LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3593, 23 January 1923, Page 62

LITERATURE.

NOTES ON SOME NEW BOOKS. A work combining historical and biographical interest is “The Life of Jameson, by lan Colvin, published in two volumes by Arnold. 1< ew personalities and careers could nrovide more fascinating material for a biographer than those of Dr Jameson, hie played many parts, and passed through strange vicissitudes. He achieved much; then through one great mistake, suffered temporary eclipse, to emerge and show himself greater and nobler than before. Great as is the part he played in the history of South Africa, the man himself, one feels, was greater and more interesting than his deeds. Mr Colvin possesses two special qualifications for writing the life of Dr Jameson; his full knowledge of South Africa, and his personal friendship with Dr Jameson; and his biography promises to be fascinating reading. The following quotation from it testifies to the enduring friendship between the two great Empire builders, Jameson and Cecil Jihodes. It belongs to the days immediately after the unfortunate Jameson Raid, which many believed to have brought about estrangement between the two friends. “A friend, hearing the news that Groote Schuur had been burned down with all the dear and lovely things in it, went to Rhodes .and began to break the news with the customary preliminaries. Rhodes changed colour, but when at last he heard the truth, Ts that all,’ he exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, ‘I thought you were going to say that Jameson was dead.’” Here is Mr Colvin’s picture of Dr Jameson in his closing days:—-“More patient than of old, his body dwindled to a perilous frailty, the face marked by constant pain and self-repression, the features more aquiline, the eye, if not more penetrating, more tolerant, the smile less gay, but more winning, the whole comprehension of the man enlarged by suffering and humiliation. Such now was Jameson. The presence, the gesture, the brusque and fearless yet kindly speech,, the purity from any taint of self or self importance, such were the winning and healing qualities of the Doctor in those latter years.” Under the title of “Neighbours Henceforth” Owen Wister, author of “The Virginian,’’ makes a strong plea for friendship between the United States and France. His book is the outcome of two visits to France, the first just after the Armistice. When he returned from this, profoundly impressed by the scenes of ruin he had beheld in the war area, he found his countrymen apparently cold to France’s sufferings and mistrustful of her claims, and paid a second visit to see conditions more fully and enable himself more effectively to plead France’s cause. His tinal message to his countrymen is that they must give up their isolation. He sees the shadow of future wars in which European nations will destroy one another. Duty to humanity calls on America to exert herself to prevent a calamity which will destroy European civilisation. If America rejects the appeal, it will be to her own ruin. The book is published by Macmillan. What promises to he a very useful history of Ireland for the ordinary reader is “Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,” by Robert Dunlop. (Oxford University Press.) The author says in his preface : “Fortunately I have no theory to serve. Historically Ireland is as remote to me as ancient Egypt. My only concern is to get at the truth.” And writing with this detachment, he exhibits British government of Ireland as a long failure, a succession of acts of tyranny and misgovemment. It is only within the last 60 years that attempts have been made to govern Ireland for its own benefit instead of for the exclusive benefit of England. The present calamitous state of Ireland is the outcome of centuries of wrong. An English reviewer makes the single criticism that insufficient space is given to early Irish history and to accounts of Irish affairs apart from the English connection in later centuries. Mrs J. R. Green and other Nationalist writers have treated this important side of Irish history at length, but with too much bias towards glorification of Ireland before the days of Saxon domination. On the other hand writers from the English standpoint commonly have little to say about native Irish history, laws, literature, and all tilings most genuinely Irish. A biography of a man still living is an unusual performance, and one presenting many difficulties to the writer. The difficulties are heightened when the subject is a statesman whose career, so far as the general uncertainty of human life allows one to forecast, is very far from its close, and whose character an dachievements are seen in the confused atmosphere of contemporary politics. Such a difficult task has been essayed in “Mr Lloyd George,” by E. T. Raymond (Collins), and apparently with a high degree of success. The reviewer in The Times’ Literary Supplement says that in it Mr Raymond “is persuasive rather than dogmatic, and prefers to suggest rather than to conclude . . . his merit as a writer lies mainly in his flashes of psychological intuition.” To the general reader the book will be valuable as a resume of internal and Imperial history during the last 30 years, as well as for the light it sheds on the personality of a man who, from a lowly station, has risen to play a more prominent part in world affairs than any Englishman since William Pitt. The career of one of the umost notable Englishmen of our days is told in “Lord Northcliffe: A Memoir,” by Max Pemberton (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr Pemberton knew Lord Northcliffe intimately; lie was his playmate in boyhood, and remained a personal friend through life. When all detractions are made Lord Northcliffe stands forth as an ardent

patriot and Imperialist; a man who by j force of character, enterprise, and practi- j cal imagination, achieved extraordinary success. His life offers material as exciting as that offered in fiction, and the record of it by a practised writer like Mr Pemberton may be expected to be as widely read as a popular novel.