BOOK NOTES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 80, 2 March 1935, Page 12

BOOK NOTES

“Adventures in Geyserland.” This narrative by Alfred Warbrick (Patiti), formerly chief Government guide, ot life in New Zealand’s thermal regions, is one of the most compact and thrilling publications yet published concerning geyserland. It gives a graphic account of the Tarawera eruption and the destruction of the famous pink and white terraces when millions of tons of superheated rock und mud were hurled skywards. It is fortunate indeed that the wonderful description of this event ,and the subsequent adventures of the exploration party tliave been preserved, for the loss would have been a national one. There are few who are privileged in a lifetime to witness so closely the fearful spectacle of a volcanic peak splitting down the centre, and twelve miles of heaving country belching flames and glowing rock in a ceaseless roar, while lightning stabs through the darkness to join a vomiting mountain. There is a grimness, sincerity, and simplicity in the story, published by A. H. and A. W. Heed, of Dunedin, which vivifies the catastrophe. It took toll of 150 lives. A. A. MILNE ON AVAR. A. A. Milne is famous as a humorist. In “Peace With Honour” he is desperately earnest. lot he deftly uses his gifts of humour to explode the fallacies in the arguments brought forward by sentimentalists, militarists, and those jingoists who arrogate to themselves the title of patriots. AVhgn it is advanced that “all the greatest qualities of man come out in armed conflict,” Mr Milne asks drily, “if in the last four years 10,000 ‘Titanics’ in succession had struck icebergs and gone to the bottom, each with a loss of a thousand lives, would any moderately sane person, in excuse tor doing nothing but build more Titanics, and crash into icebergs, utter the complacent truth that all the greatest qualities of man come out in shipwreck?” To the argument that war is human nature, and it is “natural” for a man to kill, murder, and slowly starve men, women, and children, Mr Milne comments pertinently that “it is not natural for him to commit suicide.” He points out that, once a struggle to the death for self-preserva-tion lias started, agreements all go by the board, as they did in the last war. Only safety and security count, and “no nation can give its word of honour to another nation, because no nation has a word of honour to give. It is as meaningless for a nation to talk about its honour as it would be for a cholera germ to talk about its honour; or a bath-mat; or the multiplication table.” War, Mr Milne contends, is mainly a matter of a sentimental convention. embracing sentiments about “patriotism,” “national prestige,” “security,” “thin red line of heroes,” etc., etc. It is this convention he attacks unsparingly and forcefully. His remedy is arbitration, common sense, and the application of ordinary standards of morals and decency to nations. PHILIP GIBBS ON EUROPE. Just as Mr Knickerbocker tried to get an answer to the question, “AA’ill AVar Come in Europe?” from the rulers, so Sir Philip Gibbs, ill his “European Journey,” looks for his reply to the waiter in the cafe or the newsvendor in the kiosk. He describes his book as “the narrative of a journey in France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Germany, and the Saar in the spring and summer of 1934. with an authentic record of the ideas, hopes, and fears moving in the mind of common folk and expressed in wayside conversations.” The encounters are casual and the reports give glimpses of the mind of ordinary Europeans rather than a complete picture. But these haphazard glimpses arc both interesting and illuminating. Thjy go beneath artificial nationalisms to the common, essential element of humanity. AA r e find repeated, like a melancholy burden, the trouble and''anxiety cf the depression, the feeling of uncertainly, the fear of approaching war, and yet with it an intense hatred of having the 1914-18 horror all over again. THE BRITISH NAVY. Of special interest is Mr Hector Bywater’s realistic survey of Britain’s naval position in “A Searchlight on the Navy.” The main contentions of tile Daily Telegraph’s naval correspondent are' that “in the future, as in the past, our fate will be determined on the sea”; that the British Navy is now in eclipse owing to a mistaken policy of one-sided disarmament and the “blunders” of the Washington and London Naval Treaties; and that the weakness of the British Navy will not only lead to the decline of national prestige and the disintegration of the Empire, but also is a menace threatening peace. Mr Bywater speaks with weight and authority on the naval policies of the great Powers, criticises the naval treaties very shrewdly, and discusses in clear and compelling style such problems as the value of big and small ships, the place of the battleship to-day, and tlie relative power of the naval and air arms. He gives a complete picture of the forces of the Royal Navy, with special chapters on fuelling problems and training of personnel. “MARLBOROUGH.” Volume one of Mr AVinston Churchill’s revolutionary and monumental “Marlborough, His Life and Times,” dealt with the first 52 years of the subject’s life and traced his rise under three successive sovereigns to preeminence in the realm. Therein the great soldier’s career was set in a new and truer light. In volume two, four years only (1702-1705) are covered, but its contents and wealth of documentary detail are astounding. During this period Marlborough led England as cap-tain-general and, with Godolphin, as virtual Prime Minister. “His. life was a ceaseless triple struggle, first to preserve the political foundation in England which would enable her to dominate the Continental AVar; secondly to procure effective military action from the crowd of discordant, jealous, and often incompetent or lukewarm allies ; and thirdly—and this was the easiest part—to heat J the French in the field. Nothing like this concentration of business and effective actions upon a single man had ever been seen before in Europe, or was soon to be seen again.” AA'itness to his superhuman mental and pliysicial activity remains in the immense mass of private and official correspondence preserved mainly at Blenheim. Much of it has been printed before, but a fresh search of the Blenheim papers revealed a large number of new letters, a series written to his wife, the Duclicss Sarah, and to his other intimate, Godolphin. Mr Churchill has used Marlborough’s own words wliereever possible, and shown his mental state at critical moments. This is a signficant contribution to our understanding of a much-malinged figure. The writer’s thoroughness is such, however, that he has worked over every campaign, every battle, of Marlborough, on the ground and on paper with the aid of a military authority.