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LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. The Night Haunts of London. By Sydney A. Moseley. Author of “An Amazing Seance and an Exposure,” “The Truth About the Dardanelles,” “With Kitchener in Cairo,” “The Fleet From Within,” etc. London : Stanley Paul and Co. The title of Mr Moseley’s book prepares one for full revelations of the seamy side of life in our sophisticated modern civilisation. The expectation is correct, but Mr Moseley writes with a pleasing absence of sensationalism and offensive detail. He tells his tale clearly, shewing discrimination and Judgment, and the gravity of his indictment of present social corruption is thereby increased. In his preface he speaks of the urgent need for public enlightenment on the night side of life in great cities and what it signifies. One class, consisting of pharieaical or hypocritical people, he says, decries all exposure of social evil as demoralising sensationalism ; another class, consisting mainly of religious middle-class people—“probably the real backbone of the country”—is in genuine ignorance of these night haunts and of the canker that has slowly eaten into the heart of what is pure and clean in social life. The first class is narrowminded ; the second, simple-minded—a much to be preferred state. The IDst chapter or two treat of the night ci'ubs that have increased so much since the war. Some, says Mr Moseley, are run on lines to which the most conscientious police inspector could scarcely take exception; others are haunts; of vice ; most are neither one nor the other, merely dull affairs 'an for the benefit of people who delude themselves into the belief that to sit on hard benches and play at Bohemanism is to have a high old time. “You may visit many in search of sensation and be merely unutterably bored.” Murray’s, in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly, is one of the best known of West End night clubs. Here you can obtain dinner for 7s 6d, and wine at £2 tho bottle, and a band of four coloured men plays jazz music and guests rise from table and jazz or fox trot round between their courses. Yet withal “she would go to Murray’s to be surprisingly shocked will come away shockingly surprised” : nowadays, at all events, conduct at Murray’s differs little from what may be seen at any West End hotel dance. West liml night clubs are not a whit as bad, gays Mr Moseley, as some ostensibly innocent tea rooms, which flaunt a veiled vice under the very nose of the police. But he gives descriptions of clubs of a more depraving type. At the class of tea rooms he denounces waitresses are obtained by methods calling for the attention of ail societies concerned with the protection of women. Girls engage themselves under the impression that they are to work in a cleanly conducted business, and then find they must wheedle a minimum amount every day from customers or they will be dismissed. A written statement by a young married woman is given describing her experiences in one of these establishments for making money by attracting the depraved and praying on the unwary. She left, disgusted, the first day. Dealing with the White Slave traffic and “Girls

who Disappear,” Mr Moseley strongly deprecates the passivity of the National \ igilanoe Society, and its tendency to dismiss reports of attempts to trap girls as unfounded. “We get those sorts of stories over and over again,” said an official, as if the abundance of similar stories might not testify to the frequency of attempts to. ensnare girls rather than to their nonexistence. He gives statistics showing that m 12 months 152 women and girls disappeared without trace in London alone, while 3642 reported as missing were subsequently traced, nothing being said of the circumstances under which they were found. One section deals with the unfavourable result of the test of war on m omen mainly society ones—who seized on n as an occasion for license and sensationalism, cloaking frivolity and worse under the guise of patriotic activities. Altogether Mr Moseley gives a gloomy view of the results of 'the war on" social morals. And woman is chiefly to blame. In no other age has woman so cheapened her sex. . . . In a comparatively short period, the social and political chains of centuries’ casting have strained and snapped. ’Woman has become emancipated. ( invention lias become a byword to her, womanliness a term of sickly sentiment.” In .discussing cinema stage morals—under which heading he has much of the temptations of the girls engaged on wholly inadequate pay—Mr Moseley contests the frequent statement that the public really desires the puerility and impurity of the commoner performances. He maintains that audiences show more enjoyment when given wholesome sentiment and genuine fun and humour. The question then is, whom does it pay to provide the demoralising type of performance? One inconsistency may be pointed out. Mr Moseley is plainly on the side of morality, and upholds a high standard of virtue and refinement in ~ women. Yet he holds it hypocrisy or self-illusion to look for the abolition of social evils through moral restraints, and calls for “scientific regulation” of irregular intercourse to obviate ciisease (pages 121-2). This standpoint entails one of two alternatives ; either the continuance of a degraded class of women the old wav out of the difficulty—or a general lowering of the standard of womanly virtue. In conclusion, the book deserves the attention of all interested in social problems. TWO OF JOHN LONG’S TWOSHILLING REPRINTS. “The Breath of Suspicion.” William le Queux. “Forest Fugitives.” Theodore Goodridge Roberts. The title of the former book seems rather inept. Briefly, the plot is the discovery by a scientific Frenchman of a method of making pratinum, and the persistent attempts of unscrupulous adventurers to rob him of his invention before he has succeeded in developing it. Of course,, there is a love story intertwined. The inventor, Monsieur Revillat, has a charming daughter. Finally the plotters are baffled, and the inventor, after suffering much, enjoys the proceeds of his invention, while his daughter is happily married to the young man who had assisted him in his labours. The scenes of the second story are laid in America, and the date is nearly a century ago. It is a tale of adventure, peril by sea and by fire, lawlessness, and piracy. The chief characters—George Hill, an Englishman, who gives up the church for the untrammelled life of the West; and Mary, daughter of a man with a long career of piracy to his credit—go through many adventures and trials together, and finally are united, “to live long and sheltered lives in love with one another and the world.” THE PROBLEM OF WHITE AND COLOURED. A very important new work on the pressing problem of the relations between white and coloured races is that entitled “The Rising Tide of Colour Against White World Supremacy, ’ bv Lothrop Stoddard (Chapman and Hall, London). Mr Stoddard gives an historical review of the circumstances and events leading to the great expansion of the white race, and its dominance over the coloured. He also reviews the changes which are begnning to threaten white supremacy —the progress of Eastern nations, the gradual civilisation of African peoples, the rapid increase of coloured peoples as compared with the whites, their growing antagonism to the whites, and their claim of superiority. His conclusion is that unless a gigantic and frightful racial war is to be fought to the finish an agreement must be come to by which whites and coloured will agree to respect each other’s independence and natural boundaries. The whites, in return for the agreed on preservation of truly white lands from Asiatic penetration, must abandon the claim of permanent domination over Asiatics in Asia. CHEMISTRY MADE FASCINATING. Under the title “Creative Chemistry,” the Century Co. publishes a book by Air Edwin E. Slossom, which will appeal to ordinary intelligent readers with a little inkling of science. Air Slosso-n writes in attractive, non-tcchnical language, and gives a fascinating account of the wonders achieved by modern synthetic chemistry. AN AUSTRALIAN STORY OF ADVENTURE. Air Conrad H. Sayce, already very favourably known as a writer of short stories, has just published a first novel, “Golden Buckles” (Alex. M'Cubbin, Melbourne). The scenes of the story are laid mainly in Central Australia, ' and the adventurous life of those regions, with opal and gold hunting, eollissions with natives, and the terrors of the climate, furnish many thrilling episodes. The author writes from a basis of personal experience, in a vivid, picturesque style. His book should prove a good seller, and it may be hoped that it will be followed

by many other typical Australian romances. AN ENGLISH PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL. “An Imperfect Alother,” by Air J. D. Beresford (Macmillan), is a notable novel of the realistic, psycho-analytic school. It is remarkable in that the more interesting of the two leading women characters, who deserts her husband to run away with the cathedral organist, is a middle-aged woman, mother of the leading male actor, whose love story and marriage forms a telling contrast with her own varied love experiences. The main drama is thrown into relief against the background of the narrow petty life of an English provincial town. Messrs Putman and Sons are bringing out a volume of memoirs by the exEmpress Eugenie. The manuscript has been in the publishers’ hands for 10 years, but on account of its personal revelations was withheld from publication till after the authoress’s death. The position of the writer will-ensure a wide sale for the memoirs, whatever their historic interest may prove to be.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19210125.2.224

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 3489, 25 January 1921, Page 62

Word Count
1,595

LITERATURE. Otago Witness, Issue 3489, 25 January 1921, Page 62

LITERATURE. Otago Witness, Issue 3489, 25 January 1921, Page 62

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