Chesterton, the Man." 1 make the following quotation:— Chesterton's personality is interesting, but unimportant, lie ia forty-live years old, and was educated at St Paul's S'ohooi, lie is niumod, and lives at Overloads, Bsacorisfie:d, Bucks, Eng.aud, in a houso as proportionately small as he is large. Ho weighs around 300 pounds, and looks like a composite picture of Balzac and bamuol Johnson. Botwecn " Greybeards at Play," which he wrote in 10CO, and " Tho Crimes of England " (a paradoxical title for a tremendous ou burst against Prussianism), which _ was published recently, Chesterton has written more than thirty books, and every one of them worth reading. Ho is England's greatest, authority on Dickeiia, but personally ho prido3 himself on being England's greatest authority on hams and bacon. Ho does most of his work in a library that ho built in a fie'.d across the road from his houso. A good deal of his timo is spent in London, where he preaches Middle Age common sense to his colleagues at the Savage Ohib, and, while sitting at table, writes essays for the " New Citizen," the publication which has been favoured with most of his critiques since he left tho London " Daily News " in 1913 after thirteen yoars of " preaching orthodoxy to nonconformist," as Julian West remarks on his book on Gilbert Keith Chester'on. For Chesterton is. incurably orthodox. Of this he says himself: "Thero is only one way of really guarding ourselves against tho excessive dansror of dogmatism . . ' . and '•hatl is to be stecned in dogmatism's and soaked in philosophy."' Ho is, as Holbrook Jackson sayß, "the happiest and heaviest of men." THE AIRMAN IN POETRY. The airman and his wonderful fents is beginning to bulk prominently in the current war poetry. Hero are some line ,lines, entitled "The Ace," by an American poet, Wills Steell:— The silver ladder of tho dawn, Oh, lightly, lightly treads the Ace, Safe as a child upon a lawn, With careless, smiling face. I watch your bright wings berating For sport the sky's bluo height, And flashing and retreating In tho sweet morning light! The wonder of it as you swim, Oh, mounting-, mounting, over higher,, Straining the vision to a dim Midge in a stream of Bre!_ And as you soar I'm yearning To follow you up there, Far-dartimr, aud returning To breathe diviner air! The empty spaces 'neath your oar, Oh, wary, wary, peer below I Those pearly clouds as ramparts aT» To hidis a lurking foe. I wntch you spread your talons And boat your wings apaco— He falters—loses balance. ... Icarian disgrace! Tho golden ladder, of the ovo, Oh, lightly, lightly, you retrace, You drop lite saying " by your leave" To your eccufitomed place. I watch you fa'!, full hearted, And denp-breathed after strain, When bird ar.d you are parted Are you but man again? STRAY LEAVES'. A. G. Hales, the well-known novelist and war correspondent, who is known in Australia as "Smilor" liales, hets written his autobiography under tho title, '' My Life of Adventure." 111-natured (Australian), critics have hinted that Mr Hales is gifted with as vivid an imagination as was that friend of our youth, Baron Munchausen. But Mr Hales lias a big public of his own, and I, for one, confess that I find his lively "M'Glusky" and other yarns a welcome means of passing what might otherwise bo a dull evening. Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, who will shortly have ready the third volume of "The Crime (the second volume of which was reviewed in these columns a fow weeks ago), have in preparation a work by a well-known American of German birth, Ofcto H. Kahn, entitled, "Right About Face," to which an introduction has been contributed by Theodore Roosevelt. Mr Kahn writes front the point of view that the greatest service which men of German birth or antecedents can render to the country of. their origin is to set their faces like flint against the monstrous doctrines and acts of a rulership which has robbed them of tho Germany which they loved, and in which they took just pride. Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to accept a. copy of Mr Mr S. H. Leeder's "Modern Sons of the Pharaohs," one of the most handsomely produced, as it is certainly one j of the most important books on Egyptian life of to-day»