AMONG THE BOOKS

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1736, 6 September 1919, Page 4

AMONG THE BOOKS

SOME REVIEWS.

PLEASANT PROPAGANDA. Tired of assaulting the system directly, the teachers have launched a flank attack. Tell a man his sins to his face, and as likely as not he will turn nasty. At the very mildest he will go on committing them. Show him the same flaws in someone else, ,or handle him so deftly that he seems to be the first and only discoverer of his own shortcomings, and he will .shout "peccavi" from the house-tops. There is a chance anyhow that he may do it: if he fails you he has at least been negotiated scientifically. So Miss Edith Howes has written a book Educationist first and fancyweaver only by the way, she calls it "Tales out of School," and introduces it in a parable. As it is the purpose or parables to bring you to a "Thou art the man," we shall anticipate no one's progress to grace. So also we shall say little of the 15 tales that follow except that they are better pedagogy than literature. Now it is furniture, now the inspector, now the committee-man, now the senior or junior teacher who belongs to the dark ages. Or the playground is depressing, or the thermometer so low in the schoolroom that the "real" teacher is driven to writing an article in the newspaper. Whatever the theme the picture carries its own condemnation—and when one considers how very difficult it is to do this kind of thing, Miss Howes will not be judged harshly for her failure to give her stories grip. If the educational "Song of the Shirt" has yet to be written, and there are no school horrors here quite bad enough to provoke a Dominion "Cry of the Children," Miss Howes has at least attacked the the problem in the only permanent and effective way. Apart altogether from parents and the public, it would be great gain if this volume could be read by at least 80 per cent. of the teachers themselves. Meanwhile this troublesome question arises: Why is a lady of such conspicuous talent permitted (or compelled) to drift to Australia? ("Tales Out of School" comes from the publishers, • Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs.) A Blotted Escutcheon. We have ended the war in fact, but by no means yet in fiction. Nearly every new novel that comes from the press has the war still, or some phase of it. for background. In "Wings of the Morning," by Joan Sutherland, the story opens in America, long before the Huns disturbed the peace of the world. A well-bred Englishman is serving a term of imprisonment for manSlaughter, in a gaol run by a brutal governor. Soon, however, the culprit's release is secured, and the •venue is shifted to England, in the fateful days prior to August, 1914. Milton Collingwood, the prisoner of the first chapter, is domiciled in an elaborate suite of rooms St. James, a highly-successful portrait painter, who disdains the favours that society would shower on him, and lives a secluded life. Then comes the war, and the painter places his car and his services at the disposal of the Croix Rouge, after thev had been refused by the English War Office. Soon he meets a charming English girl, and, of course, falls in love with her, but the blot on his life forms a barrier—and the motif of the whole story. Henceforth we have a picture of life in a country house in England under .war conditions, and in portraying certain characters in this new setting the author is a good deal more successful than in developing • the blotted 'scutcheon business, which is apt at times to run to loose ends. More than once the weaver seems to come to the end of a piece of materia], and instead of joining it up, starts afresh. Incidentally, too, the work of an ambulance driver at the Front is portrayed with a meticulous regard for detail that reminds one of certain French authors, and will cause a little shiver down the spine of those who do not fully appreciate the hideousness of war. There is one chapter in particular in which a scene in a captured German

REVIEWS AND NOTES

dug-out is described in a most harrowing fashion. We are by no means sure that the writer has not used various incidents of the war that received newspaper prominence at the time and more or less skilfully incorporated them in her story. Still, readers who like their fare spiced at times with strong flavouring will find this a very satisfying volume. ("Wings of the Morning" is published by Hodder & Stoughton, London, and has reached us through L. M. Isitt, Ltd.) GLEANINGS. The "New Zealand National Review" pursues its apparently primrose path. Brightly illustrated and admirably produced, it lacks nothing but a~ little more literary distinction to be a really first-class magazine. We note, of course, that intending contributors are asked to indicate when they submit an article whether they do, or do not, ex.pect to be paid for it. That tells a tale. On the other hand the testimony of the 45 pages of advertisements is more than usually emphatic.

Solemn advice to the publishers on how to run their business:— "The older the house, the stronger its already accumulated list, the more conservative, naturally, it becomes, the less inclined to play with loaded dice in the shape of manuscripts. Yet a policy of extreme caution and conservatism is more dangerous and deadly than a dash of the gambler's makeup. Two poor seasons together are noticed by the trade; four poor seasons together may put a house badly behind. A season with 10 books only, all good, all selling moderately well, is perhaps more meritorious and more valuable in the long run than a season with 30 books, nearly all poor except for one or two sensational successes. But the fellow who brings out the 30 books and has one or two decided best sellers is the fellow who will make large profits, attract attention and acquire prestige. It is far better to try everything you can that seems to have 'a chance' than to miss something awfully good. And, provided you drop the bad potatoes quickly, it will pay you better in the end."

.It is admitted that a recent book of hitherto unpublished sketches by America's first humourist contain relatively poor stuff. Even Albert Bigelow. Paine admits it, to whom the author is a god. But the Mark Twain touch is far from absent. The death of Dickens threatened the world with an epidemic of lectures of which Clemens gives us a burlesque description: "Readings from Dickens," by John White, who has the great delineator's style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this country and made these things a study, always practising each reading before retiring and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips. Upon this occasion Mr W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he saw Mr Dickens smoke. This

relic is kept in a solid silver box made purposely for it "Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist," a popular lecture, by John Gray, who waited on his table while he was at the Grand Hotel, New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the audience a fragment of the last piece of bread : which the lamented author tasted in this country. "Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch," a lecture by Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears, and will always wear, a glove on the hand made sacred by the clasp -of Dickens. Only death will remove it.

In looking back over the war novel*, "Mr Britling Sees it Through," "Blind Alley" and "Saint's Progress" will always be neatly packeted in our minds. Mr Galsworthy's book is not so strong as Mr Wells's nor- so arresting as Mr George's, but it is the only one of the three which is a story. Mr Wells has lost or abandoned the art of writing stories, and Mr George always was more of a feminist than a novelist; but Galsworthy is a romanticist and a humanist, and even when he tries to make an important feature of religious and moral discussion, as he does here, the story sticks out through every pore.

An American paper the other day published facsimiles of half a dozen short letters by half a dozen famous French authors. From the point of view of calligraphy, George Sand is an easy winner, her writing being at once artistic, easy and bold. De Maupassant no less definitely is the most hopeless, followed at a considerable interval by Victor Hugo. Brieux we would place next to George Sand—his penmanship indeed is finer and more regular than hers, but not so arrestingly cesthetic. (It is interesting to note, by the "way, that Brieux, who ventures boldly into English for the "yours truly" makes it, like most schoolboys, "your's truly.") The two remaining authors, Flaubert and Anatole France,' write curiously alike, even to a striking inability to keep their lines parallel with the top of the page. In the case of France in particular the obliquity is almost 1 grotesque.