THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 3314, 19 September 1917, Page 50

THE WEEK.

There is a game that nearly everybody plays just now to an extent that they never indulged in before. It is called "playing ostrich." Sometimes it is a very silly game to play, sometimes a wise one; and in these times particularly one must indulge in it occasionally if one is to carry on at all. There are different ways of doing it, according zo circumstances, and perhaps the method I have been indulging in lately may appeal to some of you. For the last fortnight or so I have steadily declined to read any of the cables from Russia, and instead have buried my head, not in sand as the ostrich does, but in two or three of the latest novels. The i result is excellent. Of course, even in novels nowadays one cannot get away entirely from the war, but very often they* touch on phases of it which already seem like ancient history, and of little personal concern to us. Such a one is ''The Old' Blood," by Frederick Palmer, the American war correspondent. This is not a very new book as a matter of fact, but I had not read it until quite lately. In this the hero, a young American of the best New England stock, is caught up in the maelstrom of war while visiting some faraway cousins in England and in France: and" there is a very vivid description of the few days during which the tide of the German invasion enveloped the old chateau from which his two girl cousins had refused to move. Later on, as you may guess from the title and the picture

of a young man in khaki on the outside cover, the call of "the old blood" is too strong for him, and he becomes a secondlieutenant in the British army in a very short space of time. As the' story says, ; "they were making second lieutenants ! very rapidly at the War Office in those [days.' 1 The material of the story is very slight: one attractive young man and two girls, who can both claim the same title, though one is pretty and the other, as we are informed over and over again, is plain. From the very beginning we can | see which sister it is to be in the end; but there are complications which make one follow the working out of the story with some interest. ! An entirely different atmosphere is to be found in "Miss Haroun al JRashchid," a prize novel by a new writer, Miss Kerruish, who, judging by her unusual name, may be in some respects a counterpart of the heroine. The scene is laid in Armenia and Mesopotamia, and the story is supposed to be told by Rathia Jerningham, the daughter of Sir Home Jemingham, a famous Assyriologist, and his first wife, a Moslemah of high birth, for she came of the line of the Abbasside Caliphs, who once ruled in "The Land Between

, the Two Rivers." Eathia does credit to Nboth sides of her ancestry, for she is highsouled and high-spirited, and possessed of a quick wit and a fine courage as you will find if you read of her adventures in the highlands of Armenia in the dead of winter, at a time when she and her English step-sister Evelyn were separated from their father. It is quite a relief when they emerge safely from some hairraising scrapes, and come down to the warm sunshine of Mesopotamia and Eathia's own city of Mosul. Even there exciting things happen, especially In connection with the attempt of the Jerningham party to forestall a French exploring expedition in the search for Assyrian remains at a hitherto unworked spot. The book is almost worth reading alone for the piece of vivid descriptive writing in the chapter called "The Carting of the Cherub," which tells how a huge Assyrian sculpture that Eathia had unearthed was carried some two or three miles' over a difficult road to the brink of the Tigris, where it could be shipped away. The weak point of the book is that the "lovering" part is somewhat unconvincing, and I don't think myself that the two who are left holding hands at the end were the least suited to make each other happyj but others may think differently. Then, for those who like her books, there is Ethel M. Dell's new novel, "The Hundreth Chance," which is supposed to be the best that she has yet written. There is an unbeautiful hero, of humble origin but noble soul, with, a determined chin and red-brown eyes, a poor but very proud heroine, with eyes of a deep sapphire blue (one cannot help wondering whether the children's eyes would come out a kind of artistic purple), and the usual cripple brother—to whom she is devoted—as well as a foolish mother. There is also a villain in the person of a wealthy young lord, who is not altogether a desirable acquaintance; and given these factors you can guess from the firsts few pages pretty well all that is going to happen. I read the beginning and the end, and took a dip or two into the middle, and that was all I could manage. A rather unusual story, and a' very short one, -is "The War Wedding," by the Williamson couple. There are no motor cars in it this time. The idea of it is that an Elnglish officer, taken prisoner by the Germans, only recovers his memory after eight months of oblivion, and, for reasons that seem 'right to him. does not contradict the report of his death. By a roundabout method he gets into communication with the girl he had married a. few hours before leaving for

the front, and the letters between these two —she unaware that it is her husband who is writing to. her —play' a nrominent part in the book. It is a simple tale of true love, such as one likes to read in these times, and in the letters there are some very beautiful and comforting, though, not very original, theories put forth as to" the meaning of the war, and the future of those who have "passed over" during it. After the first few chapters we- get away from the Avar zone altogether, and are transported to California, with its sunshine and its flowers, and it is there that the finale takes place.

ELIZABETH.