NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 32

NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS

“Every Living Creature,” by Ralph Waldo Trine. London: George Beil and Sons. Price, Is net, cloth. Following upon a series of booklets otie of which. ’“ln -tune with the Infinite,” luss had a wide vogue and run into its 16th thousand, Ralph Waldo Trine, an American writer, has presented the feminine world and the juvenile world with, a brochure bearing the above title. Insidious and attractive in style, it i»s nevertheless in the main a bold attack upon some of those habits and affections which for centuries have been steamed, nay, highly prized as distinctively characteristic of the Britisher and ‘ his descendants wherever found. Commencing with a chapter upon the necessity of inculcating a spirit of kindliness for dumb animals in the breasts or young children it attacks the essentially British pastime of hunting—“the thoughtlessness, the selfishness, the . heartlessness, the cruelty of hunting for sport.” Vivisection, docking, overcrowding of transport cattle, the use •of furs and feathers in dress, the eating of desk as food, and the condemnation - of the “direct connection between ‘pigsticking’ and ‘man-bayoneting’ ’’ which the author finds to be inevitable, besides the horrible cruelty to animals - which characterises all wars; all these things meet, with condemnation from /Mr ' Trine. He contends, with details in proof., that the cruellest nations are also the most criminal. In attacking the military system of the various world-powers he says: “In passing through Germany not long since, I was particularly impressed with seeing in fields here and there large companies of soldiers drilling and manoeuvring, while in the fields on all sides of tnem _ were numbers, chiefly of women and children and horses and oxen, hard at work. It is so to a greater or less degree in the European nations where the military system has grown to such enormous proportions.” One rises from a. perusal of Air Trine's little booklet with a bewildering sense of the far-awayness of t-nc imiieniuin: also with a choking heart-pity for the myriads of snails and aphides which will be boiled alive when man forsakes baked meats and attempts . to subsist on cabbage.

“Sport in War”’ by Major-General R. S. S. B-aden-Powell (with nineteen illustrations by the author). London: William Heinemann. Cloth, 3s' Gd.

The antithesis of “Every Living Creature/’ is “Sport in War,” from the pen of Major-General Baden-Powell, “the hero of Alafeking.” Major-General Baden-Powell is not a literary genius', bat his short stories of hunting and lion shooting in Africa, boar-spearing and snipe-shooting in India, are nevertheless spiritedly told, racy, and exhilarating to the lover of literature and breathe the spirit of daring adventure and the skilled use of arms. Here is Baden-Powell’s description of a pig-hunt : In pig-wstioking every man rides to hunt, whereas in fox-hunting the majority (although for some occult reason they will fleidom own to it) hunt to ride. The first part of a pig-sticking run partakes rather of the nature of a point-to-point race, since each man Is endeavouring to be the first to come up with the pig, ami so to gain the honours of the run ; and while keeping one eye on the object in view, he has to keep the other on the doings of his rivals, so far as the elation of a glorious gallop will allow /hi 'nil When the “first spear” has been /won, the: dodging, -and turning, and ./quick'/rallies required for fighting the hoar have no little resemblance to the galloping melee of the polo-field, till, 'with your worst passions roused as the grizzled old tusker pits himself against you, you meet charge with charge, and, blind to all else but the strong and angered foe before you, with your good spear in your hand, you wish for blood with all the esctasy of a fight to the death.. And then: “All's : blood, and dust, and grunted curses.”