NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4289, 23 February 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS

■Every Living Creature,” by Ralph Waldo Trine. Loudon : George

Bell and Sons. Price, Is net, cloth

Following upon a sides of booklets one of which, “Iu tune with tho Infinite,” has had a wide- vogue and_ run into its 16th thousand, Ralph Waldo Trine, an American writer, has presented tho feminine world and Hie juvenile world with a brochure bearing the above title. Insidious and attractive iu stylo, it is nevertheless in the main a bold attack upon some of those habits and atfe.obious which for centuries have been sH»etued, 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 iu the breasts of young children it attacks tho essentially British pastime of hunting—“tho thoughtlessness, the selfishness, tile heartlessnoss, tho cruelty of hunting for sport.” Vivisection, docking, overcrowding of transport cattle, the use of furs and feathers in dress, the eating of flesh 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 ail wars; all those things meet with condemnation from Mr Trine. He contends, with details iu proof, that the cruellest nations are also the most criminal. In attacking tho military system of the various world-powers ho says: “Iu passing through Germany not long since, I was particularly Impressed with seeing in -fields hero and there la.rgo companies of soldiers drilling and manoeuvring, while iu the fields on all sides of tuein 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 whore _ tho military system has grown to such enormous proportions.” One rises from a, perusal of Mr Trine’s little booklet with a. bewildering souse of the far-awayness of the millenium; 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. Baden-Povvell (with nineteen illustrations by the author). London; William Heinemann. Cloth, 3s Gd.

Tho antithesis of “Ei'ery Living Creature,”'is “Sport iu War,” from the pen of Major-General Badon-Powcll, “the hero of Mafokiug.” Major-General dader.-Powoll is not a literary genius, but his short stories of hunting and lion shooting in Africa, boar-spearing aml snipe-shooting in India, are nevertheless spiritedly, told, racy, and cxbilarto the lover of literature and breathe the spirit of daring adventure and 1 . the skilled use of arms. Piero is Badon-Powell’s description of a pig-hunt; In pig-sticking every man rides to hunt, whereas In fox-hunting the majority (although for some occult reason they will seldom 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 bo tho first to come up with tho pig, and so to gain the honours of the run; and while keeping one eye on the object iu view, he has to keep the other on the doings of his rivals, so far as the elation of a glorious gallop will allow him. When the “first spear” lias been won, the dodging, and turning, and quick rallies required for fighting the boar 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 esetasy of a fight to tho death. Ana then:

“All’s blood, and dust, and grunted curses.”