A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21763, 31 March 1934, Page 8 (Supplement)

A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY

POLITICS AND WAR A novel that can safely bo described as absorbingly interesting of itself and also of great historical value is " The ll'idge of White Waters," by Norman Griles. The scene is South Africa in the days of Paul Krnger. The story opens just when rumours of gold on the Witwatersrand were beginning to attract attention. It deals intimately with the life of a number of Dutch families who were living on the edge of the gold-bearing country. The rise of the city of .Johannesburg brought them out of poverty and struggle to business fortune, the war that followed made their men soldiers and brought them all, men, women and children, into close association with the war and with the politics of that part of South Africa which was dominated bv Krnger. .Most members of the families who are the central figures of tiie story were pure Dutch, but one had married an English wife and he and others were influenced by Africanders who had little or no belief in Krugcr or his policy, and who sympathised with the grievances of the ai.tlanders. In this way the author makes up a little community which was probably typical of the Transvaal of the time. He brings them all in their various ways into intimate contact with the war and makes his story essentially human, while it traces the main facts of the war and its influence or; the Boers and on the future of South Africa. On, its historiual side the story is told judicially and with restraint; on its fiction side it is a 11 jvel of outstanding merit and interest, " Tlte Kidge of White Waters," by .Normun Giles. (Collins.)