THE READERS' COLUMN.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 September 1915, Page 9

THE READERS' COLUMN.

(By James Wortley)

'A Fair Country," by Winston Churchill, autlwi of "The Inside of the Cup, ,: "The Crisis," etc. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd.) 'Per A. S. Brooker, Devon St.

When a popular novelist becomes a preacher he reaches a congregation, the size of which the most eminent divine cannot hope to touch. If in the shape of a book, and especially such as we are accustomed to expect from Mr. Churchill's facile pen, the message comes into the home, and gets at the man ox woman when and where he or she are most vulnerable, seated at the fireside. It is just then the individual is most "club-able,'' and the message most likely to reach the heaxt. Mr. Churchill has always had a message—has always been a preacher. AH his books, from "The Crisis'' to the one under notice 'have had a -vital spiritual note that one cannot but take notice of. This spiritual note has given greater emphasis with the passing years, and of this Mr. Churchill's books bear distinct evidence. "A Far Country" is autobiographical, and relates the 'life story of a lad who became a leading corporation attorney, and as such a power in ilvis State. The story J shall not attempt to outline. It has features which are common to the author's other books. The juggling with politics and enactments by the mannikins of interested trusts and financiers who occupy the seats of the mighty in the State legislature, such as we are familiar with, occupies a full share of the story. Neither can the author omit to make many a tilt at the profession of organised Christianity, or its iiu.sk. such as we get in "The Inside of the Cup," Here is a little aside. Hugh 'Paret, the narrator of his own history, has gone to a country town on politics bent, pulling one of the many strings of the party machine. He is the guest of the local leader. "Supper was a decorous but heterogenous meal of the old-fashioned sort that gives one the choice between tea and cocoa. The minister was there, the Rev. Mr. Doddridge, who would have made, in appearance at least, a perfect Puritan divine in a steeple hat and a tippett. Only—he was no longer the leader of the community; aoid even in his grace he had the air of deferring to the man who provided the bounties of which we were about to partake rather than to the Almighty." Hugh Paret is not an attractive personality. The reader, as his father-confessor, knows too much of the man to take him as the people of his State did. They would consider him the suave, successful lawyer, AVe know him as a masterful, unscrupulous prig. Nevertheless, the reader has a certain sympathy with him, because of his frank avoiwal of his wrongdoing. Hugh setting out for "a far country," to which he came, and where, when there, he found but the tasks Mat the swine, ct«., would seem to date from the mutual misunderstanding that existed between his father and himself. He says: "I loved him, but he made of righteousness a stern and terrible thing implying not joy, but punishment, the suppression rather than the expansion of aspirations. TII.-5 religion seemed woven all of austerity, containing no shining threads to catoh my eye. Dreams to him were matters for suspicion and distrust. I sometimes ask myself, as I gaze at his portrait now, whether he could have felt the secret, hot thrills I knew and did not identify with religion. ..... I cannot judge him, even to* day. . I never knew him. . There were times in niv youth when the curtain of his unfamiliar spirit was withdrawn a little, and once, after I had passed the crisis of some childhood disease, I awoke to find him bending over my bed,with a tender expression that sin-prised and puzzled me." But the whole book does not consist of dry sermonising; Indeed, not any of it is, though quoted extracts would appear to make it so. It is brimful of life, vitalising, energetic and full. The distressing thing is tliat we travel with Hugh, watch him hesitate at the cross roads, and finally take the Wrong turning. The road' home from the country is long and tedious, and life cannot be the same for him. It is satisfactory to know that a life full of scheming for power and peft is not the best that cau be, and Paret misses the love and comradeship of friends until the insufficiency of his efforts to really satisfy. What have become to us typical college, business and domestic life among the upper circles of America is graphically depicted. OTHER NOVELS. "A Texas Ranger," by William McLood Raine (Dillingham); "The Trail of '98," by Robert W. Service (Fisher L'nwin); and "The MMlandors," by Charles Tenney Jackson (Bobbs-Merrill Co.), all received from the B.K. Bookshop, are all capital American yarns, well above the average fiction standard, and will receive longer notice in our next instalment of "The Readers' Column." NOTES. ' Mr. Rex Beach is telling the American preas that the. picture drama is improving the standard of our novels. Harper's announce- a great quartette of books fresh from their press. They are "The Landloper," by Holman Day; "The Turmoil," by Booth Tarkington; '"Empty Pockets," by Rupert Hughes; "The Primrose Ring,'' by Ruth Sawyer. General Goethals, the Governor and Director of the Panama Canal operations, lias been lecturing on the construction of "the big ditch'' before the Princeton University, and these have been put in book Win for the benefit of those interested in that great undertaking. Baroness Orczy has started a remarkable organisation, entitled "The IVomeii of England's Active Service League." One of its rules i* that no member must be seen in public with a man who, although free and fit, has refused to enlist. Ten thousand applications for membership were received the first day. Many scores of writers and 'journa.'ists ore ■ engaged'one way or another on active service. This applies equally to Kncrlis.il and American writers. Incidentally they will no doubt he making use of the ample opportunity of the many dramatic situations the'war nrovid'is