BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 307, 24 November 1934, Page 12

BOOK NOTES

WITH THE LEGION. Mr G. Ward Price, famous as a war correspondent, is the first British journalist to have accompanied the Foreign Legion on active service. His absorbing account of the Atlas campaign of 1933 is both authoritative and impartial, an admirable corrective to all the sensational nonsense that has been written about the Legion. Living the life of a legionary, in camp and in the field, Mr Ward Price used trained eyes and ears to discover the truth. He found that the Legion is not mainly a refuge for reprobates —many of its recruits are disappointed husbands or lovers; that there is little discontent and no brutality; that the life, though hard, has its compensations. A remarkably interesting book. BLIGH OF THE BOUNTY. William Bligh was a remarkable man with a spectacular career. Mr Geoffrey Rawson’s “Bligh of the Bounty,” first published, with illustrations, in 1930, has now been reprinted in another form as the latest addition to the Nautilus Library, “the standard library of books about the sea and ships.” The book is written in simple, terse, and graphic style, and brings out vividly the dramatic interest of Bligh’s stormy and strenuous career. “His fortunes took him to every corner of the globe,” Mr Rawson points out, “he was the central figure in most romantic, most heroic, and most unsavoury episodes; he was at once a villain and a hero; he was twice deposed by his subordinates, and twice reinstated and promoted by his superiors; he figured in several courtsmartial; he was renowned for his courage and execrated for his brutality ; he served his King and country for nigh half a century ; he sailed in twenty ships and commanded ten; he was at sea during the whole of his nautical career; he was Cook’s sailing master, and Nelson’s next astern at Copenhagen; he fought under Duncan at Camperdown and at the Battle of Dogger Bank under Hyde Parker; and he made the most notable boat voyage in the annals of the sea.” All these exploits are refold with vigour and gusto. A TRANSVAAL STORY. “Jock of the Bushveld,” by Sir Percy Fitz Patrick, is a straightforward stirring story of life in the Transvaal, transport-riding, and hunting buffalo, lions, liartebee6t, porcupines, and other game, with Jock the bull terrier as the hero. He was an ugly unwanted pup, but the teller of the tale picked him out from the litter for his courage. The stories of how he became deaf owing to a kick from a koodoo and how he fought a baboon are thrilling episodes. Picturesque characters figure also in the narrative, especially Jim, the big Zulu bullock driver, “a terror to drink, but a great nigger.” Jock’s death is a fitting end to an adventurous and faithwul career.

OLIVER CROMWELL. Few figures in English history have provoked such controversy and contradictory opinions as Oliver Cromwell. To Clarendon he is a “brave bad man.” Hume and Hallam regard him as hypocrite and vulgarian. Hilaire Belloc paints him as villain in unredeemed black. On the other hand, his admirers praise him hardly “this side idolatry.” Carlyle sees in him the hero as mystic; in his unforgettable face dwells “a kind of murky chaos.” Gardiner and Firth are more moderate and impersonal. And Mr John Buchan, in his “Oliver Cromwell,” follows them in a judicious reading of his hero’s character. His Cromwell is no bravura in either black or white, but a sympathetic, discerning, and complete study, convincing by reason of its soberness as by its complexity. If historians and biographers have been driven to extremes by violent yet contradictor}' elements in Cromwell himself, Mr Buchan cuts the Oliverian knot by pointing out at the very beginning that “paradox is in the fibre of his character and career ... a devotee of law, lie was forced to be often lawless; a civilian to the core, he had to maintain himself by the sword; with a passion to construct, his task iyas chiefly to destroy; the most scruplous of men, he had to ride roughshod over his own scruples and those of others; the tenderest, he had continually to harden his heart; the most English of our greater figures, he spent his life in opposition to the majority of Englishmen ; a realist, he was condemned to build that which could not last.” Mr Buchan admits that “no man was ever more extravagantly inconsistent,” but ho explains this by two sufficient reasons, Cromwell’s own candour and the vicissitudes of the times. A former soldier, the biographer sets out with almost professional interest the military tactics in the Civil War battles. And although Cromwell is the central figure of the composition, the social and political background is painted with due regard to proportion. MYTHS OF THE EAST.

“The Myth of the Mystic East,” by Lieutenant-Colonel R. H. Elliott, consists of a number of articles which were originally printed in Blackwood s Magazine, except the first chapter, an expansion of a lecture to the Royal Anthropological Institute. The author went to India forty years ago, and writes from long experience of the East as a surgeon. He also studied conjuring and magic, and for 15 years was chairman of the occult committee of the Magic Circle, the greatest association of conjureis in the British Empire He is, therefore, able to write “from the inside” in his vigorous practical “debunking” of the mystery attached to Indian snakes, magic and witchcraft. He has experimented with cobras and holds that the cobra might justifiably plead with Punch’s tramp, “arf the lies you ’ear about me, lady, ain’t true.” Particularly interesting is his analysis of the mango, basket, salaaming duck, and other Lantern tricks. A special chapter dismisses the rope trick as just pure myth, the evidence for its existence being carefully examined. ,Whilst the author adnmes the skill of the Indian conjurer and fakir, he has scant patience with beliefs in the glamour and mystery of the East, which he regards as bred by superstition out of ignorance. “THE GUESTS ARRIVE.” Cecil Roberts takes his characters to Venice, coaxes them into a gondola, gives them a background of A enetian palaces and blue Venetian lagoons, with the music of distant guitars floating across moonlit waters —and then watches what happens. “The Guests Arrive,” his latest novel, more or less evolves from such a situation. Vet it need not be thought that Mr Roberts s Venice is the over-dramatised city ol the magazine story, a city of beautiful but improbable nonsense, specially designed for scenes of passion and enchanting gondoliers singipg “0 Sole Mio.” The Venice of this story loses none of its magic because the author obviously knows it so well, and none of its charm because it has become the Venice of Mussolini, motor boats, and American tourists. “The Guests Arrive” is a light, colourful, eminently readable romance. Mr Roberts prefers to survey the world with the eyes of a romanticist, and defiantly upholds the claims of romance in his introduction.