BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LI, Issue 16773, 4 July 1925, Page 3

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

KITCHENER \S DROWNING. “NOT THE WORK OF A GERMAN MINE. ’ ’ STRANGE LETTER. BLAME PLACED ON RUSSIANS. “Ilis (Lord Kitchener's) mysterious dentil was the work neither of a German mine nor of a. German torpedo, but. of that power which would not permit the Russian army to recover with the help of Lord Kitchener, because the destruction of Czarist Russia had been determined on. Lord Kitchener’s death was caused by his abilities. ” This statement is contained in a letter from General von Liiiloinlorff la Mr. V. W. Germains (“A Rifleman''!, and is reproduced in a new book by Mr. Germains, entitled “The Traill About Kitchener.” It. will revive the strange controversy regarding the sinking of the cruiser Hampshire oil' the Orkneys on June 5, IfUli, when she was taking Lord Kitchener to Russia. “I have italicised the concluding passage of this remarkaoie letter,” writes Mr. Germains, “because deep as will be the interest with which Englishmen will read the words of soldierly acknowledgment of Lord Kitchener's great military capacities which come from the enemy leader, < lie phrase, ‘Lord Kitchener’s death was duo to hi; abilities,’ must acquire a tragic signb'ier.L". e when we remember the dark stories which have so long been circulating alleging that this greatest of Englishmen met his death by treachery. SUSPICIONS. “Courtesy towards a distinguished enemy general, who lias gone as tar, probably, as he could go in unravelling the mystery of the Hampshire, must forbid us frnjti dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s of his statement too narrowly. But Englishmen who remember the uncommonly (dose relationship which existed in those days between the Russian revolutionary committees and the German intelligence service may bo forgiven for drawing their own conclusions.” “Luddiklorff’s letter, taken at its face Value,” said Mr. Germains to a Daily Express representative last night, “can only mean that he believes that the Hampshire was sunk owing to the machinations of the Russian revolutionaries, who had been apprised of Lord Kitclieiicf’s movements by lire London agents of their international black hand gang.” Lord Jellieoc states definitely in “The Grand Fleet” that, the Hampshire struck a. mine. Lord Esher states in “The Tragedy of Lord Kitchener,” “That Lord Kitchener met his death at the hands of Yho enemy never has becli and never can be disputed.” SOCIALISM PAST AND FUTURE. “The Socialist Movement,” By Dr. A. Shadwcll. There are over two hundred definitions of Socialism, which are virtually so many cities of refuge to its apologists, since, as Dr. Shadwcll remarks, “it is always possible to shift the ground and to say, when any particular aspect is criticised, that it is not Socialism.” The firmest ground is obtained, therefore, by descending from words to facts, and, ns Dr. Shndwcll has done in these small but wellstored volumes, examining the Socialist movement itself in its concrete relations. It is, the author estimates, just over a century old, and up to the outbreak of the Great War had passed through two phrases —the first generous, and idealistic, the second materialist; and rancorous. In the passage of the cult, into Gcrman-Jowish domination, “benevolence was superseded by bitterness, the motive of sympathy with the poor was overshadowed bv hatred of the rich, the idea of cooperation was replaced by conflict, the voluntary principle by the compulsory, persuasion by aggression, aspiration and sentiment by hnrd-and-fast determination.”

Dr. Shadwcll’s analysis of “Marx and Marxism” exposes the obligations of that, “great plagiarist,” and examines the phenomenon of his surviving prestige in spite of the disproof of some of liis chief premisses by the course of history. There are still Marxians who adhere to the doctrine of ati inevitable “increasing misery” in spite of the visible improvement of economic conditions. Dr. Shadwcll summarises very effectively that closer approximation of classes and their conditions which destroys the original Marxian argument. There has been a levelling up at ouo end ami a levelling down at the other. It stares one in the face in visible matters of the first importance — houses, clothes and locomotion. Perhaps the first affords the most striking object lesson. No, one to-day dreams of building a Blenheim, a Chatsworlh or a Castle Howard; and no one builds such cottages for laborers as represented the other end of the scale when the palaces were reared. As for clothes, it is no longer possible, as it used to be, to distinguish classes by clothes, masculine or feminine. And locomotion. In the happy days before the arrival of modern capitalism, only the rich could travel at all; everyone else, was limited to walking. Now all use the siime conveyances; the only appreciable difference between first and third class oil the railways is the relative amount of space, and it capitalists dash about by road in their own chrs, the proletariat do tlie same in charabancs. The third or post-war phrase of: the movement hinges on the phenomenon of Bolshevism, which, as Dr. Shadwell says, is “the submission of Socialist theory to the test of experience”— a test by which Lenin himself admitted that it had failed. The "broadest, fact in this connection is that, “since the Bolshevist revolution there has never been enough food to feed the population.” The Russian experience in regard to the food supply is particularly instructive, because Capitalism bus so completely abolished famine from this country, which was formerly liable to it in some degree every bail season, that the mere possibility was forgotten until the war, which suspended the working of Capitalism. Ihe banishment of famine is surely no small achievement, but it, is never mentioned. We may usefully contrast it with the institution of chronic famine in Russia. Nevertheless the Bolshevist exarnplo

lias inflamed Socialist imagination, even if its methods tire hot explicitly endorsed in those manifestoes of AVestern Socialism in which, Dl‘. Shadwcll drily suggests, “perhaps no exact meaning is intended.” The British Labor movement shows this vagueness even more than its Continental counterparts, since in recent times “it has lost, all initiative and become tin imitator and a hanger-on tied to one foreign organisation or another.” Dr. Shadwcll(s own belief is that Socialist parties are likely to continue gaining ground by their profuse promises “until their policy has been put to the test of experience much more thoroughly than it. has yet been” subject, always, to the risk that Bolshevik aggression may discredit and ruin the whole movement in a parallel to the events of 1848. But the conclusions reached by the author arc a secondary consideration alongside ol bis well-arranged and documented facts and his exacting analysis of arguments and programmes. Dr. Shadwcll has put into 400 pages a study of brilliant, though unimpassioned, cogency.