BOOKS

Northern Advocate, 15 July 1939, Page 5 (Supplement)

BOOKS

Your Own

“A collection of books” Carlyle suggested, “is the People’s University.” Of course a collection of books, like a university,, depends on the use made of it. A rich man can order a room to bt filled with books from floor to ceiling, and know nothing of their contents, while a poor man, denying himself loss profitable and enduring luxuries, can build up a small library in a proud corner of his home, every book of which he has read, some of them more than once; a really select and august exclusive society in which he spends some of the happiest hours of his life.

Age cf Book Clubs This is the age of book clubs. For a modest pound or so a year a man can join one and get sent him from don a monthly selection of the club he has joined. The trouble with book clubs is twofold: First you can’t pick the books you want. You get expen-

Library

By “Caxton ”

An Ambition Worth While

4ive books at a low price all right, but they arc what someone else dieses for you, and the exercise of your own choice, a valuable piece of culture in itself, is inhibited. Secondly, such a book club stands for a more or loss pronounced viewpoint, and all its publications tend in one direction, which means, unless you con afford to jefn two or three clubs, you may acquire a lob-sided mental development.

Much bettor to take advantage of the varied choice offered by such reasonably priced collections as “The Home University Library,” or Dent’s “Everyman’s Library,” which is now approaching a • thousand volumes. Among more recent libraries of this kind, 'Nelson’s have made a conspicuous success with their 2/- Discussion books, each one by an expert, presenting the pros and cons of vital questions In modern life . Cassells have now entered this field

With their “Living Thought Library” at 2/6 each. I suppose I ought to say re-entered this field, for they were in it before with a series of sixpenny classics.

The first four of this new “Library” are Schcpenlir ucr, by Thomas Mann; Darwin, by Julian Huxley; Montaigne, by Andre Gidc. raw. TLstaj, by Stefan Zwcig. If you are tempted to think any one cf these four famous authors out of date for a “Living Thought Library” you are mistaken. I was reading Tolstoi only a few days ago (“Essays and Letters” World’s Classics) and found a passage that startled mo by its modernity. It might have been written in the present crisis, and published yesterday fn the “New Statesman.”

Apostle of Pessimism Schopenhauer is only dead to those who have not road him, and only know that he was a philosopher cf pessimism. If anyone takes the trouble to go behind the thoughts of most men today he will find a strong tincture of pessimism, not as a counsel of despair but as a settling and steadying •fortification of the mind against the appalling chaos of world life. Shuffling Optimists Desmond MacCaiThy speaks for many when he says: “I love a jet black j pessimism, provided it is intellectual, j and not temperamental. The wailings I of depressed persons in literature I merely depress me; but to see the case against life stated and man’s predicament on earth described with unflinching severity exhilarates me. We feel we have looked at the worst, heard at last the worst that can bo said. Now, we say to ourselves, we can count what mercies remain, and against that background they may well seem more precious,. It is, on the contrary, the shuffling optimists who turn their eyes from suffering and folly and cry ‘Peace,' peace,’ where there is no peace or hope either, who j depress us.” i

Deep to Deep

The fact is that the deep-thinking of Schopenhauer, of Darwin, of Tolstoi and of Montaigne lives again vital and vivifying whenever it is approached deeply, the deep In them calling to what is deep in every man and every age..

If it were not true that the thoughts of these authors are living and vitalising still, these books would acquire that quality from the distinguished men of the moment who pen their admirable and comprehensive introductions, Thomas Mann, Julian Huxley, Andre Gide and Stefa Zwelg, all writers who have the ear of the thinking world to-day. Benney’s New Book

Readers of “Low Company” got a taste of Mark Benney’s stark power of description, and, probably, more or less agreed with Bernard Shaw that it could be ranked among the great “human document” books. Mr Benney has now written What Rough Beast, published by Peter Davies. It has received a “good press,” praised as “discerning, sympathetic ahd violently alive.” After Mr H. G. Wells there is not much left to be said, and this is how it impressed him: “I think that it is up-to-date Benney’s best piece of work, an extremely original

design, very brilliantly carried out, one of the finest novels I have read for some time. , I do not know whether I ought to call Iron-Foot Jack a creation or a discovery —at any rate he lives with all that super vitality that distinguishes the ‘characters’ of the masters. and somehow, in and about this figure, Benney has woven, reflections upon the wisdom of mankind at large that recall the sweeping references of Flaubert’s “Boulevard et Pccuchet.”

The Dark Horse of Politics

Foreign Affairs, by Anthony Eden (Faber and Faber, 12/6) should interest a lot of people, all the more because so many believe Mr Eden will return to office and to power in the direction of British policy.

The Quality of Vision

Beginning with his maiden speech on an afr defence in 1924 and ending with his New York speech last December, this volume covers the active statesmanship of the most promising personality among the younger men and leaders in post war English politics. I have not read the book yet, only lengthy extracts. These struck me as very remarkable for their insight into the way things were going, the need for preparative action, which anticipated so definitely what is now being recognised and done, though at the time it fell on deaf ears. I shall, therefore, eagerly await the chance of reading the book as a whole, and meantime offer the readers of this column the remarks of an unnamed London reviewer in the Sunday Times.

Failure of League of Nations

“The interest of these speeches lies to a great extent in the story they tell of the failure of the League of Nations to effect change by negotiation when it. had neither the will nor the means to insist on this method. As long as Italy co-operated with the League, the power of Geneva was conclusive in Europe. But once Italy broke with Geneva to satisfy by force her own aspirations, Geneva lacked power sufficiently overwhelming to implement its principles, and it was in this difficult period that Mr Eden, himself

a staunch advocate of the League, became Foreign Secretary. To re-read his speeches after the occupation of the Rhineland, when British public opinion believed that Germany was entitled to fortify her own territory even if the method she chose was reprehensible, is to see what a gallant struggle he put up to lead Germany back to the path of negotiation. If that effort failed it was because once force had been allowed to attain its ends, it was hardly likely that talking would make Germany abandon so successful a method.

What Drove Him to Resign

“By the time the Spanish war broke out in the summer of 1936, the machinery of Geneva was already being conveniently forgotten. But the .shadow of the League’s failure could not be avoided. The whole basis of international negotiation was destroyed once the spate of pledge-breaking had begun, and it was realisation of this that finally drove Mr Eden to resign rather unfortunately on a point of procedure when the fundamental issue was the wisdom of negotiating at all with nations who continued to violate existing obligations. “In his introduction Mr Eden remarks that the aim of successive Foreign Secretaries has been to promote international understanding. In his cwn case these speeches fully bear out that claim. But why omit the important speech of January 19, 1937, to which Herr Hitler replied in the Reichstag?”

* * * More Lawrence

At the end of . May, Williams and Norgate published Oriental Assembly, by T. E. Lawrence. In addition to a diary of his journey across the Euphrates, there is in this book, the suppressed introductory chapter to the “Seven Pillars of 'Wisdom.” The book is edited by Tils mother, Mrs A. W. Lawrence, who supplies interpretative notes. There are numerous illustrations, upwards of one hundred reproduced photos by T. E. Lawrence during the Aral) revert, with which his name is indelibly associated. - j*g¥B?SBSP