NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 15272, 23 June 1923, Page 11 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE. Death of Maurlco Hewlett. Mr Maurice Hewlett, whose death was announced this week, .was.born in Kent. He was called to the Bar and from 1896 to 1900 ho was Keeper of Land Revenue Records and Enrolments. His first ’ successful novel, “The Forest Lovers,” was published in 1898, and thenceforward rarely a year passed without some worthy contribution from him to contemporary Action. Steeped in the lore of the Middle Ages, there was no English novelist living who could draw better pictures of mediaevalism. Love and battles, chivalry and elementary passions, knights and fair ladies, were his theme. The clang of arms resounded in every line he wrote. His style has been happily described as being “like flags and trumpets.” Of his longer novels, “Richard Yea-and-Nay,” was perhaps the most successful.

A Chinese Husband. “Mr and Mrs Sen ” (Hodder and Stoughton) is a tale of singular charm, delicately written by Mrs Miln, who, since her triumphs of “Mr Wu” and

“The Feast of Lanterns,” has become a leading interpreter of China and Chinese life to the West. The hero is a Chinese diplomatist of rare character and kindliness who marries a young English girl of distinguished family. The two are not unhappy, though a visit to her husband’s exalted family in China proves trying to the English-woman. But the end is sad. “ The Man Upstairs,” by P. G. Wodehouse.

It is given to but few writers to be equally good at long and short stories —at the complete little sketches which fill a few pages of a magazine, and the novel which makes a volume by itself. This writer is one of the few. Most people know his delightfully humorous novel's, and all who do may safely add this volume to their collection. It contains nineteen capital stories, some of which seem to be condensed novels in themselves, and some brimful of the real Wodehouse humor. The book is certain to be as popular as the author’s earlier ones. It was only published in a popular edition for the first time last year, and already the sales are in keeping with those of its predecessors. The publishers are Methven and Co., London. Mr Hoover’s Book.

“We have, in fact,” says Mr Herbert Hoover, in “American Individualism" (Heinemann), “a special social system of our own. We have made it ourselves from materials brought in revolt from conditions in Europe.” The “firm and fixed idcaL" is equality of opportunity for the individual, “while we in turn must stand up to Ihc emery wheel of competition." On Russia’s ghastly experiment Mr Hoover speaks with knowledge: “Socialism in a nation-wide application has now proved itselt with rivers of blood and inconceivable misery to be an economic and spiritual fallacy.

“ Tho Mad Mullah of Somaliland,” by Douglas Jardine. With a Foreword by Lord Milner.

“I like war, but .you do not.” This is but one of many phrases used' by the Mad Mullah of Somaliland in the, correspondence he addressed to “the English People” that suggest that — mad or sane—he' was intelligent enough to grasp the essential factor and sincere enough to state it in plain terms. The Mullah, it will bo noticed, said that he liked war, not that he liked victory—that is to say, that he enjoyed his national game apart from the result of any particular encounter. He compelled the English people —to the dismay of the taxpayer—to play his game for more than twenty years; and it is not improbable that they would be still playing it if a higher power had mot intervened and killed him with influenza.

In this book Mr Jardine tells the long story of his campaigns In a way to make the complilcated details part of an easily intelligible whole and to bring out the dramatic and romantic aspects of the conflict, lie has never seen the Mullah, but he draws him as a live man —cruel and rapacious, but with a clear-sighted resolution that gives a certain dignity to these qualities. The Mullah appears as the child of his hard country and hard people; he understood how to keep himself alive in the first and how to dominate the second. It is not the fact that he was a popular hero; he was something much more formidable in the conditions —an invulnerable sorcerer. lie gave an organised band of followers what they wanted —food, women, and loot; and with that mobile force he could exact a terrible vengeance on tribes that had sided with the •English—ns many of them preferred to do. lie claimed a religious mission that sanctified the life of raiding that was otherwise acceptable to the Somalis as a natural and amusing mode of existence: They were quick to perceive an admirable opportunity to lay up for themselves treasure in the Mohammedan paradise by the inexpensive method of confiscating other tribes’ treasure upon earth. Victory spelt riches and wives; defeat a paradise peopled by houris.” Mr .lardinc makes it clear why it was difficult for the British Government to assert itself. Officials proposed, but transport disposed. Water and its absence were the dominating factors ,and tiie small parties of natives could travel farther without water than our columns. He has a delightful chapter on the Somali, jovial orator and tough fighter. In 1912 a Somali crawled to Berbera with a bullet wound in his leg and a spear wound right through his body. When the doctor probed the first, the patient gasped, “Do not worry about that, but please have a look at the spear wound; it hurts me when I laugh.’ Mr Jardine describes the various attempts mado’ by us over a period of more than twenty years to reduce the Mullah to impotence, or at any rate to inactivity. Wo had no option hut to try conclusions with him ,for in 1899 lie was such 5 menace to Berbera that Indian merchants fled by sea. To put. it roughly, in spite of one or two of |,lie setbacks that are unavoidable in this type of warfare, our organised expeditions dispersed the Mullah's forces, but ho always escaped to become the nucleus of another horde of raiders. His forces were dispersed for the last time in .1920 by a small British force Supported by aeroplanes; he once morj. escaped, but died, as slated, before he could again assert himseli.