BOOKS and BOOKMEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17203, 8 March 1930, Page 10

BOOKS and BOOKMEN

THE KING’S BIOGRAPHY

THE ROYAL DEMOCRAT,

NEW YORK, Feb. 7

The Commissioner-General i'or Australia (Air. Brookes), at'the request of the editor of the New York Sun, lias prepared a review of Sir George Arthur’s biography of King George. Air. Brookes points out that the King has contributed to the evolution of constitutional kingship and has bv this very triumph helped to make it possible for the British Empire to be transformed into a British commonwealth of nations. He reviews the life of the King, how he has taken advantage of his opportunities for service, and speculates on events if. George the Third had “had the vision and breadth of George the Fifth.” Mr. Brookes comments upon the fact that, the King is called “the Royal democrat” in America, and proceeds: “The title of ‘Royal democrat’ seems to me to be peculiarly appropriate to a Sovereign who succeeded in embodying .las personality in the very genius of the British Empire and the race. The book deals with an individual who has accomplished much in liis day, and made a contribution to high politics such as could not have been contributed by any other than himself, but had he been other than he was he might have done infinite damage to the ordered progress of the British Empire and the consummation of constitutional 'monarchy. We of the Empire are conscious of the fact that King George the Fifth has exalted Ills splendid office by his own conception of the functions of a constitutional monarch, and has added unfading lustre to the position, and made it secure for a future generation. The King knows his Empire better than anyone on earth. He knows his job as a constitutional monarch better than all his legal advisers and the statesmen of the Empire. He has dug in so securely that generations will grow grey and still find his descendants acting as the Visible and personal link binding a more united and peace-loving Empire, and helping to spread good will among the nations of the earth.”

BOOKS. BOUGHT OR BORROWED,

It is estimated that in England alone over twelve thousand books

come to light every year, und that at least two-thirds of them are, financially, failures. Commenting on this extraordinary output in the Spectator, Mr. B. If or Evans observes that books are certainly read. The prosperity ot the circulating libraries and the statistics issued by the municipal circulating libraries are proof enough ol that. But the cultured public, while ready enough to borrow books, refuses to buy them. In dealing with the author we are a most immoral nation. A library buys 50 copies ol a book and 500 people read it; we arc not in the least perturbed that we have paid the author only a tenth of the price that he has bargained, to receive. Each time one visits a theatre one makes a direct contribution to the author of the play, but those who pay hall' a guinea for a seat in the theatre and a- tew hours’ swift amusement, will hesitate before they pay 7s (id for a book which may give them pleasure for years. They prefer to enter into a conspiracy with othei readers to borrow the book and read it with the linger marks of the last conspirator still fresh upon it, and its covers stained and worn. The publishers acquiesce passively, lor the libraries oiler them a minimum guaranteed sale. The book seller is a mute sufferer, and it is pathetic to recall that while in the eighteenth century the book shop was a social centre for men of good taste, ’.t it, today an honest calling notably on Dio decilne.

VISITORS TO HUGO.”

For a delightfully clever little story Alice Grant Kosuian's “Visitors to Hugo’’ can be commended. Hugo, a votiU) just sent down from Oxford for —well, youthful behaviour (you are made to feel it was nothing else) is condemned to bed for life as the result of a motoring accident, and the entire comedy is enacted by his visitors —those who come to see him and while away the time. A distinctly novel idea, this—an ingenious way of playing on your sympathies and making you an absorbedly interested onlooker. Hugo’s principal friend, Haul, is in gaol. A T ot that, he is that kind of youth; no friend of Hugo’s could be; but he was indiscreet and is suffering the penalty (six months) for that which lie did not do. He had previously married a humble typiste, and the mesalliance was, in the eyes of his family,: something even worse than the offence ho was said to have committed. Poor little wife! The haughty family will have nothing to do with her. Hugo has never seen her, and is unable to trace here whereabouts, and, lying there helpless, lie frets about his friend in prison, the wife in need of assistance. A reader, or secretary, is engaged to attend to Hugo l'or a few hours a day. She is Paul’s wife. Hugo does not know it, as she has taken another name until the six months are up. She is unaware of Hugo’s friendship for her husband. There we have the foundations of an ingenious plot, and matters unroll as Hugo dictates letters and sets inquiries moving through a bright girl wlio is a close and lively friend. It develops by means of the conversations of the iuvalid with his visitors

—youth on the one side fighting against the antagonisms of the elders on the other, and fighting as well the battle of the secretary, who is thrown into a peculiar position by her job as Hugo’s assistant.

The unusual inventions of this book are arresting, and become a gay entertainment on account of the humor thrown into the bantering talk of tiie invalid, especially in his dealings with the woman whose relationship to his friend he does not know about. It is bright, and chattily told. There are parents, aunts, servants, the jolly girl who is such a firm friend of Hugo’s, and even relations in India, brought into it through interviews and letters in a way that makes it whimsical reading. 'This is an effort above the ordinary. Plot is one thing in a novel; but the power of making it sparkle is another. (Angus and Pobertson).

WANDERLUST.

A NEW ZEALANDER'S TRAVELS

The late Bertram B. Bunny, who died- while his,book of reminiscences, “A Rolling, Stone’’was going through the press, was a New Zealander, who in early manhood succumbed to the restless desire to see the world, and therefore shipped • in one tramp steamer after another. He roamed about the oceans for some years, seeing strange ports and meeting strange people. Then lie went north to Alaska and the Y T ukon, where the discovery of gold had attracted thousands of adventurous spirits, and a sprinkling of ruffians and gunmen. He did- odd jobs of various kinds in the frozen north, and more than once nariowly escaped death. He tells interesting stories about, some of the men who became famous in the north —Eli Vcrrcau, "’ho carried the mails, summer and winter, between Dawson and Eagle; “Alabama Bill,” who ran n road house, but gave so much credit to travellers that he had to close up and hit the trail again; Bishop W. C. 'Bompas, who-spent nearly 40 years in the north; Charlie Anderson, who made more than a million dollars out of his claim at Dawson, and with the assistance of a succession of wives, spent the lot, and was soon back at work -in a-timber saw-mill at. 60 dol-lars.-a month! Mr. Bunny’s experiences were so varied that every page of his book is entertaining.

A GERMAN LITERARY SENSATION.

“The Lost Child,” is a book which has been hailed in Germany as a masterpiece. It is written by a wellknown actress who preserves anonymity under the pseudonym of Rahel Sanz.ara, and is said to be her first novel. This is not a story that can be read with pleasure unless one has a wish to delve into the warpings find twists of human nature. It is, so to speak, a psychoanalytical essay, n romance of psychiatry. It portrays one of the most unpleasant sides of life, but there is mixed iu the tale the contrast of Christian kindliness and sympathy for the unfortunate that holds the attention and carries a reader through all the unpleasantness, ft is of the revolting murder of a girl child by a youth represented as suffering from a taint mentally owing to the circumstances of his birth. The father, a once happy farmer, who befriended the mother of the boy, goes on a long search for the girl. She is believed to have been kidnapped, but the body lies in a stable on the farm covered up iu a heap of manure. The story is cruel in its analyses in the harrowing phases, but it resolves itself into beauty when at the end—the characters grown old and grov, and the loss partly healed by time’s hand—-1 he killer of a dearly loved lost child is taken by the farmer into his home after the penalty of the law has been paid. The author in simple writing achieves a success in the portrayal of the man’s silent anguish, his realisation of fate’s decrees and submission thereto.

“THE MAX WHO COULD STUB WAR.”

A fascinating diversion for knight or necromancer in olden times was a search for the elixir of life. To-day the search is for the means of causing death in wholesale quantities so that war will be impossible—or will mean certainty for the country that owns the secret. lii a book by W. Penmnre, entitled “The Alan Who Could Stop War,” a chemist has the secret of, a new and handy explosive, capable of wrecking cities, and, being an Englishman, lie desires above all things to put it in the possession of Britain. Conservative Britain, however, is busy toying with the League of Nations idea, as much safer, and the inventor finds it difficult to be taken seriously on the Continent. He makes an American acquaintance, who is one of the,most enthusiastic pacifists ever heard of. So warm docs he become about the new discovery that he offers the inventor a million dollars for it, in order that it might be suppressed and the world saved from tho horrors. The American is, however, being exploited by a Russian, whose aim is to obtain the secret for the Soviet, and the inyentor has no end of adventures in the persecution that follows at the hands of the malignant Bolsheviks, and the very enthusiastic American. While he is confined in a cellar, and reduced in will power by a ilrtig given him by his captors, he makes another discovery—a gas that renders human beings immovable for days . He is helped to escape by tho American’s daughter, stops plans that have been made with tho stolen explosive to blow,up London, Paris, and a lot of other capitals, and immense hordes of Soviet soldiers on tho march from Russia are stiffened with tho new gas. Exciting and quick moving, this book will pass an hour or so easily. (Hodder and Stouglion.)

EARLY CANADIAN ROMANCE

Ralph Connor’s “The Runner’’ is a throwback to the novels of the period of tl'ustav Aimitrd and Fenimoro Cooper. The book is full of tho forests, the waterfalls, the snows and rough life of Canada in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the North American Indians had not lost their individuality as a people and wore reckoned with in the warfare of the times. The story opens with an interesting picture of the portage at Niagara Falls, where the goods brought up by the ships had to be laboriously carried overland to,tho upper reaches of the lakes, a. dozen miles or so. Rone La Flannno is the boy hero of, tho story, a wild Canadian youth, friend of the Indians, and tin' story takes us through the time when the settlers and the red'men, the French and the English, and the citizens of the young United States were involved in border warfare. It is a good story of the pioneers of 1810, though the hero is somewhat too heroic for his age. The coloring is the most attractive part of it. Otherwise it has nothing that lifts it much above the plane of tho ordinary. (Hodder and Stoughton.)

NEW ZEALAND STORIES. .T. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London, who published last year an anthology of short stories by Australian authors, announce a volume of short stories by New Zealand writers. Tt contains stories by 20 New Zealand authors, including Katherine Mansfield, (J. B. Lancaster, A. A, (Trace, Claude Jewell and B. E, Baughan.