LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3292, 18 April 1917, Page 53

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. "Sea Warfare." By Rudyard - Kipling. London: Macmillan and Co. ("The Dominions Edition"; cloth, 3s 6d.) This is a . delightful book, written throughout in Mr Kipling's best and most characteristic style. Although some parts of it have from time to time appeared in our newspapers, those did not do it justice. It requires to be read as a whole.

The navy is very old and very wise. Much of her wisdom is on record and available for reference; but- more of it works in the blood of those who serve her. She has a thousand years of experience and can find precedent or parallel for any situation that the force of the weather or the malice of the King's enemies may bring about! The main principles of sea warfare hold good throughout all a.ge3, and, so far as the navy has- been allowed to put forth her strength, these principles have been applied over all the seas' of the world.

Such is the introduction, and such is tlie keynote of the book. The words "so far as tne navy has been allowed to put forth her strength" are put in italics, and emphasise the fact that the author insists upon throughout that the quietness" of tne navy exists only in seeming; that she is as a bloodhound on leash, whose performances are not for public discussion, but may be absolutely relied on. Even in reference to the recent suffering of merchantmen, Mr Kipling shows conclusively how much less these are at the presenttime than they were in former Erench wars, when privateering formed almost their sole defence; now they are protected by more than 2000 vessels of ail kinds, manned by 50,000 odd men, " from retired admirals to the sons of sea-cooks." And fearful and wonderful are the things which this trawler or auxiliary fleet performs, although " its doings are merely recorded by flags stuck into charts, and its casualties buried in obscure corners of the newspapers." Then follows a description of the chase of the submarine " with a price on her head," which the trawler fleet " hunts and traps with zeal and joy, whilst the navy-as-we-know-it is busy elsewhere." "And then," he adds, " these German submarines, thus hunted and trapped, perish in ways so curious and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea that the ghosts of the women they drowned pilot them to destruction. But what form shadows take—whether of ' Lusitania ladies' or humbler stewardesses and hospital nurses, —and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know." The main fact is that the work is being done, arid very thoroughly done. Just as Mr Kipling discourses of the trawler fleet, relating many thrilling incidents and making the reader's heart glow with hero-worship for the often nameless heroes whose record lives not yet in song and story, so he tells of the submarine service, technicaly called " The Trade," though no man knows how or why that name originated. "It is a close corporation. It recruits its men and officers from every cass that uses the sea and engines, as well as from many classes that never expected to deal with either. It takes them. They disappear for "a while, and return changed to their very souls, for ' The Trade ' lives in a world without precedents, of which no generation has had any previous experience—a world still being made and enlarged daily." What the submarine can do, is doing, and has done is told to us in a series of stories with name and date attached, often in the very words of the commanders. And these tales are so impersonal that it often seems as if the boat herself spoke ; and this is as it should be, for surely each one of these boats has "found herself" and her mission as truly as her officers and crew have found themselves and accepted their mission. There, in all the haste and fury of these multiplied actions, when life, death, and destruction are on every side, " not one life of any non-combatant has been wittingly taken." The non-combatant?, civilians, and neutrals have been " carefully picked up or picked out, taken below, transferred to boats, and despatched or personally conducted, in the intervals of business, to the safe, unexplored beach. . . . But the boats with a hundred things on their minds no more take credit for their humanity than their commanders explain the feats for which they have won their respective decorations." Of the Grand Fleet itself our author speaks in " Destroyers at Jutland." He gives a powerful, most thrilling, and detailed account of the great fight which will live as long as history lives, for the delectation of our children and grand-children. Every one of tho many chapters in "Sea Warfare" is preceded or closed with one of' the author's characteristic poems in varied metre, taking many liberties of word-construction, but always breathing the same high note of patriotism which marks his prose. Of these we give one example: Not in the thick of the fight. Not in the press of the odds. Do the heroes come to their height. Or we know the demi-gods. That stands over till peace; We can only perceive Men returned from the seas, Very grateful for leave. They grant us sudden daye Snatched ' from their business of waj : We are too close to appraise What manner of men they are. And whether their names go down With age-kept victories, Or whether they battle and drown Unreckoned, is hid from our eyes. They are too near to bo great; But our children will understand When and how our fate Was changed, and by whose hando

Our children shall measure thoir worth— We are content to be blind; For \vc know that wo walk on a new-born * earth ' With ihe aaviours of mankind. "A Man's Work." By Silas Hocking. London : Ward, Lock, and Co. (Cloth,-illustrated, 3s 6d.) Mr Silas Hocking's new book is a laboured disquisition on tho well-worn theme of a man's duty to himself, his raco, and his generation by engaging in some work of an uplifting and humanitarian tendency, instead of frittering away his life in sport, folly, extravagance, and worse. He thinks that good women should refuse to marry such worthless men and cites as examples his heroine. Adela Bardell, and her bosom friend Winifred Willoughby, who, after the usual troubles and misunderstandings, draw exceptional prizes in' the matrimonial lottery. There is no fault to be found with the morality .of this or any other of Mr Sila3 Hocking'3 books; they are admirably suited to a Sunday school library; but they are laboured, didactic, and untrue to life as we know it. Hia characters are in violent contest—very white or very black, —whereas in the world of men and women in which we move the characters are all of differing shades of grey, and the whole of life is a compromise in which, as the poet said, There is so much had in. the best of ua And so much good in the worst of us, That it ill becomes the best of ua To find fault with the rest of us. "Hack's Brat." By A. lan Macleod. London: Hodder and Stoughton. (Cloth, 3s 6d.) The scene of this clever novel is laid in New South Wales—partly in Sydney, and partly in a small "out back" mining township, whither the hero, John MacLure, is sent as assayer by his company to test the output of a new diggings, and judge whether it would repay a large outlay of machinery and men. Mac Lure is a typical Australian of the sterner breed, with no weakness for women or drink, and a great gift of silence. The miners as a rule do not like him, but lie ha* one or two admirers among the better sort, so that when " old man Hack passes in his cheques " the boys think Mf a good joke to hand over his legacy to Mac Lure. This " legacy " Is a wild girlchild of seven or eight years, who has no name, no heritage, no visible parents or relatives. No one knows when, where, or how the old miner picked her up; but she has accompanied him in his wanderings, run . absolutely wild, and beenN taught to swear "as sailormen teach parrots." Hack picks out Mac Lure as the " straightest" man in the township, and charges him to look after the child and see that she comes to no harm. MacLure accepts the charge, and for a whilo does no more than pay for the child's food and suffer her to run about like a little' wild beast. Then suddenly hfc hears her sing to the accompaniment ot an old concertina, and he perceives that she has a golden voice. He now takes "an interest in her, not because of her loneliness and ignorance, but because of her voice, which is greater to him than. any woman. He tries to teach and restrain her, but. finding that impossible, places her in one of the best schools in Svdney, kept by a professional friend of his family, makes' himself responsible for her expenses, and disappears into the wild. Ten years later he returns to find her a splendid woman, grateful for his generosity, but almost as cold, proud, and silent as himself. The story goes on to ■ show how Mac Lure learns to. love the woman rather linn the voice, and how thev both puffer before they reach a final understanding.