NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16815, 5 June 1926, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE. Books on Early New Zealand. Lovers of books on early New Zealand will be gratified to know that the Government Printer will shortly he issuing a new hook covering tho period of Hone Hekc’s rebellion —1844-40 — when, aided by a large body of Ngapuhi chiefs and tribesmen, lie stoutly defied British authority in the North. The book, which is copiously illustrated, has been written by Mr T . Lindsay Buick, F. R. Hist S., and will be published under the title of “New Zealand’s First War." A New Zealand Tragedy. With one or two possible exceptions “The Butcher’s Shop,” by Joan Devanny, marks the largest stride yet made by any English writer of fiction towards that absolute liberty of thought and expression possessed and exercised by Lho novelist of Franco. It is lo the ordinary English story of sexual passion of to-day, what that sort of story is to Richardson’s “Clarissa.” It is as unflinching as Remy dc Gourmont’s biological treatise, “The Natural Philosophy of Love,’ ’and, except for one or two passages of quite unavoidable crudity, lo equal which, one must turn to the pages of Zola or Balzac, it is as clean. The author writes with an apostolic fervor which burns out all taint of pruriency, but what the doctrine is that she would inculcate is very hard to define. Is the climax of suicide and murder conventional, or is it an ironic thrust at the conventions?

The story is too complex to summarise without doing it an injustice. Sufficient is it to say that it is staged in New Zealand, on a remote sheep station, where Margaret Errol, who has been married for many years, and who is attached to her husband and several children, remains secretly discontented with life. With the arrival of a new manager for the station comes tragedy. Glengarry is a man of passionate disposition, and Margaret is wildly fascinated by him. Still, she refuses lo leave her husband or abandon the liaison. Upon this theme has the author built her tragedy. The story shows a fine power of observation, and most of Us implications will, no doubt, prove a source of irreconcilable debate among Us readers. For all that, none will deny the hook’s literary excellence. “Sopia,” by Owen Rutter. It was assumed that the “gonenative” theme, that is, the theme in which loneliness, alcohol, and tropic heat are shown to have sucli a demoralising influence on a white man that he adopts native ways and consorts with native women, had just about been played out. Conrad, Pierre Loti, E. L. Grant Watson, Asterisk, and several other writers have all exploited it through the medium of novels, whilst a stage version covering the same problems was recently shown in Sydney under the name of “White Cargo.” Apparently there cannot be too much of a good thing, and so happens along anotiicr writer with yet another contribution. This time the reader is transported to the wilds of Borneo. Denis Prothero, a clean-minded, handsome youth has just arrived from England to take up his official duties, and is straightway much impressed at the moral latitude of his colleagues. On protesting, he is cynically told that it will not ho long before he himself “adopts the custom of the country.” The months pass, but Denis, although faced with many temptations, remains true to his word. At last his fiancee in England, grown tired of waiting, sends him his ejectment bill. Further embarrassment 'is caused when Hie native girl, whose overtures he has so far repelled, saves the station from massacre by warning him of a' proposed native attack. Gratitude and a weakness resultant upon gin-slings, causes him to yield. Curtain. Several years elapse, and Denis, returning to England, marries and takes his wife back to the jungle, hut m fear of losing her he does not reveal the past. There she discovers the truth. . . and then ... The asterisks arc taken from the book’s paper wrapper. “A Mirror to France,” by Ford Madox Ford. We advise all lovers of France to buy this hook. It will delight them, because it deals not with the cosmopolitan haunts but with the quiet, intimate life of the French. There is a touch of banter hut the undertone is one of real affection for our neighbours. “France (the author says) is still a realm in which you will find good cooking, good wines, pleasant faces, good talk about books, bustle love-making, frugality, dignity, powers of expression, amazingly good local cheeses, brass hands, bull-fights, crimes, passioncls, strikingly attired sportsmen with singular dogs, and neither liCs nor lounges in Hie •hotels.”

France is still the land of good cooking—jf you know where to look for it. "In Bordeaux, in Toulouse, in Perigonl, possibly in Lyons, in Hie country round Allii, and as I think round Dijon, you can go into any restaurant, hotel, roadside inn or other place where they offer food for sale with Hie sure hope lhat whatever is provided will lie good—will lie as much above mere “cooking” as music is above noise.”

“Woodrow Wilson,” by W. A. While. President Wilson’s fame has paled in a Europe which lias suffered so much for his mistakes and for his ignorance, and this somewhat sarcastic account of him by an American critic shows that he was no Lincoln or Washington.

lie had, says Mr White, “a singletrack mind”; lie “dreamed of a world too noble for its inhabitants"; and'he was, in fact, a theorist who did not understand how to deal with human beings.

Ills “100 proud lo tight” speech, after the Lusitania outrage, encouraged the Germans lo believe that lie would submit to anything and so piled up dimcullies for him. Mr White, however, really seems to believe that Mr Wilson's speeches won the war. Rut if lie would consult good German authorities lie would 11ml that Ihc war was won by "General Tank,” by Marshal l-’ooh with the Allied armies, and by the British Navy in equal proportions. Mr Wilson came very near losing the war altogether because lie trusted io talk and failed to send to the Allies, then desperately pressed by Hie Hboats, the, aid which Admiral Sims lias since’ shown could have been given early in 1017 with case.