CURRENT LITERATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15664, 18 July 1914, Page 4 (Supplement)

CURRENT LITERATURE.

BOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

BY CRITIC. FICTION. THREE striking books are comprised in this week':; reading of interest to those who appreciate purpose in the planning of a novel. All are extremely serious, even tragic; evidencing tho amount of thouglit given by novelists of to-day to the questions which are arising out of the modern complexity of life. "The Stain"—by Forrest Halsey (F. G. Browne and Co., Chicago; Robertson, Melbourne)-* a vivid, i! pMnfal, exposition of the laws of heredity. It is arresting and highly dramatic ; it is written with such preponderant interest of plot that even a reviewer will scarcely pause to note whether or not it fulfils the canons of literary art. Successful in its moving action it undoubtedly is; and, pathetic as the inference is. one lias to acknowledge the extreme rationality of its developments. The story is worth epitomising, though this form states rather badly what the reader should gather in natural and more compelling sequence from the book itself. A young lawyer is slowly rising to notice by his clever defences of poorlypaying clients. His object is to mako justicenot law—triumph ever the network of graft that hows New York in its grip. Judge Harding is popularly estimated free from influencing motives. Really he is the paid representative of an infamous gang. His ambition is a governorship, and he is on the way to secure it when Norris threatens to interfere with his smooth running for it. Harding and others get to work to undermine Norrifi's work. He is offered bribes of various kinds and he turns them down. In his office is a stenographer who is enthusiastic for bis success against tho gang.

She is kleptomaniac under certain conditions of brain worry, and at the climax of his affairs she steals. Her arrest brings out all his love for her. He insist* upon marrying her while she is on bail. Then be deiends her against the partial jury and the absolutely hostile judge, lhe judge knows that the girl is iii- own daugnter by a divorced wife who has already denounced him as a thief. ihe similarity in the hands of the judge and the accused is remarkable, physically suggesting the predisposition to steal. But Harding, the judge, refuses evidence and browbeats Xorris, who is defending bis wife as one subject to too disease of inherited kleptomania. He is about to declare sentence upon the girl when his heart fails and he falls dead. She is subsequently pardoned. Ine heredity question is very skilfully worked in "The Stain," and the novel is dramatic to a fine degree.

"A Free Hand"— Helen C. Roberts (Duckworth, London: Robertson, Melbourne)is a remarkable instance of improvement in the executive side of writing. It is far and away beyond Helen Roberts' last effort. It may be called a study of a temperament, or an analysis <of a conventional-seeming character. It sets the questions as to whether a boy is to have his life and his work mapped out by his parents, and as to whether or not a wife, with dramatic ability and opportunity, is to cling to the domestic and not successful life. Both of these queries the authoress answers in the negative. The boy makes a mighty - struggle against bis environment, and partially succeeds. His "free hand" is not left free, however, because the unlooked-for element of affection for his mother constrains him to continue in the profession of dentistry, one which is quite without appeal to him, long aiter he has discovered bis inability to succeed in it or to like it. Even then he . might have shaken free; but woman again , makes his destiny. His love for Alison Grant insists upon their marriage; marriage precludes the idea of roaming about the less conventional parts of the world, always a tremendous allurement to him. He is therefore kept to his groove, and they both dislike the failure of it. Then comes Alison's temptation, to return to the footlights. She reminds him of her wish for a free hand for them both, a wish opposed to formal marriage,' ,and, being stronger in her selfishness than he, she breaks. Then enters another girl, who also sore freedom in loving Ridley Courage; but as she is about to seek it the claims of her delicate mother and indolent sister are asserted, and she remains at home. It is in keeping with the idea of the selling novel that Alison should eventually ask . for divorce and that Courage should marry Janet. But it is opposed to the .fundamental motive of the story, orthodox as it may be. .There is pathos in the brave endurance by the man of all the conditions imposed upon him by his women, while his real self would otherwise choose so different and, so much more, congenial a life. Under it lies a great truth, of which Helen Roberts has drawn a clever exposition in a very interesting book.

'The People's Man"— by E. Phillips Oppenheim (Methuen, London; Hicks, Invercargill).—Hero is the careful and skilled setting of a problem which i 6 agitating not only England, but the whole world of commerce and industry—that of the claims of labour to share or appropriate the profits accruing to capitalists. Mr. Oppenheim's tentative solution is that the railways and tho coal mines should be State-owned.

His condemnation is that each representative of labour is battling, not for the cause of humanity and the betterment of conditions, but for the immediate and tangible increase of pay, less work, and more pleasure. Tho only benefit that the author sees in this is "that the children of Labour will gain education, and so learn how to adjust things. For tho time, each representative of the worker is merely narrow and bound by the desire of his particular section to gain conces-' sions; the wider issue is quite obscured. 'these factors make it very difficult for Maraton, the notorious labour leader from America, to fight a winning battle for the oppressed, such being his purpose in coming to Britain. Nor can the Labour party tolerate the notion of Maraton's mixing as social equal with rich and cultured people. This to them is a sign of treachery to their cause. But Maraton continues to drink good wine and admiro beautiful women, and yet to work with heart and soul for his ideal. He becomes M.P., strenuously fights, and becomes hopeless of the present entanglement. And when the workers discover that he is really a millionaire they ignore the fact that of his millions lie retains an annua! five thousand pounds for his personal use and devotes the overwhelming balance- to charitable purposes, and demand that he share the five thousand.

Ultimately he discovers that his humanitarian struggle has been used to dupe him and hit? following for a political denouement with Germany which threatens the national existence of England—which is Mr. Oppenheim's way of retreating from a problem far too difficult •to solve. His hero, Maraton, hastens to retrieve the country, smashes the railway and the coal strike on the instant, and restores industry to the position in which ho found it. Then, being free of humanitarian motives as they tie his own hands, he makes love to the Prime Minister's lovely niece, and marries Iter. Though inconclusive, as it necessarily must be in days when the straggle is still keen and vital, "The People's Man" is a bold study, with much sherwd observation of and comment upon existing conditions, and one which will hold the attention from one cover to the other.

NEW ZEALAND BIRDS. A New Work. " Mutton Birds and Other Birds"—by H. Guthrie Smith (hitcombe and Tombs). —Students of nature, and in particular those who find pleasure in the habits of buds, have a real treat provided for them by Mr. Outline Smith in this work. He is delightfully simple: that is his great charm from the literary point''of view. Of his scientific knowledge and his power of patient, untiring observation, even the most casual reader who opens his book will gain fine impression. He is modest enough for the most genuine of students. "'I often think," he remarks, "that birds have been but ill-served by their friends, and are unfortunate in their literature. Much of it is childish, much of it is maudlin. There are the writers whose science is, I sometimes suspect, only a knowledge of Latin names, and who chill their theme with a foreign nomenclature. There are folk, like myself, who can see perhaps, but whose observation is little better, alas, than the observation of the keen-eyed savage; and who lack the special training and wide comparative knowledge which alone can truly inform. Lastly, there arc the great workers in the field of ornithology —men who devote a lifetime to a single branch of the subject—anil to them each student's hat must rise in honour and respect. The intellect is often apt to burn the emotions out, or maybe they do not often co-exist with equal force in the same individual, but it was one who could both think and feel who mourned over the condition of our New Zealand avifauna as one that must grieve to the utmost every ornithologist who cares for more than the stuffed skin of a bird on a shelf,"

The author takes no credit to himself, then, and to all those keen-sighted and loving-hearted men whose pleasure it is to submit to much personal discomfort and inconvenience in order that they, without conscious purpose, may - add to the store of human knowledge and make easy the path of the accurately-trained scientist with letters after his name. No true recorder has ever despised the modest hut unassailably excellent work of men of the stamp of Mr. Guthrie Smith. His inspection was not merely confined to the birds themselves. It included study of the flora of those parts of Stewart and other islands where his thirst for information led him; and it unfolds a sketch of the topography of each habitat of the birds discussed. And his svmpathv has the effect of calling out from his reader all the latent love for wild creatures. Notice the hours and the care of his watching! " About • eight or ■ nine o'clock there were hundreds of thousands, or, as I have computed, millions of birds on the island, the vast majority of them being kuaka. The air was gorged with sound as when bees swarm or lambs bleat in thousands together. Each species was calling its own call, and singing its own song.' The predominant sounds seemed to be "Ku—kia," endlessly repeated, and a long-drawn " Koe—koe—oe—oo— o," with something of a wail in it. I feel sure, however, there was no sadness that night among the petrels. The island was like a fair, the eager arrivals running hither and thither, inspecting, rejecting, visiting, courting, and chanting their subterranean lyrics. "Many of the kuaka burrows were really alive with revelry. All night long the kuaka were streaming in and out of their holes, stealing over the surface like rats, and like rats, too, when alarmed scuttling off in the half-light along. the ragged paths, but never, even when pressed, rising to fly," Mr. Guthrie Smith is very tempting; but his observations, and, in spite of what he says, in the preface, his photographs are so interesting, that he deserves to be thoroughly read by every lover of nature* for whom is enjoyment waiting. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY. ♦ A NEW ZEALAND WORK. Those interested in J lie development of constitutional government in New Zealand have had reason to complain of the inadequacy and scrappiness of sources of information. That complaint no longer obtains, owing to the publication by Whitcombe and Tombs (Christchurch) of " The Constitutional History and Law of New Zealand." The authors are Professor James Hight, of Canterbury College, and Dr. H. D. Bamford, of Auckland. The qualifications of the collaborators for their task will be admitted, and it may fairly be said the work fulfils the expectation theso names raise. The essential characteristics of such an undertaking are accuracy and completeness, and in both respects this work is entirely reliable. Although not running to unnecessary length, the book give.? a complete survey of the origin and growth of the chief institutions of government, from the time the missionary and trader brought the western conception of organised society to the present day. The innumerable but scrappy sources t>f information throughout the Dominion have been searched and incorporated in a complete, orderly history. If there be any who imagine that our free political institutions grew quietly, , without pain and struggle, this history will undeceive them. lhe various phases of constitutional development, many of them at the time hotly contested, are recorded with a fulness and precision that do credit to the industry of the compilers. The British Government's reluctance to colonise New Zealand is explained, the .Wakefield system of colonisation, and the New Zealand Company are fully treated, the circumstances under which the Treaty of Waitangi was signed are described, and the final effort of France to establish herself in this country is noted. The growth of British colonising policy furnishes an interesting passage, and leads up to the proclamation of British sovereignty and the constitution of 1640. Having described the movement ,to constitutional government and the period of the provinces, the authors conclude the first part of their work with a judicial review of the continuous ministries. On the present political situation the authors have just this note:—"Upon the death of Seddon, Sir Joseph Ward succeeded to a secure- command, and for a time bade fair to hold on indefinitely. The legislative springs, however, showed'no signs of renewed activity. Few measures of policy were before the country, and the one great controversial topic—land settlement—was not regarded as a strict party question. The old union between Liberalism and Labour showed signs of dissolution, and Labour was not strong enough to force the pace. Administration thus became once more the chief question of practical politics, and it was upon this issue that the elections were frankly fought in 1908 and 1911. . . . Once more the situation is confused, but unless a strong and active radical party arises —strong in numbers and bent upon large measures of policy— seems likely that administration will before long become again the chief political topic, and that to long as times are buoyant and borrowed money continues to flow in, any Ministry which succeeds in holding office for a session will long retain its place and power." The second part of the book explains existing institutions.