The Old School Tie

Northern Advocate, 30 March 1938, Page 2

The Old School Tie

' “LORD SMARKAND." (By Horace Vaehell. Cassell 8/6), Vachell is too good an author io be | lightly esteemed. He has won too 1 many friends with his earlier books, especially “The Hill,” with its authentic glimpses of English Public School life as experienced at Harrow. Reginald Scarfe the “Demon” of the school life story, matured by. thirty odd years of life, since he left Harrow, and soured somewhat by a misfit marriage some twenty-five • years ago, now reappears to take the centre of the stage as Lord Samarkand, a sort of Northcliffe newspaper peer, who has acquired wealth and influence, A case in Sydney recently, drew police court attention to that line of scientific discovery which can now be employed in questions of paternity. There are certain “blood groups.” Everyone of us can be clasified by a blood test into one of these few* groups. If anyone offers himself for a blood transfusion and he •is healthy, his blood is tested for its group relationship. If it “belongs” the transfusion will be all right. If not, another offer must be likewise tested until one of the right group is found. By the same blood group test it can be proved, as at Sydney, that a man accused of paternity was definitely not responsible, since the child’s blood test disclosed a different group from that of the accused. I On this piece of modem science Vachell’s story turns. Lord Samarkand endeavours to get his wife to divorce him,.and employes a professor Vanneck to establish that a supposed son of his Lordship is not his son, but another’s. It is all very interesting, and sometimes exciting. But it is not worthy of “The Hill,” nor, I think, is it quite worthy of the author of “The Hill.”