A Literary Log

Southland Times, Issue 25341, 20 July 1935, Page 11

A Literary Log

BOOKS ON THE TABLE “The Shipbuilders” (George Blake). “Mind Makes Men Giants” (Richard Lynch). “Clouds That Flee” (Col. Montague Cooke). “The Garden of Wishes” (Anne Maybury).

Rolled toy

Iota

CLYDESIDE DEPRESSION “The Shipbuilders” is a novel of industry in depression. The author, George Blake, has used a Clydeside shipbuilding yard for his scene, and the friendship of Pagan, the shipbuilder, and Danny, the riveter, which survives all fluctuations of fortune, and remains untouched when the firm has fallen in ruins. These spiritual things last the longest. With the launching of the last ship the novel opens, so that the picture is one of an industry’s descent to the slough of despondency. The reader is shown the hard chafing of idleness on decent men and their families; the lure of cinemas, football coupons and dog-racing, and the small plutocracies that have clustered round them while a gigantic national industiy is dying; the vastness of the social problem, with its underground spread of racketeering and gangsterdom. At times his language is a bit too emphatic and in the effort to heighten his colour;, he makes comparisons which cannot escape exaggeration. The tragedy of the shipbuilding industry supplies ample material without any literary auditions. These are faults in style, but the author can revea’ the substance of the scene without letting words get in the way. It was a tragedy beyond economics. It was not that so many thousands of homes lacked bread and butter It was that a tradition, a skill, a glory, a passion, was visibly in decay and all the acquired and Inherited loveliness of artistry rotting along the banks of the stream. The evacuation of the position is just. “The Shipbuilders” is not a happy novel, it is not gay. Grimness is written over it, but there are _ flashes of passionate protest, and pictures of sturdy courage. But it is not an unbeautiful book. Behind all this disappointment and suffering is the strength of the friendship of Pagan and Danny—that is a very fine thing. “The Shipbuilders" by George Blake (Messrs Faber and Faber, Ltd., London). THE USE OF THE MIND The captaincy of the mind is popularly accepted these days, and if faith moves mountains, it certainly moves them in the mind, for faith is a condition of and lives in the mind. Without the central executive station we call the brain man is a dead bulk, and it is not surprising, therefore, that he should be excited by an intense curiosity about this marvellous control unit through which he moves and has his being as a living thing. This mind of his can carry him everywhere. It is the one means of locomotion on which no limits can be placed by governments or local bodies. The star-spangled spaces of the celestial terrain are as open to him as the country of the United States and if he cannot take his body with him when he journeys beyond the limits of earth, he at least knows that all his enjoyments are of the mind —the body being a collecting agent for the capture and use of those impulses and contacts carry to the mind sensations to be enjoyed. Life is in the mind, and so those who turn to it as a subject for study are attempting to unmask some of the outer works of that citadel which defies man’s analysis. But of those who turn their attention to the mind there are many who find themselves puzzled at the outset by obscure terms and by obscure phaseology. If you plunge into metaphysics you will find quickly that you are out of your depth, and if you are wise you will scramble to solid ground as promptly as you can, and then make your new essay by venturing first with no more than your big toe. If you would swim in these treacherous but alluring waters, you must approach the task with proper respect and adequate caution. There is nothing sadder than mental drowning. Better to keep out of these waters, than to drown in thorn, or to be forever haunted by the fear of drowning. Richard Lynch has written “Mind Makes Men Giants” with the idea of supplying the means of a gradual approach, but his purpose is not so much the entry of metaphysics as it is the best means of putting your mind to dutiful service, the best means of making it strong, of making the mind practical. His idea is to show the reader the principle on which success is grounded, and then to indicate how the application of these principles will open doors to you. His survey is comprehensive and his advice is given with a gusto that is infectious. Giants cannot make minds, but it is undoubtedly true that the mind can make giants. Of course, sometimes it flatters a body, but to think of such a possibility would, I take it, offend against one of the essential principles with which Mr Lynch deals so lucidly. “Mind Makes Men Giants” by Richard Lynch. (Messrs Angus and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney.) A HAPPY WARRIOR Colonel Montague Cooke in “Clouds That Flee” (Hutchinson) recalls the almost forgotten incident of Winston Churchill storming the Empire promenade in the last days of that institution. When still a cadet at Sandhurst Mr Churchill accompanied the tuthor’s brother to the Empire, but found that owing to the “purity campaign,” then at its height, barriers had been erected to shut off the promenade; Mr Churchill burst through them and headed a cheering crowd that streamed after him into the forbidden area. One curious story is of a distinguished General of choleric temper playing golf at Biarritz at the age of over 80, and being suddenly outraged by the remark of a young man that such veterans as he should not be permitted to loiter on the course. Usually noted for an ample flow of powerful language, the General was so furious that he was reduced to complete silence. But as the young man approached he struck him a blow with his niblick. The man fell insensible and had to be carried off on a hurdle. There are many other good stories in this book of reminiscences. One of them gives an instance of sublime coolness (or impudence) on his own part, when he was a recently joined junior officer in the R.H.A. On one occasion, being a cricketer of some note, he was playing in an important match when he received a telegram recalling him to attend a court-martial. His telegram in reply was: “Impossible—playing cricket”—which was not at all well received.

BESIDE ST. NICHOLAS The nursery garden provides a charming setting for a romance, but Anne Maybury in “The Garden of Wishes” is too busy with her people to worry about the scene, and one feels a little disappointed that such an opportunity to pause and taste the sweetness of the flowers should be overlooked. Certainly romance is busy under the eye of the statue of St. Nicholas from which the garden takes its name. There the ardent Lynette, running the garden with her three brothers, falls in love with Anthony, the heir to Fleur Park, the adjoining estate, but Anthony married the daughter of an American soap king, and then tried to carry on with Lynette. In addition to this he implicated her sister Enid in a daring and shady scheme. In contrast, Jaby was her solid friend, but in his life was some dark mystery. The unravelling of this and the dispersal of the clouds gives Lynette the opportunity to recover from her own disillusionment and to find happiness again. “The Garden of Wishes” by Anne Maybury (Messrs Mills and Boon, Ltd., London). THE PERIODICALS Mystery and Detection is a magazine new to me and as the June issue is only the fifth number of Volume 1. I don’t suppose many other people m New Zealand have had the chance to peruse it. The Nazis, we read, have suppressed all crime stories and thrillers but that fact will not lessen the popularity of the thriller in New Zealand and one might predict a large audience for this magazine which in the June issue alone collects works by R. Austin Freeman, H. C. Bailey, Edgar Wallace, Mrs Belloc Lowndes,. G. K. Chesterton, Marjorie Bowen, F. Tennyson Jesse, Thomas Burke and Algernon Blackwood. There you have a pack of names to excite the eye of any reader of detective and thrill stories. The Wide World, on the other hand, is a veteran. It has been going strong for many years, and it looks like going as strong for at least as many years to come. In the July issue the fierce natives of Caledon Bay are written up and the work of the Australian northern police is described. A fierce feud in the Kentucky mountains comes as a shock in these days, and so, too, does the timely and revealing article by a man who actually served with the Paraguayans in the Gran Chaco fighting against the Bolivians. Interest ranges from the desert to the Arctic, from sea to mountain peak, and the articles, most of them illustrated, are full of meat. Mr copies of these magazines come from Messrs Gordon and Gotch, Ltd., Christchurch.

THE ROUND TABLE Seldom has the “Round Table” been fuller packed with important matter than in its June issue. Its most timely article is one arguing that Air-power is not only vital to Britain, but is unattainable save on the basis of commercial aviation. Britain’s Navy arose out of, and as an adjunct to, her mercantile interests on the sea. Similarly: a military air force can be created rapidly from a small nucleus if the airmindedness of the people, and the technique of air navigation and aeronautical engineering, have been strongly developed in the country by civil aviation, and if the ground equipment and the skilled personnel are ready. The example of Germany in the last three or four years is sufficient proof of this proposition. In spite of her creditable advance in the cheap carriage of mails, Britain has much leeway to make up in the use of the air as a business highway. Speed is the first asset for that purpose, and she is not yet within sight of the cruising rates approaching two hundred miles an hour that are often attained in America. Home travel by aeroplane is still in its infancy, and there are several important foreign routes on which British enterprise has not yet shown its face. The general situation of worldpolitics is reviewed by two writers, one of whom analyses the essentials of collective security and the other examines the nature and effects of economic nationalism with especial reference to Germany and to Japan. An exceedingly well-informed paper on Abyssinia exhibits the broader questions that underlie the present dispute with Italy, and suggests some of the difficulties with which the latter would have to cope in a military campaign. KAT-CATCHING Some people kill rats with terriers or ferrets; others use kindness! One of these is Mr Dalton, the rat-catcher of Southwark. He and his men have accounted for something like ten million! J. Wentworth Day saw him at work and describes the scene in a cellar in “A Falcon on St. Paul’s” (Hutchinson). Mr Dalton’s two men—he has sixteen assistants —put down some wire cages, opened the doors and suddenly flashed on their bulis’-eyes. Rats leapt into life all over the floor. Mr Dalton talked to them. He spoke in a low. soft voice, making little hissing noises, coaxing sounds, with a low. lover-like whistle every now and then. "Come on, then! Come on. my beauties. Walk right in—don’t be afraid!’’ he invited. The rats did so. One after another they ran into the cages—where there was no bait—and Mr Dalton’s men. moving noiselessly in padded shoes, shut the doors behind them. Occasionally Mr Dalton picked up a rat with his hand and put it in the cage. A hundred yearc ago, we are told, there was an official “Rat-catcher to His Majesty,” who wore a scarlet coat with yellow rats embroidered on the edges; his salary was £lOO a year with perquisites! To-day a county ratcatcher earns from £250 to £3OO a year:— When Bedfordshire wanted one they appointed an army captain, full of honours and martial bearing, and Lord Ampthill stated that generals, majors, doctors—even an admiral —had applied for the post. So you see that a rat-catcher is somebody. LONDON’S TASTE. The following books were in demand in London at the beginning of last month: — Fiction.—Naomi Royde-Smith’s “Fake” (Macmillan); Rachel Swete Macnamara’s “Strange Encounter” (Hurst and Blackett); K. von Dombrowski’s “Land of Women” (Putnam); Bruce Marshall’s “The Uncertain Glory” (Gollancz). Miscellaneous.—“ Great Tudors” (Nicholson and Watson); Dame Ethel Smyth’s “Beecham and Pharoah” (Chapman and Hall); E. T.’s “D. H. Lawrence” (Cape}; William Roughead’s “Knave’s Lookingglass” (Cassell).