BOOKS and BOOKMEN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17233, 12 April 1930, Page 14

BOOKS and BOOKMEN

ENGLISHMAN VICTIM OF JU .JU CURSE.

FORMER OFFICIAL TELLS HOW HE WAS HAUNTED BY PLAGUE OF SNAKES.

LONDON, March .1

Some -strange stories of a witch.’s curse are told by Frank Hives, once a district commissioner in Africa, in his book on “Ju Ju and Justice in Nigeria.” One of the author's most uncanny experiences was that of having the “snake curse” put on him by an old woman who believed him to be responsible for her son's imprisonment.

Snakes of all sizes and varieties followed him wherever he went. lie found them in his bed and in his boots. Most of them were poisonous and some were more than five feet in length.

The old woman waited for him outside his compound at Obudu and put the “snake curse” on him in front of his native servants and the whole village. “E could have had her locked up as a crazy person,” writes Air. Hives, “ . . . but after a while I could not have given the order, for I felt as though I were being hypnotised, and could only stare bldnkly at her.” The following afternoon Air. Hives found a fat, brown snake coiled up on his bed. His orderly decapitated it with a hatchet. Within the next three days fifteen other snakes were found and killed, all in places where he was likely to go. He decided to leave the station. But as soon as he reached his destination he found several snakes basking in the sun on the low mud walls as if awaiting him. “Then when I was asleep under my mosquito curtain that night,” continues Al>. Hives, “I was disturbed by a flop above me. When I raised my hand it came in contact with somethin glicavy that was making the curtain sag almost down to my face. .Cautiously I touched it again and felt the cold, clammy coils of a snake.” The victim of this uncanny curse then decided to return to Obudu and find the old woman responsible. No sooner had he arrived than he found a snake on top of his boxes. In tiis attempt to kill it he shot himself in the foot.

Shortly afterwards, when he had sufficiently recovered, he produced his false teeth and snapped them in the witch's face, declaring in a menacing voice that if she did not remove the curse his teeth would haunt and bite her for the rest of her days. Luckily she believed him and he was never troubled by snakes again. “AMERICA WILL OWN THE WORLD.” ONE OBSTACLE-EMPIRE FREE TRADE. A TIRADE AND A CONFESSION. “America is God's own country. America will own the world.” That is the thesis of Ludwig Denny’s latest book, “America Conquers Britain.” Air. Denny, who is foreign correspondent and conference observer for one of the most influential newspaper combines in the United States, sprang into notoriety with his sensational book, “We Fight for Oil,” in which he depicted the machinations of the British, European, and American oil magnates in the new fields of South America. In “America Conquers Britain,” he extends his scope. Economic rivalry, he argues, must ultimately lead to gunfire. In oil, in aviation, in hydro-electric power, the United States are steadily gaining a predominant influence in the world. Great Britain’s industrial supremacy in the nineteenth century was due primarily to her command of tho world’s principal fuel, coal; with the replacement of coal by new forms of fuel that supremacy has vanished. THE ONLY METHOD. Mr. Denny, anti-British in essence, anti-war on the surface, is forced to pay tribute to the ideal of Empire Free Trade. “This plan,” he declares, “is the only remaining method by which Great Britain can regain her old world position in competition with the United States.” Great Britain .standing alone, he argues, is unable to hold her own against America’s superior size and strength, but the British Empire, if moulded into an economic unit, would be superior to the United States in nren, population, natural resources, raw materials, foodstuffs, producing and marketing potentialities, in international bargaining power, and general economic strength. Air. Denny wants a bloodless conquest of the world by his country. The last sentence in his book is “What chance has Britain against America? Or what chance has tho world?” AMERICAN CAPITAL. Another remark i«: “If Britain is foolish enough to fight us. she will go down more quickly, that is all.” American capital, he declares, is now penetrating every corner of tho globe. The German steamer Bremen, which now holds the “blue riband of tho Atlantic,” was built with American capital. South America is held by the United States Government as a closed field for exploitation by United States business. The electrical supplies of Great Britain are now largely controlled by American interests, A British Empire fiscal union appeals to Air. Denny as the only solution for that country's economic troubles; he attacks it as tho only obstacle to world-control by tho United States. NEW WAR BOOK. AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR. LONDON, March HI. John o’London’s Weekly, with tho tacit consent of the publishers of tho book, says that Private .10022, tho anonymous author of “Her Private We” —which the paper describes as the “sanest and truest war-book yet published” —is Air. Frederic Alanning, a native of Sydney, who had to live in the mountains near Vienna for his health’s sake after war service. Air. Manning came to England at the age of 13. He published several j novels before the war. j

THE BEST SELLER. Last year there were .35,000,000 copies of the Bible sold, the next best seller only running into 1,325,000 volumes. Ami what’s more, there’s no chance of its place being usurped, for a similar story has been told year after year for many years. What a remarkable best-seller record! BEST NOVEL. MELBOURNE, March 15. The Australian Literature .Society's gold medal for the best novel by an Australian, published during 1929, has been awarded to Henry Handel Richardson (Mrs Robertson), for her novel “Ultima Thule.” The adjudicator mentioned that two other novels of outstanding merit by Australians were published last year—“Ooouurdoo, ” by Katherine Pritchard, and “A House is Built,” by M. Barnard Eldershaw. N.Z. SHORT STORIES. “New Zealand Short Stories” (J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., London), is a companion volume to “Australian Short Stories” published by the same linn last year. The new volume contains thirty-two stories, the authors represented including Arthur Adams, Duleie Deamer, A. A. Grace, Sir George Grey, G. B. Lancaster and Katherine Mansfield. Mr. O. N. Gillespie, who is responsible for selecting the stories, states that it is the first collection of short stories by New Zealand writers that has ever been made. He admits that, compared with Australian stories, the collection lacks a distinctive atmosphere and a national outlook. He offers as an explanation of this defect the fact that the people of New Zealand have not yet developed distinctive national characteristics, but, on the contrary, have sought to reproduce in their country a close copy of the conditions that exist in Great Britain.