LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19067, 12 January 1924, Page 4

LITERATURE.

THE PEACE-PRIZE EDITOR 4 ALL ABOUT ELWABD BOK. By Constant Rhadkb. Last year Mr Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal from 1889 to 1919, treated an American Peace Award of 100,000 dollars for the best practical plan by which the United States may co-operate with other nations to achieve and preserve the peace of the world. The award of this prize, followed by the publication of tiie winning plan, has been the occasion of acrimonious debate in the Senate. It remains to be seen what will be the outcome of the national referendum to which, jn the terms of the award, the plan is to be subjected. The entire scheme marks the 'culminating point in the remarkable career of one of the most extraordinary men ever admitted to American citizenship—one who challenges comparison in many respects with Henry Ford. Indeed, Edward Bok and Henry Ford may bo considered as typical Of modern America, since they illustrate in their own persons the amazing degree to which powerful personalities can dominate and influence a great nation. Either man, also, typifies the two streams which, conjoining, constitute the American nation. Henry Ford is American-born, he hailing from a Michigan farm. Edward Bok was bom in Holland and landed in America with his father and mother and family when he'was seven years of age on September 20, 1870. On September 20, 1920, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of his arrival in the United States, Edward Bok published his autobiography, under the title of “The Americanisation of Edward Bok,” _ a book which created a veritable sensation and spread the name and fame of the editor of tfcw Ladies’ Home Journal far and wide. In common with his many other enterprises Mr Bok planned this autobiography on an original plan. Not only did he write it in the third person, but ho detached Edward Bok, the author of the book, from Edward Bok, editor and publicist, of whom he wrote. In the course of “An Explanation,” Mr Bok says:— This method came to me very naturally in dealing with the Edward Bok, editor and publicist, whom I* have tried to describe in this book, because in many respects he has had and has been a per- . sonality apart from my private self. I have again and again found myself watching with intense amusement and interest the Edward Bok of this book at work. I have, in turn, applauded him and criticised him, as I do in this book. Not that I ever considered myself bigger or broader than this Edward Bok; simply that he was different. His tastes, his outlook, his manner of looking at things were totally at variance with my own. In fact, my chief difficulty.»during Edward Bok’s directorship of the Ladies’ Homo - Journal was to abstain from breakmg through the editor and revealing my real self. Several times I did so, and each time I saw how different was the effect from that when the editorial Edward Bok had been allowed sway. Little by little X learned to subordinate myself and to let him have full rein. But no relief of my life was so great to me personally as has decision to retire from his editorship. My family and friends were surprised and amused by mv intense and obvious relief when he did so. Only to those closest to me could I explain the reason for the sense of absolute freedom and gratitude that I felt. Since that time my feelings have been an interesting study to myself. There : ; are no longer two personalities. The Ed- ‘ ward Bok of whom I have written has , passed out of my being as completely as if he had never been there, save for the records and files on my library shelves. It is easy, therefore, for me to write of him as a personality apart; in fact, I could not depict him from any other point of view. To write of him in the first person, as if he were myself, is' impossible, for he is not :■ Partly because of the originality of this conception, but largely of the nature of the subject treated, “The Americanisation of Edward Bok,” when first published three years ago, quickly took its place as one of the most entrancing and inspiring biographies in the English language. It might more properly be described as “The Evolution of an Editor, since it told in detail the dramatic fashion by which the little Dutch boy, landing-in America without any advantages, educated himself until he was qualified to address the largest number of American readers ever reached through the pages of a. single periodical. From his first job of cleaning the window of a bakery at fifty cents a •week, Edward Bok steadily progressed, establishing himself gradually in the regard of the highest in the land, winning his way into exclusive literary circles, the while displaying such business acumen and a gift of anticipating popular desires and demands, and risking all in the interest*! of what he believed to be right and m the best interests of the community as finally to establish himself securely in the editorial chair of one of the most widely circulated and influential journals in all the world. It is characteristic of its author that, the book having gone through twenty-one editions in less than two years, a twenty-fifth edition should he planned to_ mark its majority, issued at the low once of one dollar. One of the off-shoots of this majority issue is a special Australasian edition, sold at ss. the which will add greatly to the popularisation of the book. , , At the end of his personal narrative, the author asks two questions, “To what extent. with bis unusual opportunities of fifty years, has the Americanisation of Edward Bok gone? How far is he, to-day. an American?” The answer is contained in two final chapters headed _ resnectivelv “Where America fell short with me” and “What I Owe to America.” the following etxracts from which shed a flood of light •upon the character of the American people: When I came to the United States as a lad of six, the most needful lesson for me, as a boy, was the necessity of thrift. . . . Wa had been in the United States only a few days before the realisation came home strongly to my father and mother that they had brought their children to a land of waste. Where the Dutchman saved, the American wasted. There was waste and the most prodigal waste on every hand. There was literally nothing in American life to teach me thrift or economy; everything to teach me to spend and to waste. ‘ . . Is it any wonder, then, that in this, one of the essentials in life and in all success, America fell short with me, as it is continuing to fall short with every foreign-horn who comes to its shores? As a Dutch boy, one of the cardinal truths taught me was that whatever was worth doing was worth doing well; that next to honesty came thoroughness as a factor in success. It was not enough that ' anything should be done; it was not clone at all if it was not done well. I came to America to be taught exactly the opposite. The two infernal Ameri■■’canisms" “That’s good enough” and “That will do,” were early taught me, together with the maxim of quantity rather than : quality. During my years of editorship, save on one or two ■ conspicuous instances, I was never able to assign to an American writer work which •all’'! for painstaking research. In every instance the woik ' came back to me either incorrect jn statement or otherwise lacking in careful pre- : paration. jln the matter _of education America foil far short in what should be the .strongest of all her institutions: the pub- - lie school. A more inadequate, incom--petent method of teaching, as I look back over my seven years of attendance at three different public schools, it is difficult to conceive. . . . Whatever shortcomings I may have found during my fifty-year period of Americanisation; however America may 'bare failed to help my transition from a foreigner into an American. I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can offer, and that is opportunity. As the world stands to-day. no nation offers opportunity in the degree that America does to the foreign-bom. . . . What is not generally understood of the American pconic is their -wonderful idealism. . . . "While between nations as between individuals, comparisons are valueless, it may not be amiss to sav. ■from personal knowledge, that the Dutch /worship the gulden infinitely more than do the Americans the dollar.

Mr Bok concludes by saying: “I ask no greater privilege than to be allowed to see my potential America become actual; the America that I like to think of as the America cf Abraham Lincoln and of Theodore Roosevelt —not faultless, but less faulty. It is a part in trying to shape that America when it comes that I ask in return for what I owe to her. A greater privilege no man could have.” RAPID REVIEWS. More New Novels, It is thirty years since Mr E. F. Benson made a sensational hit with his first novel, “ Dodo,” and he reached high-water mark 13 years later with “The Angel of Pain.” Since which time he has gone on steadily writing, with a measure of success. The latest fruit from his pen is a volume of short■ stories, the title of which, “Visible and Invisible ” (Hutchinson), indicates their purport. Tire scene of the stories is laid in the threshold of that forbidden land which Marion Crawford in his “Uncanny Tales” and Mr A’gernon Blackwood in “Doctor Silence ” av. many other books have clone so much to exploit. It says much for Mr Benson’s practised hand that he has written stories which possess a genuine thrill and the best of which almost parry conviction There is a blending of scientific truth with the horrible and incomprehensible which goes far to assure the success of this collection. Sir James Horton, a recluse and mysterious physicist, who was credited with having made “an artificial being formed of the tissue, still living, of animals lately killed, with the hair of an .ape and the head of a bullock, and a sheep’s thyroid and so forth,” is the dominating personage in the opening story, “ And the Dead Spake .” Horton had been experimenting with brain tissue, and in several instances by applying the needle of the gramophone to the speech centre of the brains of persona recently deceased he had actually performed the miracle of causing the dead to speak. Horton’s housekeeper, whose husband had, supposedly, committed suicide while shaving himself, died suddenly, and the physicist by immediately connecting the gramophone with the brain succeeded in getting her, while dead, to admit Paving murdered her husband. Still more grim and grisly is the story “ Negotiurq, Perambulans,” founded on the verse in the ninetyfirst Psalm, which in the original Latin reads, “Negotium perambulans in tenebris.” In Polcarn, a village in Cornwall, at the gate of the churchyard “ there stood the figure of a robed priest holding up a Cross with which he faced 1 a terrible creature like a gigantic slug that reared itself up in front of him.” And in the village were told legends of something “ more deadly to the soul than any pestilence that can only kill the body; it was the Thing, the Creature, the Business that trafficked in the outer Darkness, a minister of God’s wrath on the unrighteous.” The other stories are in a. similar - strain and on a parallel plane and “ Visible and Invisible ” must take its place with Mr Benson’s previous volume, “ Tire Boom in the Tower,” for flesh-creep-ing, hair-raising qualities. In “ Old Roses ” (Hurst and Blackett) Mr Oliver Sardys has manufactured melodrama of the traditional sort and of the approved pattern. The heroine, Gaynor Brand, made her debut in a previous story by the same author, “ The Pleasure Garden,” and in “Old Roses” she continues her predestined course. Gaynor, who by this time had adopted the stage as a profession, believing her first husband to be dead, marries again. Owing to the treachery of a girlfriend she separates from her ~ second husband, only to be faced with the reappearance of husband number one, come back to life. Meanwhile she supports herself by writing a wonderful novel, the bare outline of which, has so impressed the editor of a widely circulated periodical that he offers to keep her in funds until the story is Gaynor takes pity on a woman who is a victim of the drpg habit and who in gratitude reveals herself as the real wife_ of Gaynor’s first husband. Of course wife and second husband are reconciled and all ends happily. It is safe to assume that Mr Sandys has written with his eye to the possibilities of the film. Mrs Jamesqp, who writes under the pseudonym of “J. E. Buckrose,” knows how to tell a capital story, and “ Susan in Charge ” (Herbert Jenkins) is one of her happiest efforts. Susan Elliot is a girl from Girton with red hair, velvety brown eyes, and a beautiful complexion, who undertakes the charge of three children during their parents’ absence. Once in thip Yorksnir© home, S'ufiun speedily hss several grown-up people on her nands. Susan gets a fright when a shell-shocked returned soldier, supposed to have been killed at the front, steals into the library at night to borrow a book, and is denounced by Susan as a thief. He has come home to see his wife, but finds himself almost an Enoch Arden, since she is on the point of marrying Jim Creighton, bettor known as Jim th e Smuggler. Susan has her hands full with these and others, notably Bill, the brother of Jim, and. there is a suspicion of cocaine smuggling, all against a village background. It is a cheerful, simple story, vivaciously told, and quite up to the standard of the author’s other work.

When more than 20 years ago Mrs Mordant wrote “The Garden of Contentment” she excited expectations’ which have never been absolutely fulfilled. In Her subsequent stones there has always been a lack of just that quality which lifts a novel out of the ruck. So it is with “Reputation” (Hutchinson), the latest book from her pen. The theme is a strong one, an attempt to show that as in 3848, so in 1880 and again in 1922, society is much the same, the standard of morality unaltered, .and renutations just as readily lost. This is illustrated in the lives of three Claudias who adventure forth respectively in Mid-Victorian, Edwardian, and Georgian periods. Claudia Waring, born and bred a member of a large, conventional, and clerical family, loses her reputation by eloping at 18 with a fool of an elderly squire, from whom she escapes unsmirched after five days’ absence. No one, however, will believe the story, and Claudia goes to 'London, where she lives brilliantly, devoid of emotion, but intensely alive intellectually. Her niece, Claudia the second) is in danger of a similar shipwreck but she saves herself just in time. And Claudia the third, living in 1922, laments the dullness of the life of her great-aunt. By the author’s admission, “Sally’s Sweetheart” (Hutchinson) is a long overdue story. It should, says Mr George 15. Burgin in a foreword, have been written 20 years ago “in the natural sequence of Four Corners’ stories.” This, of course, definitely places the scene in Canada, and it is a story of the misunderstandings of lovers and the romance of Canadian forests, with a background of Indians in their reservations, and of half-breeds. T young men characters are not very interesting, but Mr Burgon makes great play with a mule called “Miss Wilks,” who drinks whisky and smokes tobacco, to say nothing of an Indian dog. The book is mildly exciting, with a tinge of humour and a splash of sentiment, and it is. considering the materials, well told. Miss Norma Lorimer returns to her old love in “The Shadow of Egypt” (Hutchinson). Mr and Mrs Harold Westcott leave England for Egypt because of the illhealth of Mrs Westcott. But while the wife thrives in the Egyptian climate, the husband, obsessed -with his British ideas, is out of sympathy with his now environment. A Syrian General, of physical charm and intellectual power, is attracted by Mrs Westcott. and imbues her with reasons for British unpopularity in Egypt. There are incidents of treasure stolen from _ the Phhraohs, illicit love-making by moonlight beneath the shadow of the Pyramids, and all the trappings and allurements which Miss Lorimer knows so well how to handle The action of the story is complicated by exhibitions of Moslem fanaticism and antiBritish riots, and all to a background of modern Egyptian life. A Fascist agitation of Mohri blackshirts, beaded by the Syrian General, is also dragged in. The book is melodramatic love-making to the tune of racial and religious strife, and makes quite pood reading. As a picture of Egypt today. however, Miss Lorirner’s story must be accepted with a grain of salt. “Ft, House of Dreams” (Hutchinson), by CuriL Vorke (Mrs S. Richmond Lee), is a pretty I we story of the type to which readers of this author’s books have grown accustomed. Desiring to inherit the property of his uncle, Sir Derek Haynes marries Margaret Ferrers, in the belief that she is his cousin Margaret Farrell. When the real Margaret Farrell appears, he declares that ho is not legally married to his wife, since she signed the register with a false name. After a period of cross-purposes and bickering, Derek, who is actually as much in love with his wife as she with him—although both are too proud to confess the fact—remarries her to make everything doubly sore. This is the fiftieth novel

turned out by Curtis Yorko, and the story is told with a facility born of much practice. In “The Garden of Delight” /Herbert Jenkins) Mr W. Riley, a novelist who has selected the West Riding of Yorkshire as his special preserve, tells yet another of his pleasant stories. The woman, who tells the story, revisits her native village of Upper Wharfdale after a lapse of 25 years, and comes back to her first home, the Garden of Delight. In South Africa she has left the graves of mother, husband, and two boys, and the story is in part reminiscent of those bereavements. The book is livened by the presence of “The Imp,” a laughter-loving lad, full of romance. The charm of the story lies in its faithful depiction of the Yorkshire wolds and dales and the clever characterisation of the Yorkshire folk. “Tire Garden of Delight” will make a wide appeal. The title “Who Killed Lord Henry Rollestone?” (Herbert Jenkins), by John Daye, is sufficient indication of the contents of this novel. Lord Henry was found in his London flat shot through the head, and, a? he was a member of the fastest set in London, no one mourned his death, but for the sake of the story it is essential that the murderer be found. There are three detectives in the case—one from Scotland Yard, a private detective employed by the murdered man’s brother, and an Irish doctor, who assumes the part of an amateur detective. These three behave as no detectives ever do outside the pages of a novel, and expound their particular theories one to another in a way that wearies the reader. The title is more arresting than the story itself.

“George A. Birmingham,” as the Rev. James Owen Hannay still elects to be styled, has made Ireland and the Irish such an essential part of his stories that it is with something of a shock to find the scene of his new novel “King Tommy” (Hodder and Stoughton) laid in the fictitious Balkan State of Lystria, with scenes in London and Berlin. The story is pure extravaganza and would make libretto for a capital musical comedy. After the war the dethroned King of Lystria goes to Berlin and becomes head waiter at a night-club. The British Minister for Balkan in co-operation with a Jewish financier, plans to marry his nephew, Lord Norheys, to the Princess Calypso, the head waiter’s daughter, and place the pair on the Lystrian throne. Owing to an affair with an English dancer Lord Norheys fails to put in an appearance and in the nick of time there appears on the scene the Rev. Tommy Norrcys, an English curate, who, having bought up a large number of German marks, decides to have a high time in Berlin while the going is good. The similarity in name causes confusion, and instead of Lord Norheys the Rev “Tommy” Norreys is secretly taken to Lystria, where, under cover of a Royalist revolution, he marries the Princess and is crowned “King Tommy.” It is very delightful fooling, conceived and carried out with great verve and much genuine humour. In “Tlie Heir of the Malik” (Herbert Jenkins) Mr Michael John transports the reader to the little-known land of Afghanistan and gives a good idea of Afghan customs and Afghan scenery as the background of an interesting story. The hero of the book, Philip Carr, is a man to whom adventure is as the breath of life. After the war India seems quiet and tame, so he takes to the hills and marries the granddaughter of a. local chief, in whose veins is a strain of English blood and who is a handful in herself. In this far-off land the Turk has gained a foothold, and grasping capitalists are out to exploit the vast mineral treasures. There are blood feuds and massacres and exciting adventures, and the book is valuable because of the faithful reflection it conveys of the dangers and difficulties of Indian frontier life.

The question of capital punishment has engaged many pens, and in “Where I Made One” (Hutchinson) Miss Maude Annerlcy courageously and with considerable insight attacks the problem. The story is definitely propagandist. The author not only advocates the abolition of capital punishment, but uses as one of her main arguments the reality and the nearness of the spirit world. Necessarily, the action of the story is hampered by the inclusion of lengthy arguments in support of hor main theme and its relevance is weakened by the instances, at times verging on absurdity, of spirit manifestations. James Porter, In a fit of temper, has stabbed a man. His son, Matthew, believing that his father’s association with a Mrs Hayden was responsible for his crime and execution, kills the woman. Thereupon Martin Hayden and those associated with him endeavour to save Matthew Porter from the penalty of murder. In their endeavour they are aided by the appearance from the spirit world of the murdered woman who actually is seen by judge and jury. The description of the murder trial at the Old Bailey makes one of the best chapters in the book. Readers in sympathy with the author’s argument will find this a well-told tale The coloured jacket advertises loudly the fact that “Battling Barker,” by Soutar (Hutchinson), is a story of the prime ring, and if the author is to be_ believed the prize ring in modern times is a sink of iniquity. Reuben Braddock, the premier fight promoter in England, is worth a quarter of a million, all made out of crooked lights and turf trickery. He has demoralised Yellowstone, the north country town where he lives, by infecting all the people with the gambling mania. In Yellowstone lives a fighting parson. Benton, by name, pledged to clear up Yellowstone, the turf, and the prize ring, and to be the downfall of Braddock. The padre summons to his aid Gerald Barker, popularly known as Jerry, and with the aid of Jason, a noted pugilist, Jerry is trained to be champion of England. Ihey are financed by Murray Castle, a retired sheep farmer from Australia, with whose daughter Lorna Jerry falls in love. Upon this slight plot are hung descriptions of a number of great fights. Padre and Jerry both fight as “masked men,” thereby creating all kinds of speculation as to their identity. Eventually Jerry wins the heavy-weight ehampionship and Lorna’s hand, and Braddock has his deserts. Devotees of the prize ring will find much to interest them in this book. ‘Tales of the Ivory Trade, by T. Alexander Barnes (Mills and Boon), contains ten capitally told elephant stories of quite unusual quality. The book is the outcome of ten years spent in the far African interior, and the author, after watching a ship load a cargo of ivory at the ■' Corljjo port of Matahi, says: “The steam winches screech ! Dp the tusks go in the slings—down they go into the hold! The black men move forward with others, and the loading goes on apace. Each pair of tusks a life—each with a history! “Each pair of tusks has a history,” I thought. “Could the bones of the dead but speak, what strange absorbing tales would they unfold 1” Such was the tram of thoughts which gave birth to this book. Having known my friends the elephant folk intimately, and in all their moods, for more than twenty years, and having come in contact with every type of ivory trader and elephant hunter—European, Asiatic, and African —I have embodied in it, in the form of fiction, some of my experiences and knowledge of the ivory trade.