NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 1600, 31 May 1924, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE "How I Stood by My Kaiser." A reverent admirer of the ox-Kaiser, Count, Kospoth, has published a book called "How I Stood by My Kaiser," in which he tries quite unsuccessfully to substitute a portrait of a noble and god-like Emperor for Ihe portrait of a vain and foolish Emperor recently given in Count Zettitz TruLzsehler's book. Count Kospoth, who is 85, was about 60 when he met the Kaiser for the first, time at a hunting party in the neighbourhood of the count's home. "As I set out," he writes in his diary, "I made up my mind not to play the pari of court fool, but to be received by him seriously, and I do nol, think I particularly pleased the Kaiser. 1 had imagined that lie was quite d iff ere nl." The count, who held that the Kospofhs were every whit as good as fhe Hohenzollerns, ended by seeing a good deal of the Kaiser, but he appears lo have feared I hat his blunlness of speech would bring him into disgrace. He says that General Bissing was the only other man in Ihe Kaiser's entourage who dared to speak to the Kaiser bluntly, and he does not realise that this statement reflects severely on Hie character of William 11. The count teils a good story of fhe general:—"The Kaiser once wanted to abolish the beautiful helmet worn by

the Guardes du Corps, and to give the troops in its place the helmet of a Roman soldier. Bui. when lie showed a sketch of the design to Genera Bissing fhe general said: No. Your Majesty, I won't have this ghastly fin cap for my regiment.' 'The design is mine,' said the Kaiser, and Bissing replied. 'Thai makes no sort of difference and does not make the thing any liner.' " A tale of a pheasant shoot on Count Tschirschky's estate gives another picture. The Kaisor's host was anxious that the Sovereign should have the gratification of shooting a very large number of birds. Count Kospoth writes; "An old gamekeeper, knowing this, picked up Hie birds after each drive and counted like this: "21, 22, 23, 34, 35, 30," and so on. while 1 noticed Ihe real number. After each drive the Kaiser asked. 'How many birds have 1 shot?' and the gamekeeper promptly gave the number he had made up. 1 said the, Kaiser ought not to allow himself to be deceive,!. I expected after this pointed speech that, (he Kaiser would nol command I nie to-come to him during the next drive, but he remained just as friendly | and when he was tired he allowed me to shoot wilh his gun." Count Kospoth said Ihe Kaiser was once upon a lime a good prophet. He once said lo the count: "Germany can lose only by war ami can win no- ! thing. We should place everything j at slake if we, carried on a war, it does nol matter with whom." The jewel of the count's book is the following priceless dictum of Ihe Kaiser: "The German people will never entirely understand me. I should have been a much belter man for fhe French."

"Recompense," by Robert W. Keable. This is a sequel to "Simon Called Peter," a book which caused quite a flutter of excitement at fhe time of its publication. Jf adds another chapter lo Ihe lives of Peter Graham, the | rebelling Army chaplain, and Julie Camelyn, the nursing sister, whose peculiar adventures together were duly recorded in "Simon Called Peter." The preparatory note leads one to the belief that Mv Keable is still smarting under the criticism pass'ed upon the earlier work: be dial as it may, he has certainly lifted this second volume to a much higher level of thought and style. "Simon Called Peter" ended with the separation of fhe lovers after their days of stolen enjoyment in London during the war.

"Recompense" ends also in a more significant separation, but throughout the new story Peter and Juiie pursue I heir roads apart, although at certain crucial points the pains cross. For Peter the road goes by hard fighting as a private in the last battles of lite war to a grim testing in South. Africa, where he works as Ihe aid io a pair of very rough customers at a trading store high on the Berg in Basutoland. Tint this is where some of Mr Keanlc's finest work comes in. "Site is iron-handed, unrelenting, inexorable," he confesses, "fill one has learned her way. So must God needs be." Whether showing the way in which a man is forged out of Peter Graham's hitherto liuid elements of virility, or etching the pitiless nature of the two traders, Stenhouse and Jeffries, or drawing in the Sesuto boy, Mosheshoe, one of those native African mystics whose simplicity has always moved his sense of spiritual beauty, he leaves nothing to be desired. When Peter, after 'beingwounded by a marauder on the heights, is carried down by his friends and Julie in an agonising march to the distant hospital in Maritzburg, the end of his via dolorosa is a reborn vocation, and we take leave of him in a Carthusian house. Julie's destiny, as

was to be expected from a woman of the type, is far less engrossing I ban Peter's though it will doubtless be read with avidity. Although her occasional vulgarity obscures her rare l, qualities, there is much of interest in her career and the way it oono'iudes. A book which will be very widely read and variously talked about and criticised.

"The Romantic Woman," by Mary Borden.

If an American woman of One upbringing and emotion married an Englishman —later a duke—and found the marriage a failure, this is the sort of autobiography one would expect from her. The story of Joan and Binky moves on inevitably among the, tragedies, fatuities, and finales o-f Joan's girlhood friends with the tune and tension of life as it really fs lived and is rarely drawn. It creates the sense and need of tears as tragedy should. The book stands high out of the Spring-spate of novels as the work of an authentic artist who sails vwy near genius. <.