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

problem is not immigrants, but children. Viscount Ennismore and Mr Murthwait-How deal with undergraduate politics, and explain how youthful idealism is affected by interest in the leading political figures of our public life. Tliero are attractive papers on tho Royal Academy, the Zulu war of fifty years ago, naval enlistment in the Napoleonic era, and astronomical discovery.

NOVELS. “Tho Runaways” (by George A. Birmingham) has a plot based on “Ruritanian motive,” which involves the “napkidding” of that dazzling heiress Joyce Wilmer on the eve of her marriage to Prince Benadek Rudolph of Andania (such is the name of the imaginary State for this occasion only)- The author at once transfers the action and his chief personae dramatis to Connaught, where the reader may enjoy himself in the company of all sorts of quaint and loquacious Irish types. “Tho Darkest Spot” (by Leo Thayer) —A thriller which has somo pleasant character drawing in it. Peter Clancy, tho detective, believes that the darkest spot is nearest the flame, and applies this theory to the solution of a murder and robbery in which all the clues seem to point to other and more obvious perpetrators. How his methods are justified and the part played in the drama by the delightful waif, Billie (a girl, in spite of her name), is told with verve and gusto that makes it enjoyable reading. “Halford s Adventure” (by Harold Bindloss) tells how the youngest director of Halford, Sons, of Pooltown, checkmated tho plans of the firm s manager that were ruining it, and in doing so wus assisted by its confidential secretary, Barbara Wynno, whom lip marries. Halford’s story includes adventures in the West Indies, the whole capitally done by Mr Bindloss, who once more proves how well he knows his job. In “The Mirror of Dreams” (by Sanpat) the story is one of adventure ■and the plot is a complicated one, with as far-off and unfamiliar a setting as the most romantic could desire, and with a strong element of that psychic quality which, associated with the East, holds a strong fascination for the West. And East and West meet in this story. In England a young man seeking a cluo to tlie dreams and visions that visit him, sets out for Asia, and in Thibet, hidden away in a secret valley, brought up in a 6trange religious community, .an English girl awaits a deliverer. But tho matter is not a simple one of knight errantry, for the secret service Bolshevist agents, intrigues and “double-cross-ings,” besides philosophic speculations and strangs cults, all play a part in this original story. The author is, of course, an authority on this remote part of Asia, and he has a wealth of new and interesting material to deal with.