BOOKS OF THE DAY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3772, 29 June 1926, Page 74

BOOKS OF THE DAY.

A ZIONIST COLONY. “Jacob’s Well.” By Pierre Benoit. Translated from the French, with a preface by Dr Angelo S. Rappoport. (Paper, 2s net.) London: Stanley Paul and Company. The thanks of the reading public are due to the firm of Stanley Paul and Company for its enterprise in publishing in cheap form translations of so much interesting fiction by foreign writers both past and contemporary. The present novel is interesting both as a story and for the insight it gives into contemporary Zionist colonisation in Palestine. M. Benoit is not a Jew, but he writes of Jews and Zionist enterprise with rare understanding and sympathy. “The Jews are a grateful people, whatever may have been said to the contrary,” says Dr Rappoport, who is himself a Jewish writer of high distinction. “They will, as we hope, be grateful to M. Benoit for his entertaining and interesting novel, and for the flattering things lie says about the Jews and occasionally about Zionism.” But there is irony in the translator’s praise and in his view of Palestine of to-day turned into a pleasure resort, to which the favourites of fortune pay a flying visit and enjoy themselves, prosperous Jews travelling by luxurious special trains with return tickets in their pockets on a tourist’s pilgrimage. But it is of genuine Jewish settlers that the novelist tells, and he gives a very encouraging account of their energy as cultivators, and of the spirit of earnestness and hopefulness pervading the settlements, despite financial stringency and other difficulties. The three leading characters of the story are Isaac Cochbas, organiser of the settlement of Jacob’s Well and of neighbouring settlements, Mdlle. Henriette Weill, a Jewess of 50, who is a chief manager at Jacob's Well and a most indefatigable worker; and Hagar Moses, who, as “Mdlle. Jessica,” has been a travelling dancer before the spell of Coclibas’s personality induces her to throw in her lot with the Zionists. Hagar occupies most space in the story, which begins by tracing her career from childhood up. Her father was killed in one of the Armenian massacres. * Hagar, by the charity of other poor Jews of a wretched ghetto in Constantinople, was supported during childhood, and sent-to a Greek school. Then she became apprentice to a dressmaker in Pera, and attracted the notice of a star singer, to whose quarters she went to deliver a dress. The singer’s patronage led to Hagar’s exchange of hard work and poverty for dearly-paid-for luxury. Dr Rappoport, in his preface, discusses the question whether the characters are typical Zionists, and accepts Cochbas and Mdlle. Weill, but considers the heroine, Hagar, unconvincing. A Magdalene, she, under the influence of Cochbas, becomes a Martha. She becomes a most valuable worker at Jacob’s Well, and is persuaded by Mdlle. Weill to marry the consumptive little hunchback, Cochbas. But financial misfortune threatening the existence of the settlement, she is sent by her husband to Paris to explain their situation to Baron Rothschild. She meets a former actress friend, her past asserts its hold, and turns the late Martha into Magdalene again. But Hagar does not forget the struggling colonists of Jacob’s Well; she sells the jewels given her by her lovers, and sends the proceeds anonymously to Cochbas—a detail singled out by Di Rappoport as untrue to type. Even respectable Zionist women do not despoil themselves of tlieir jewels in the in ttrests of their cause. But there is another transformation; the last chapter shows Hagar en route to return to the colony in company with a young girl, who had come to seek her. Mdlle. Weill is an understandable though extreme character, an idealist, and whole hearted in her devotion to the Zionist cause; she has been a student and a lecturer, and has written on the (esthetics of Marx, of whom she is a follower. Cochbas, too, is entirely modern in his beliefs, a professed atheist, he holds Palestine sacred merely as the land of the ancient glory of his countrymen, and desirable now as affording a home to the oppressed of his nation. But he is absolutely self-devoted, labouring with a zeal that defies difficulties and bodily weakness. POST-WAR MORALS. “ Eros.” By J. A. T. Lloyd. (Paper, 2s net.) London: Stanley Paul and Co. " Eros ” is to be the title of a musical fantasia on which the hero of the story is working at intervals through the period covered. His experience of life shows him Eros as master of humans in all ages, however his worship be disguised by modern conventionality—- “ still just the same implacable god who punished all alike, from Hyppolitus to the latest suicide in modern Europe.” The music is to express his idea of the power and ruthlessness of the master passion. But Claude Nugent is far from being a Don Juan; his own love aber* ranees are due to his pliability where women are concerned, as is his incompatible marriage with Mona, a young war widow of sensuous, easy-going nature, much his inferior in upbringing and pientality. This is in the year after

the armistice, and Claude to supplement his means accepts a managership of rather dubious nature in a musical firm. The people belonging to this are well delineated, as arc other characters who enter the book; but the atmosphere of. the story is unalluring, and there is overmuch detail in scenes of illicit love. After a few years of increasing alienation Mona leaves Claude for a cousin of her first husband, who belongs to a titled family, and Claude consents to appear as the chief sinner, and to allow Mona the custody of their child. So Mona gets hack to Hanunond Court, and Claude is free to seek his natural affinity, Iris, a skilled interpretative musician. DAYS OF FLODDEN. “"King Heart.” By Carola Oman. (Cloth, 7s Gd net.) London: T. Fisher Unwin (Limited). Carola Oman made her debut as a novelist with “ The Road Royal,” the heroine of which is Mary Queen of Scots, and in her third novel she returns to Scotch history. “ King Heart ” is James IV, one of the most picturesque figures of the ill-fated Stuart line, who fell at Flodden in 1513. Readers familiar with Scot’s poems—not many it is to be feared to-day—will recall the picture of the gallant and imprudent monarch given in “ Marmion,” with many references to his career—his participation in the rebellion of the Scotch lords against his father, who fell obscurely in battle, for which “ King Heart ” wore throughout life an iron belt as penance; his generosity, his gallantries, his love for the fair Margaret Drummond, heroine of this story, whom he seems to have married, his subsequent marriage of policy with Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII; his fatal liaison with Lady Heron—to which were imputed the delays that contributed to the disaster of Flodden—and the stirring narrative of the battle itself. All these notable features in the king’s life and the lives of people whose fortunes touched his, with much more picturesque detail, both historical and imaginary, find place in the present qpvel. The early chapters introduce the reader to the household of Lord Drummond of Stobliall, the king’s justiciar, a terrible despot in his own home. The story of the raid made by his two soii3 and tlieir followers on the Murrays, and their setting fire to the church in which the fugitives, including many women and children, had taken refuge; the coming of the king to Stobliall to demand that the two young Drummonds should be given up to justice; the curse put upon the king by Lady Drummond when her sons were taken away prisoners—this is ominous of the tragedies that follow. One of these was the fate of poor Margaret Drummond herself, poisoned with her sisters, according to the tale. The cruelty and superstition of the age, its hardness for women and the weak generally come out clearly. Miss Oman writes naturally and vividly, and here gives us a very successful romance of old Scotland, which should be specially acceptable in a Scotch community. IN TRANS-INDIAN WILDS. “Riders of the Wind.” By Elswyth Thane. (Cloth, 7s 6d net.) London: John Murray. “Ingarsen’s daughter” Alexandra, last representative of a Viking descended line, is slim, boyish, athletic, courageous—everything that an up-to-date heroine should be. But at 17, her father having died, she married Marley, double her age, and her opposite in temperament. Ten years late, finding herself being slowly stifled in her incompatible environment in Bloomsbury, she finds escape through Blaise Dorin, a traveller who has explored adventurously in Central Asia. She accompanies him on what he regards as a sort of picnic trip in the Sahara, where she learns to ride a vicious horse and proves herself a fit mate for a desert adventurer. Blaise Dorin seems for a time rather doubtful whether or not to continue their association, but finally decides to take her on his quest, among tribes across the north-west frontier of India, for a wonderful ancient robe of woven gold. They get possession of thtrobe, and when beset by bandits at a Buddhist temple, Sandy appears on the altar steps “motionless in a miraculous light, a figure of unearthly beauty in a pose of divine vengeance, a knife glittering in its upraised hand; its long suncoloured hair lay golden on the magic gold of the robe of Shir Shan, and its fathomless far-fixed eyes were unlike any eyes ever seen before.” The bandits flee in superstitious terror, but the adventurers’ perils are by no means over. Dorin is wounded, and on their return journey Sandy has opportunity for showing all the courage and fortitude’of a Viking’s daughter before they are rescued by a detachment of British forces. We part from them safe in England and happy, ‘hough Dorin’s treasure-hunting days are over. A CALIFORNIAN ROMANCE. “The Whispering Canyon.” By John Merseraau. (Cloth, 2 dollars net.) New York: Edward J. Clode. Inc. (Per Dymsck’s Book Arcade, Sydney.) After three years of war service and hospital Bob Cameron returns to “Whispering Canyon” in a redwood forest district of California, whore his father owned landed properly and a milling business. IT© knows his father’s affairs have been on the down grade of late, and hopes to improve matters. Going to the deserted mill Bob finds his father murdered in his office, shot through the window as he sat at his desk. Then he finds that mill and property are about to pass into the hands of an unscrupulous speculator, Lew Selby,

who a mortgage over them and is seeking to get possession of the whole of Whispering Canyon. One of the threatened owners is the heroine, Antonia Lee. Selby, whom the render will 6oon suspect of responsible for the elder Cameron s murder, tries to show that the criminal is old Eben Beauregard, Antonia’s cross-grained uncle, who had been at variance with the dead man. How Bob, aided by Antonia, defeats Selby’s schemes, frees Whispering Canyon from his clutches, and proves him to have procured his father’s murder is related in the subsequent chapters. The narration is direct and animated, and the story a very fair specimen of its class.. PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. The second issue of Concrete and Steel, just to hand, contains much valuable information of interest to the building trade and allied interests. The use of concrete, steel, and other modern building materials is becoming more in evidence every day, so that a publication such as the one under review has a real practical interest, more particularly so as it covers the field so near to us in Australia, as well as in New Zealand. Articles in the June issue concern the big underground railway scheme in Sydney, the steel works of Australia, concrete in road contruction, articles on concrete houses and homes, and many other interesting features. • • • Everyladv’s Journal for June is a fine publication, and, from a woman’s point of view, interesting from cover to cover. It makes a special study of beauty, and “How to Have a Healthy Body and an Irreproachable Complexion” are discussed from many viewpoints. Its home hints and dressmaking section are practical and dainty, and its special articles and short stories of a diverting nature. “From Society to Stage” describes how the Hon. Mrs Pitt Rivers becomes just Mary Hinton; and “The Marriage of Music and Art” tells of the world-famous partnership of Gilbert and Sullivan. * * # The New, attractively illustrated throughout and containing a supplement devoted to “Is Zat So?” the play of the month, is a fine magazine of fiction. Its long complete novel, “The Return of the Soul,” by Robert Hicliens, is an impressive piece of work, and the story of the woman with the soul of a white cat whom the hero had once done to death coming back to torture and haunt him is most powerfully told. Besides, there are 11 short stories, the writers being respectively Katherine Harrington, Bessie Beatty, John Hastings Turner, Grace Noll Crowell, Frank H. Shaw, John Bellairs, Louise Jordan Miln, Guy Fletcher, Peach Justin, Ernest Bramah, and May Christie. * # * Arthur Rackham is world-famous for his illustrating powers, and for even that reason Good Housekeeping for April is a valuable publication. Margery Williams’s serial for children is a joyous thing, but, with Arthur Rackham’s illustrations, it is a gem! Holidays play an important part in the magazine, and Sir W. Arbuthnot Lane’s description of the delights of a holiday in Jamaica is full of interest. In the augmented fashion section are garmered all the fresli witcheries of colour, line, and material with which La Mode, both in Paris and in London, woos the new season. Fanny Heaslip Lea, Dorothy San burn Phillips, and Mary Synon each have probed into a human problem in unfolding their fascinating stories; while Marion Coan writes of gardening in her own persuasive way. St. John Ervine represents the world of the theatre, and Clemence Dave passes brilliant comment on books of the hour.