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Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20896, 27 November 1937, Page 12

Mr Walter Duranty, whose “One Life, One Kopeck,” has won welldeserved popularity, is one of America's most famous newspaper correspondents. He is, however, an Englishman, born in Manchester and educated at Harrow. For many years he represented “The New York Times” in Moscow, and his house in the Bolshoie Ordynka was a favourite meeting place of visitors to the city. Later he received a roving commission which took him all over Europe. His wooden leg does not prevent him from getting about wherever he pleases.

The strength of George F. Dempster’s book “The Love that Will Not Let Me Go”, lies in its sincerity and truth. Seldom, if ever, have such vivid scenes from real life, showing the love of God working in people’s lives to-day, been collected into-one book. Another book which approaches the same subject from a different aspect is “Christianity and Its Critics,” by Dr Donald Soper. Here are an examination of and an answer to all the charges which are brought most frequently against Christianity. The book is written in the lively manner we have come to expect of Dr Soper, and its authority is unquestionable.

In his early days, Mr Sherwood Anderson was compared by the critics to Dostoievsky and Tchehov. As it happened, he had read .neither of them, his chief reading up to that time having been Borrow’s “Lavengro” and the Old Testament. Later, Mr Theodore Dreiser interested him in D. H. Lawrence’s work. He was bora in Camden, Ohio, in 1876. His boyhood was spent wandering from place to place. At the age of twelve he had to begin work, to augment the family exchequer. He served in Cuba during the Spanish-American war, did various odd Jobs, began to write, and was introduced by his brother, Karl Anderson, the artist, to various literary people. At one time he bought two newspapers in Virginia, one supporting the Republican party, the other the Democrats. He edited both of them impartially!

For forty-one years Mr C. H. St. L. Russell served on the staff of Clifton College, England, the opening section of his new book of “Poems” is entitled Cliftoniensia, and the book itself is dedicated to the famous school from which many distinguished men have come, including our own war historian and author, Dr C. E. Bean. Much of Mr Russell’s verse has already been published in English periodicals and papers, and a number of the lighter pieces have graced the pages of “Punch.” The author, indeed, has the “Punch” touch, a deft turn of phrase, allusive wit, and smooth craftsmanship in the scholarly school of Calverley and Austin Dobson. Ballade and rondeau, parody and translation, all trip lightly from his pen to mingle with occasional poems and Tennysonlan "sea-pieces.” If the thought is slight, the wartime sentiment rather dated, and the diction well worn, still the expression is always apt, and a genuine feeling Is evident behind its conventional form, as when Mr Russell gazes over Clifton College:

Till from high Tower and Chapel die The last flush hues of rosy light. And the gloom gathers round, and I Stand looking southward through the night.