What London is Reading

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21789, 19 October 1940, Page 10

What London is Reading

Clemenceau’s Leadership A DIVER’S EXPLOITS i Specially written for "The Timaru Herald” by Charles Pilgrim.) LONDON, August 20. IT is of especial interest to-day to 1 read of Georges Clemenceau, and how he won the war of 1914-18, in the face of great odds both internal and external, even though his biographer be his political opponent. M. Leon Daudet is a polemist who arouses bitter feelings in his political enemies, but he is first of | all a patriotic Frenchman. He can therefore appreciate what "The Tiger” did for France in 1917, when Marshal Petain, brave but pessimistic as in 1940, prophesied that Haig would give in, and therefore I’rance should make peace with Germany. Clemenceau’s action in silencing Petain undoubtedly saved France. M. Daudet’s biography. Clemenceau. A Stormy Life (Hodge) is the appreciation of a Royalist for a Republican who was first of all a great Frenchman, although it is critical, sometimes scurrilous on certain actions of its hero, which affected party rather than national politics. France has long been split internally into great party feuds, but this study shows how party may be subordinated to national interest in the face of a common danger. It is this lack of a guiding patriotism which has led France into disaster to-day. M. Daudet Is often bitter and satirical, but always witty, and those who admire his work, and they are many, will read this latest book with enjoyment, even in an English translation which has difficulty in rendering some of his most highly spiced passages. Perils of the Deep The sea is a hard taskmaster, and to no one as hard as to the deep sea diver, whose life is in constant peril of suffocation by the terrific pressure. Commander Edward Ellsberg. U.S. Salvage Officer, tells of his own experiences in this hazardous branch of the sea service in Men Under the Sea (Harrap). His own experience in salvaging the submarine S5l made his resolve “never again,” but when the news came 18 months later, “Submarine S 6 sunk, Forty Men Trapped,” he volunteered immediately. Accounts of salvaging operations in this enthralling book include the amazing rescue of 33 men from the Squalus, and the lifting of £5,000.000 of gold from the Laurentic, and £1.000,000 from the Egypt, operations which took seven years and six years respectively to complete. Commander Ellsberg does not mince matters, and it is an heroic tale which unfolds itself. Here is a story full of dauntless adventure to gladden the heart of any schoolboy, with the added spice of truth and personal experience to interest their fathers as well. The Fuhrer in England Is the German Fuhrer a subject for laughter, or is the evil he has done and is doing too serious to make him a figure of fun? Some people think one thing, and some another, but Peter Fleming in a postscript to The Flying Visit (Cape) mildly beseeches the latter thinkers to believe they may be wrong. The story Is most irreverently and i amusingly plotted. Hitler starts from an enormous hangar with suitable publicity and eclat in an enormous bomber, and accompanied by three quart-sized thermos flasks containing all that is best in the vegetable world in liquid form. His destination is London. Circling over London, his danger hunger unassuaged, he thinks he will go further west, when a time bomb in one of the thermos flasks sends all but one of the crew to perdition, the Fuhrer baling out by parachute into a horsepond. Equipped with no map, no money and no English, Herr Hitler is wet but undismayed. He resolves on a peace offensive in order to compass the downfall of England. Here surely is material for the best kind of hilarious comedy. And the exquisitely disrespectful drawings are by David Low, a sure hall-mark of success. Even war and enemies must have their lighter side, and here we have it in this extravaganza in Mr Fleming’s best vein. North and South Gwen Bristow has continued the history of the Larne family in This Side of Glory (Heinemann). Here we have the perpetual struggle between the way of life of the easy-going, charming, indolent South, and the rest of the United States. Eleanor Upjohn is the daughter and secretary of a selfmade engineer, and she falls desperately in love with Kester Larne, an attractive, chivalrous Southern gentleman. In spite of parental opposition on both sides, they get married. They are deliriously happy at first, but Eleanor learns that Kester’s estate is mortgaged to the hilt, and when the bank Is about to foreclose at the time of the cotton slump in 1914, she ruthlessly takes over. Having restored the estate to solvency by the cultivation of gun cotton, she becomes ambitious, and when Kester returns from the front in 1919, he finds his home transformed. and not in his eyes for the better. Their difference of outlook and character becomes apparent now. and Kester leaves her. Their reconciliation, however, Is a natural one, over the sick bed of their child, and the principles of neither are proved right to the detriment of the other. This is a well told story, with well defined characters, and emotional passages are reserved and delicately handled. Island Adventures Dr F. Fraser Darling loves uninhabited islands, but he does not visit them as a means of escape, but because his work takes him there, work which he considers vitally important for mankind. He is a well known naturalist, who has written and lectured before on his observations of wild life on these remote islands off the Scottish coast. Now he has written a different kind of book. Island Years (Bell), in which the wild life he set out to observe forms the background to his own, and his wife’s, adventures in these remote islands, notably Roona, 47 miles N.W. of Cape Wrath, more remote than St. Kilda. and buffeted constantly by Atlantic breakers. Difficulties abound, if you elect to spend winters as well as summers on an island which has very rare contact with the mainland, and that contact is utterly dependent on the weather. On one occasion Mrs Fraser Darling had scarlet fever on another a visitor came to stay and brought no provisions, but. ate his hosts out of house and home. Roona is the nursery of the Atlantic seal, and it was to watch these baby creatures that Dr Fraser Darling went there. The book is fascinating, as a record of the personal experiences of an indomitable couple, and as a picture of wild life familiarly presented. It is beautifully illustrated with photographs taken by the author.