WHAT LONDON IS READING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21575, 10 February 1940, Page 10

WHAT LONDON IS READING

(Specialty written for ‘The Tima.ru Herald."' by Charles Pilgrim.)

01 1) Stalin ever intend to make a pact with Britain and the Western Powers, or were his eyes always turned towards Berlin.'' “General \V. G. Krivitsky” in I IFas Stalins Agent (Hamish Hamilton), says that the latter has been Stalin's aim ever since the great blood bath of June 30, 1931. Stalin admired Nazi ruthlessness on that famous occasion, and the rebufls have come from Berlin not Moscow. I his we can easily believe.

Some can believe many other things, terrifying as they are. which “General Krivitsky” tells us. For two years, from 1935 to 1937. he was Chief of Military Intelligence in West Europe, and knew the most intimate secrets of the O.G.P.U. We gather from this book that the external and internal politics of Russia to-day are the wishes of one man. Here is further evidence, if evidence were needed, that Stalinism is as totalitarian as Hitlerism; a union between them is the less surprising. “General Krivitsky” left Stalin after the army purge of 1937. He was extraordinarily fortunate to escape with his life; a nom-de-plume is certainly a wise precaution, for the O.G.P.U. has a long arm. The reign of terror of 1937 was comparable only with that of the September massacres. We learn that between 35,000 and 40.000 men lost their lives—including member of all the chief political and other branches of the Soviet Union, and the leaders of the Youth Movement. No one Is safe where terror rules. Suspicion of espionage stalks abroad, and each man distrusts his neighbour. Many would like to disbeleve the authenticity of this book, but there is little reason to do so. Here is an inside picture of the habits of a ruler with whom we might have been allies. Winifred Holtby Vera Brittain was one of Winifred Holtby’s greatest as well as her earliest friends. Their friendship, begun in post-war Oxford, is alluded to in Miss Brittain’s best known book, Testament of Youth. Now she has paid a tribute to this friend of long standing in her biography Testament of Friendship (Macmillan). Winifred Holtby had many friends, and though they may think this is an incomplete portrait, they will be grateful to Miss Britttain for this labour of love. Winifred Holtby was born and bred in the countryside of the East Riding of Yorkshire. She had her first experience of war while still at school, when Scarborough, where she was at school, and not evacuated, was shelled from the sea by a German man-o’-war. Some of her youthful poetic effusions were privately printed when she was thirteen. When she was eighteen one of her oldest friends,

invalided home from France, fell ir love with her, and she treated hiir with breezy scepticism, a fact which affected both of them permanently All these early experiences were important in the development of hei life and character.

After the war. part of which she spent on the Western Front with the W.A.A.C’s, she met Vera Brittain. Post-war Oxford is well described in Testament of Youth, but here is a supplement to the former picture of the difficult position of post-war under-graduates between the too-old and the too-young. Winifred Holtby crowded many activities into her 37 years, and Miss Brittain does these full justice—novel writing, journalism. League of Nations, the Labour Party—all had a place in her many-sided life. Here Is a loyal tribute of friendship to be welcomed by those who knew Winifred and her work, and to be enjoyed also by those who regretfully did not. Suburb to Big Top Ruth Manning-Sanders has written a fascinating tale of that fascinating subject, circus life, in Luke’s Circus (Collins). As such it will invite comparison with Lady Eleanor Smith’s Red Waggon, but Mrs ManningSanders. too, knows her top. Luke Castle, escaping from a dingy Yorkshire suburb at the age of nine, tries to hide under the flap of a circus tent. His escape is unsuccessful, but his interest in the circus is more reasonable than he knows, for it is hereditary. His real name is Lucio Castelli, and he is descended from the famous show of that name. His ambition is to revive the Castelli Show, and be himself a showman. He begins therefore by joining Beckett’s Circus. In the descriptions of life in this circus w T e find all that glamour which, in spite of much of its sordidness, is inseparable from the circus and its followers. We have here the inhabitants; the trick-riders, wild-beast tamers, acrobats, clowns; the quarrels and jealousies; the loves and hates. In fact we have here a world apart, which never fails to fascinate because of its glamour and romance. A Novel of Ideas A different kind of story is William Blake’s second novel The Painter and the Lady (Cassel). The setting is in Languedo in the vineyards near Beziers. Here are two families, distantly related, one rich and commercial .the other poor and artistic. Ties between them are perhaps inevitable w’hen there are young people of both sexes, and the disapproval of Cecile’s family at her elopement with the painter Onesime is perhaps natural. Here is a novel of ideas—left-wing, artistic. It is rich in conception and execution, dramatic and vivid. Here is tragedy, too, when Onesime’s brother, Stephane, is wrongly accused of murder, and suffers the extreme penalty. Yet is is not perhaps altogether tragedy, since Stephane dies for a principle, for an idea, and is therefore to be considered a martyr. This is a novel told in the rich romantic vein of Victor Hugo.

A less pleasant novel is Baibara Beauchamp’s Fair Exchange (Michael Joseph). This is more or less the

story of a cad who plays on the sympathies and susceptibilities of three successive women, and lays them aside when their usefulness is exhausted. Julian Waters is a parasite, a novelist who exists by the good offices of women. He seems to have some kind of fatal attraction for them. First Hilary Barr, then Jocelyn Quentin, and finally Mary’ Powell are attracted to him, either maternally or emotionally, and each is discarded in turn. Finally it is left to his mother to become his willing slave, w’hile he remains still a parasite.