A TRAMP'S ODYSSEY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22824, 7 March 1936, Page 4

A TRAMP'S ODYSSEY

"SNEAK-THIEF ON THE ROAD" " Sneak-Thief on the Road." By Hippo Neville. With portrait. London. Cape. 12b 6d. This is a queer book; indeed an unexpected book. The book of the tramp usually follows a stereotyped course. When he is literate enough to get into print at all he commonly finds his voice with one of those "de profundis " yawps _of which the reading public is now growing a little shy. Not so Mr Neville. Perhaps this is because he didn't have to be a tramp. He just wanted to be. Be that as it may, here is the result of his tramping. He sees the evils of the present English method of dealing with its casual unemployed, and he does not forget to speak for his less vocal companions of the road. But this is no melancholy tramp, afire with a dozen indignations, glaring with one eye at a lop-sided world. The author has a delicious sense of humour. He laughs at his companions, at the casual wards, the food, the women, and also at himself. He is not uproarious. There is a delicate irony in his dissection of the nam,') and the tramp-life. He sees through his fellows with a very clear and understanding eye. Hie observations on lifp are so clear and just that one can efWiy see why the road is the onlv life for him. For instance:— I believe most action stories you read are wish fulfilment stories. I think there is much more cowardice in the world than bravery. I think that is thp best way. Without it we should kill and* kick each other more than we do I think we ought to be cowards. Most of the things we are supposed to hit out, bravely at are much better treated with contempt.

This is a rare sort of wisdom. And there is much of the sort. Mr Neville's disquisition on the reasons why tramps sometimes commit unprovoked assault carries complete conviction. No mean psychologist is here, however little he •iscs the jargon of the schools. Only once does he become a little bitter, as have other men before him, and that is when speaking of the Salvation Army, lis close-handedness in dealing with men in want is the complaint of the tramp. An organisation that claims to be in existence solely to help the underdog has no right to work a man for a week for board and lodging and a few coppers, and then turn him out on the road again, no better off than when he went in. The very real reluctance of any hard-tip man. exhibited in New Zealand as well as in England, to seek the help of the " Sally Army," suggests that there is substance in the connlaint of Mr Neville. There seems from the.se accounts to be little generosity about the assistance given and little attempt constructively to plan a future for the men " helped," except perhaps when they have the good luck to be convicts. The Salvation Army should make some answer to these complaints. They are not irresponsible, nor is this a lone voice.

There is much vigour in the writing of this book, with its curious history, of which the publishers perhaps make overmuch. The English is clear and forceful, with a Joycean freedom of vocabu; lary, and a real ability in the coining of words which is very often absent in the enthusiastic neologist. Liberties are taken, in fact, only occasionally where the author feels that there is no word to meet the case. There is no deliberate distortion or debasement of language and no straining after effect. " Sneak-Thief on the Road " may be less successful here than in England, for the conditions of which it speaks are more or less foreign to us. But the knowledge of human nature and the observations on a social system that the book contains are alone worth reading it for. When these are interwoven with a tale of persona] adventure that, however intrinsically degraded, is so altered by the odd and interesting twist of the author's mind that it becomes something in the nature of a minor odyssey, one has a book that is not to be neglected. P. H. W. N.