BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 229, 25 August 1928, Page 7

BOOK NOTES

CRICKET. Tho .author of “The Game’s the Thing,” Mr M. A. Noble, one of Australia’s greatest cricketers, discusses the game as a howler, batsman and captain, and if there are among tho readors of his book any who do not profit from what he has to say they are those to whom cricket as lie describes it is altogether too grim a business to he worth taking up as a game. “Alick Bannerman .... once noticed a very good bftt ratlior nervous opponent, as lie walked to the wicket, joking and laughing with a fieldsman. At the end of the over he went to tho fieldsman and said: ‘What aro you doing; don’t you know the game?’ ‘Why,’ said the fieldsman in surprise, ‘wliat liavo 1 done?’ ‘Talked to the batsman as ho came in and gave him confidence. . . .’. Mr Noble adds: “And ho was right”; and throughout he insists on the enormity of having traffic with the enemy. No good comes of it: when a batsman who knows his trade says “Well bowled” to you it is to deceive your captain and that he “may tear and rend you and pound you to pieces at his leisure.” In fact, tho game of which Mr Noble writes is the long-drawn-out six-day campaign; its monarch would bo Willow, tho Kaiser, and tho battle-song a hymn of hate. He discusses captaincy, temperament, and character in relation to this six-day game, and lie adds chapters on hatting, bowling and fielding which, while addressed primarily to experts, contain useful hints for those, also, who play less strenuous cricket. It is noticeable, too, as evidence that we needs must love the highest when we see it, that among cricketers Mr Noble’s hero is Victor Trumper, who “was a law unto himself.” Cautious, such as those contained in this book, would have made littlo impression on him:—“Ho would listen carefully, respect your advice and opinions, and leaving you would forget all you had told him, play as he wanted to play, and thereby prove that,, although you might bo right, ho knew a better method.” Mr Noble writes with generous enthusiasm of Trumper’s more excellent way —of his capacity to score fast from any bowling on any wicket; and he describes, so as to bo intelligible, how his most characteristic strokes were made. Nothing, however. is so effective in conveying the dominance of Trumper as that Darling —a captain who took himself seriously, even among Australian captains—would ask “Is Vic there?” whfcu the charabanc of the team was about to start for tho ground, and, if ho was, would drive off without troubling if any of the others were missing. AUTHOR'S DRAMA. Mr Henry Williamson was last night awarded tho 1928 Hawthornden prize of £IOO for his book _ “Taka the Otter.” The prize was instituted by Miss Alice Warrender in 1919 for a work of imagination by an author not moro than 41. Mr W illiamson, who is 31 and lives between Barnstaple .and Bideford, North Devon, said to a London Daily Mail reporter: “In 1921 1 left London without any money and went to Devonshire to write. I rented a cottage for £5 a year and began work. My first book brought mo about £lO. ‘Taka the Utter’ was rejected by the first publisher to whom I sent it. It lias been a worst seller in the United States. I rewroto it 17 times, and every stone, leaf, and twig mentioned is correctly placed in the district in which the storv is laid, between the Tor and the Torridgo, North Devin. I followed tho otter hounds to get my local colour.” Mr John Galsworthy, who presented tho prize at tho Aeolian Hall, New Bond-- Street, London, W., said: “Tarka the Otter” is a truly rernarkablo creation. There is certainly no other man living who could havo written it. It is the result of stupendous imaginative concentration, fortified by endlessly patient and loving observation of Nature. Henry Williamson has received as yet infinitely less credit than he lias deserved. He is the finest and most intimate living interpreter of the drama of wild life. A “BEST BOOK.” There (fan be but one or two alive who felt, as schoolboys, the magic of Thomas Arnold’s presence; lor he left tho school, which he had remade in L 841; but each of them, if lie was worthy of Rugby, has passed the spirit of Arnold on. Work —earnestness, to use his favourite word —was his mainspring. Ho was no dazzling scholar, nor demanded that his boys should ho. it was a turning-point in ins life when, in his class-room at Laleham, before he had taken up the task that made him famous, ho rapped out somo impatient words to a dull boy. The lad looked him full in the face and replied “Why speak angrilv sir? Indeed, I am doing the best I can.” Arnold never forgot. The boys in after years who idolised him were not so much the brilliant ones, but the mass who, fired bv his spirit, were doing the best they could. Such a one was Tom Hughes, writer of the book which is still, after three-quarters of a century, by far the best school story in print —“Tom Brown’s Schooldays.” No moulder of men could wish for finer memorial. It is said that opportunity makes the thief, but women lilto the heroine of Mr A. G. Hales’s latest venture —■ “As a Woman Sows,” who are born courtesans, would bo the finished article on a desert island. A child of Breton fishing folk, Fleclie has all tho instincts and the resources of tho most sophisticated Parisian cocotte. No one is safe from her wiles, which sho even practises on the village priest. At the iieiglit of her power .and affluence, when “in the marvellous city of the Caliphs, spreading its mystery and Eastern beauty by the whispering waters of the Bosphorus, life, sensuous full-blooded life was at its flood tide,” her vicious career, however, came to a violent end. The author has a rich style, which delights in voluptuous and impressive descriptions, to which the story of tho rise and fall of the beautiful but wicked Fleche lends itself.

NINETEENTH CENTURY. The six political articles in the Nineteenth Century for June are all topical and all highly interesting. Sir John Marriott, M.P., who admits that “no one has been a severer critic of Mr Churchill’s finance,” praises the Budget as an “extraordinarily coherent scheme” which “in its totality represents an effort, inspired by largo vision and by the highest qualities of imaginative statesmanship, to lift from the shoulders of British industry a load under which it has long staggered, and which has lately become insupportable.” Mr G. E. G. Catlin, in an article on Prohibition, says that enforcement, like adoption, depends on public opinion, and this in turn must rest not on propagandist statements, but on scientific investigation. Mr A. J. Liverscdgo shows how the Stevenson rubber-restriction scheme has alienated American opinion, and contends that no industry should less need artificial support or Government control. Mr Percy Hurd, M.P, puts in an eloquent plea for helping the West Indies, and Mr J. B. M. Clark argues that what Canada needs to solve her population.