AIRMAN IN SPAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23707, 14 January 1939, Page 4

AIRMAN IN SPAIN

THE MODERN SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

“ Cardboard Crucifix.” By Oloff de Wet. London: Blackwood. 13s 6d.

The experiences of Oloff de Wet in Spain read more like fiction than fact. First as a pilot in the Republican forces and later as an agent, conspirator, fugitive and prisoner in Valencia, he encounters more adventures than most people meet with in a lifetime. The author might well be described as a modern soldier of fortune. With little sympathy for the Republican cause, he joins its lackadaisical Air Force on a sound commercial basis. His attitude is aptly put in his description of a conversation with some French airmen. “ Naturally, like myself,” he says, “ they were Rightists. Instinct and common sense made us such. Adventure was quite another thing. , . For members of the cosmopolitan Loyalist Air Force, discipline simply does not exist. When it pleases him, de Wet absents himself for a fortnight, and on his return to the flying field no questions are asked. Such a state of affairs is typical of the whole war as he sees it. The Spaniards accept the many needless set-backs and disasters as fate. They merely shrug their shoulders—it is “manana.” The rare occasions on which they do attempt to reorganise are marked by wholesale executions —sufficiently numerous at any time for vans to go the rounds each morning to gather the corpses littering the streets of the various towns and encampments. Mr de Wet’s writing is extraordinarily vivid, and he possesses a real flair for introducing similes and metaphors as apt as they are unusual There are many incidents that linger long in the memory and none more so than one dreadful night in Valencia when, having assisted in the escape of some refugees, Mr de Wet sees them mowed down by machine gun fire as they drift down the river to the sea and the safety of an Italian cruiser outside the harbour. Betrayed by the “ agent provocateur ” who organised the escape, he becomes a fugitive, and his flight from the summary justice of the firing squad and his subsequent arrest and release bring the story to a climax that transcends even the vivid passages describing his life in the Air Force. Italian and German aircraft swarm over rebel and Republican territory. In the air it is no civil war, but invasion. Blunt-fingered Russian pilots—” flesh-clad robots of the U.5.5.R.,” as de Wet describes them—help to swell the slender lines of the Lovalists’ air force, but they are overwhelmingly outnumbered When he is tired of flying, de Wet returns to Spam to sell aircraft, but. left stranded in Valencia by his principals in Paris, he drifts into the role of a conspirator with its subsequent complications His character sketches are as vivid as any other aspect of the book, and to them he applies the same gift of simile invention. He sums up his opinion of the Spaniards and their war in two paragraphs:

Spain is an extraordinary place. Fate-bound. Her people wander carelessly along the road of destiny. Theirs is a happy life —thought-free —the morrow of which they talk so much does not exist for them. They reap the harvest of their own procrastination unconsciously. Unhappy memories rest upon them lightly. They know none of the littlenesses of life. And that, that is the Spaniard I like to remember. Such a Spaniard I see grinning close beside me. never stopping to consider what might have happened. As I build a calamity he tears it down. It did not happen; that is all that matters to him—to any of us. Next time? Manana . ! D. S. F. Autograph Letters The Hylands Library in Manchester is world-famed, but comparatively few are aware of the rich resources of the city’s new Central Library, opened by King George Vin 1934, A fine display of treasures of the library is now on view. One of the cases snows a collection of autograph letters received in answer to an invitation to attend the inauguration of the Manchester Public Library on September 2, 1852. The series includes the replies of Harrison Ainsworth. Dickens, Thackeray, Mrs Gaskell, John Bright, Sir Rowland Hill, and the Earl of Shaftesbury. The reverse side of the same case is occupied by the Stanley Withers collection of autograph letters. These holographs range from Charles Darwin and Louis Pasteur to the Duke of Wellington and Mr Gladstone. Of special interest are the letters of the literary men—Dumas (pere) Browning, Meredith, Hardy, and Pelham. In a brief note, Swinburne says: “ I never gave a lecture in my life, and would not do so on any terms. It is entirely out of my line.” There is a characteristic letter in which R. L. Stevenson, refusing to lecture, refers to his health as “ unfortunately but a crazy business.” James Albery “The Dramatic Works of James Albery,” edited by Wyndham Albery. is coming from Peter Davies, who state that no student of the drama for the decade commencing in 1870 should be without this work. It contains the text of 14 original plays, four adaptations, and one libretto, of which only two plays and the libretto have been previously published in England.

"All in a Maze ”

Collins are publishing "All in a Maze,” an anthology by Rose Macaulay and Daniel George, both expert anthologists. The title is from the lines “Now that the world is all in a maze Armies marching, towns in a blaze. What should an honest fellow do?" Here they have garnered the thoughts of all sorts and conditions of men and women of all times and many lands on the subject of peace and war