INTEREST IN BOOKS

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1935, Page 12 (Supplement)

INTEREST IN BOOKS

PUBLISHERS’ CHOICE AUCKLAND LAD SEES GERMANY. POKING FUN AT CIVILISATION. “The Other Germany.” by Gordon Bolitho. Lovat Dickson Ltd., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. This is the diary and comments of a New Zealander who spent three years as a student at Heidelburg. Mr. Bolitho, as he states quite, frankly, began his sojourn in Germany with all the postwar bitterness against the authors of the Great War and the prejudice against everything German that was typical of the Auckland in which he had grown up from boyhood, prejudice he found still existed in some measure in London five years ago. It was in the year 1930 that the author at the age of 25 left London for Germany. He could not speak German, and his first impressions of the Europe for w-hich New Zealand had spent blood and treasure were certainly hot exhilarating, though he saw the humour as well aS the annoyances of “ignorance abroad.”

He found at Heldelburg, among the students, among the traders of the town and among the ■ country, people deep anxiety as to the future of the Fatherland. It did hot take long, for Mr. Bolitho to shed a few of his prejudices. He found the Germans a dispirited people, Some of them vengeful, all of them sad, and many of them ill-clad and underfed but taking their fall from ease and wealth with quiet stoicism unsalted by the humour wherewith the British slumdwellers or unemployed so Often keeps himself sane and life tolerable. The New Zealand student found his German confreres willing to be friendly. He was admitted to their student organisations, he saw duels fought when they were banned by the Government, and he gives an interesting account of the appeal Of duelling to the German Student. Mr. BOlithq lived in Germany long enough to see the ban on duelling removed by Herr Hitter, and to See a good many other anti-military restrictions removed when the Nazi rule began. He found warm welcome at the homes of fellow students, and in the country life of Germany intensity Of effort, acceptance of harsh Conditions and even the lack of food, and, in his earlier years, deep, disconsolate dread Of the future. To such people dame the Nazi appeal. It awbke them as by a trumpetcall. Herr Hitter and his followers refused to believe that Germany had taken thd cOUnt. They would not admit military defeat in the Great War, Only the betrayal of Germany by the traitors who desired Socialism to rule.

Among the young men .■ with no prospects of recovering their former means 6nd social standing the appeal was irresistible, They took fresh hedrt. The Gefmahs are, says Mr. Bolitho, a people Who love organisation, rules ahd uniforms. The Nazi Leader gave them all those, and gave them also the reminder that whatever the sins of the preceding generation, which had been responsible for the war, Germany could ahd would once more attain to the position of a great European Power. The author’s dOscriptidn of the Polish Corridor, his experiences ■ among the Polish Jews, his contrasts between German efficiency and Polish laziness eSem just a little oVerddne. He was living with German people whom he liked, he heard the story of the "corridor” as told by Germans and he has but two shades —white and black—in his picture. The Germans are always good and black is the right shade for the Poles, Nevertheless, while the conviction remains that the truth may be somewhere between Mr. Bolitho’s eulogy and Other writers’ condemnation. Of Nazi rules and government this is a book that Should be read and studied.

It has the merit of being written by a young man and by a New Zealander. To say that is not to extol insularity, but it is to claim that the views of a Dominion student are less likely to be trammelled or coloured than those of Sojourners in Germany Who had come from Great Britain, where social laws and prejudices are so longstanding and so enwrapping in their effect upon judgment.

This book will make a reader think. Even allowing for the author’s remembrance of kindly people and happy days, there still remains much to ponder over and to raise doubt Whether the information upon which British opinion of Nazi Germany has been formed has been sufficient and reliable enough for such a purpose.

Mr. Bolitho does not ignore entirely the uglier tendencies Of the Hitler regime. He tries to explain the persecution of the Jews, but he appears to have accepted rather too easily the Nazi allegation that the So-Called persecution was much exaggerated. The fact remains that Jewish relief organisations find themselves with thousands of cases needing assistance, and if the Nazi persecution were less brutal than has been suggested it was at least severe enough to make those refugees flee for their lives.

Whether his conclusions are accepted or not this is a book which any student of European affairs should read. It is not dry propaganda, there is athleticism as well as discipline in German student life, the descriptions of home life show how near akin in essentials are most Western peoples, and the reader is likely to share the author’s contention that it is good for Germany and good for Civilisation that she has found her soul again. Her conduct is a matter for the future, and will depend very largely upon the leader she chooses, and the sympathy or the intolerance Germany receives from other countries. “H6w Like aft Aftgel,” by A, G. Maedonnell. Mcftiillan & Co., London. A. J. Fyfe Ltd., New Plymouth. This volume is a brilliant, amusing satire upon present day civilisation. It purports to be the experiences of a boy who was wrecked upon a South Sea island. The other survivors were three missionaries, one English, one French and one German. They educate the boy each according to his lights—the Englishman to think there is but one code of rule, that of the English gentleman, and ths one game, cricket; the Frenchman that France is the only country where life can be really lived, and that shrewdness can go hand in hand with vivacity; the German that the genius of the Fatherland had preserved civilisation. An educational crisis arises when “Hugo” reaches adolescence and the question of sex must enter his mental training. Here again national lights

govern the teaching. The English padre gives the early Victorian view of woman “shy, modest and retiring. The sight of violence and, above all, of bloodshed is apt to make them faint.” Woman must be placed on a pedestal, kept there and worshipped. The German pastor was less exotic “You choose a woman,” he told Hugo, “and you marry her and you put her down in a kitchen, and there you leave her.” The French priest would have “no woman problem. There is Only Life, and Woman holds the key. All women are exactly the same. All women must be made love to all the time. That is the secret ... The good God sent Woman into the world to try us, to tempt us, to dazzle, infuriate, bewilder us, to inspire and to lead us, to amuse us, to bully us, to torment us, in short to enchant us. Very well. Be enchanted.”

Hugo found the teaching difficult to apply when in process of time he found himself rescued from the island by an American yacht and basely deserted by his three mentors. He finds entrance to Western civilisation a complicated proceeding. The author does not spare the inhibitions and restrictions of the passport system, and very early in his career Hugo finds the Woman problem looms large on his horizon. There is not a dull page in this book,

although its satire upon soma elements in modern life is very unsparing. Hugo enters English life as the alleged husband of a film star. Her mode Of living and" the role Hugo is made to fill by their publicity agent make application of the island-taught-precepts about .women difficult to apply. They lead to some most amusing experiences in which the reader is glad to have a chance of sharing. •