East and West.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13490, 11 January 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

East and West.

I'llK COLOUR LINK. Mr A. K. W. Mimon's new novel, "The Broken lload."' is a very vivid,, a very powerful, and an admirably -written study of the unhappy lot of the young Indian educated in England, and forced by fate to return, after Eton and Oxford, to the life of an Oriental. Kast is East, and West is Wo-t. Each i>; something; each is an entity. But half East-, half West, is that most hopeless tragedy—just nothing at all. Very clearly Mr Mason, througlrthe ,mou( h of an old, experienced official, points his moral in an early chapter of li:Vs book: You take these boy,s, you give them Oxford, a season in London. . .' . You show them Paris. You give them opportunities of enjoyment such as no other age, no other place afford.-—has ever afforded. You give them, for a shoi t while, a. life of colour, of swift, crowding hours of pleasure : and then you send them back—to Kettle down in their native States, and obey the ordeni of the Re.siden 1 :. JL>o you think I hey will have their heart iu their work, in their humdrum life, iu their e"abora t e ceremonies 1 "There's a youth now in the South, the hejr of an Indian thro;:-:---lie has six weeks' holiday. How does lw use it. do you think ' He travels hard to England, spends a week there, and travels back again. Iti England he is treated a:< an equal; here, in spite of his eeienionies, lie is an inferior, and will and must be iso. The best you can hope is that. he will be. merely unhappy. You pray that he won't lake to drink and make his friends among the jockeys- and the t.iainers. He has lost the taste for the native life, and nevertheless he has got Uj live it.

" Xh'jre is the white woman.'' continued Luffe. " TJie English -\vMnan. thy English girl, with her daintinetw, her pretty frock,-:, her good locks, her delicate charm. Very likely she only thinks of him as a picturesque figure; she danws wi'-h liim, but she does not take him .seriously. Yes, but he may take her seriously, and often docs. Wluil then? He is already a stranger among liiis own folk. He will eat out life heart with bitterness and jealousy. " And, mind you, I a.m speaking of the best—-the best of the princes and the best of the English women. What of the others —i-lie English women who fake his pearls, and the princes who come back and boa.st of their success? Do you think that is good for British rule in India?" Hhere Ali is ;i Pathan, a. prince of Chiltistan. He is a Miccts.s in England, becomes almost an Englishman, and friends, with Dick Linworth, wlict;v father made the- roau 1 ihiough his country, and who hy.i the Indian tradition in his own blood. He also meets the white woman fated to be his undoing. .She accepts his pearls, but will not marry liim. And ht> goes back Lo his own people with hatred for the European ill his heart. He plols agaiiwt the dominant Power and is broken by his old friend; and Where Ali, who might have been a man. "broken-hearted, ruined, and despairing." (Mnks himself- to death " with the riff-raff of llangoon."