NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17586, 15 December 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

NEW BOOKS REVIEWED.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

"Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island," By H. G. Wells.

No doubt the reader who falls -into Mr H. G. Well's little trap has only himself to thank. He gets fair warning on the title-page, which runs, in the eighteenth-century manner: "Mr Blettsworthy on Rampole Island, being the stock of a Gentleman of culture and refinement who suffered shipwreck and saw no human beings other than cruel and savage cannibals for several years. With much amusing and edifying matter concerning manners, customs, beliefs, warfare, crime, and a storm at sea." This is so promising that one is tempted to overlook the ominous "Concluding with some reflections upon life in general and upon these present times in particular." And, indeed, the story starts off excellently and for a time we dare to hope that we shall And ourselves back in the world of Kipps and Tono-Bun-gay, where there is no lesson to be learnt, and not every picture tells a story. Mr Blettsworthy's youth is spent In the family of his ecclesiastical uncle, to whom all creation seems directed to the production of the Victorian Englishman, so that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. His nephew Arnold grows up in this gospel, until his faith in the Tightness of the world is shaken by the revelation

of the perfidy of his first love, the very Wellsian tobacconist's assistant

Olive Slaughter. So far it is quite like old times.

But Arnold takes his jilting much more seriously than earlier Wells heroes, and a sea voyage, undertaken to restore his shattered spiritual constitution strands him among cannibals of Rampole Island, where we look expectantly for the fun to begin. Nor are we disappointed. Mr Blettsworthy is installed as the Sacred Lunatic of the tribe, with a sacrosanct position as an infallible but involuntary oracle. He dines in state with the commander-in-chief and the sages of the tribe. "We did not fall to forthwith. Etiquette forbade. We put out right hands in the dish, grasped succulent looking morsels and waited, eyeing each other with a pretence of affectionate geniality. We must have looked like three pair oLboxers about to close. Then, as if by simultaneous impulse, wc set ourselves to thrust the chosen morsel each into the mouth of his antagonist. So we demonstrated our unselfish preference of his enjoyment to our own."

So Mr Wells continues to ply us with excellent jam, until we begin to wonder whether wc are not after all going to escape the powder. And then we catch a suspicion of its flavour. Mr Blcttsworthy has been expressing surprise that the giant sloths of the country neither procreate their kind nor die. One of the wise men replies: "Why should they die? Part of your madness, Lunatic, it to be for ever talking of this progress of yours. Are there no megatheria in your world? —that world that keeps going on and on. Does nothing in your world refuse either to breed or die?"

"Nothing," I said, and fell into thought. "No animal," I corrected. Shortly afterwards our suspicions are confirmed. The tribe goes to war. "Nearly everything, until the supplies of colour ran out, was painted red. Every few days there would be orgiastic war dances, in which slaughter and victory were rendered with great animation, or there would be howling meetings against the enemy. These gatherings were supposed to keep up the spirit of our people. In them the sages and leaders of our tribe denounced the vices and crimes of our antagonists amidst the applause and indignation of the tribe. The sentences of the speakers were punctuated by violent howling, and it was extremely unwise to betray any slack-1 ness in these responses."

After that no one will be surprised to he told that Mr Blettsworthy is not reallv on Rampole Island at all. He is in New York, but sees the world through glasses slightly distorted by the hardships he has endured. On his recovery Mr Wells slips deftlv into his skin and we resign ourselves to the reflections threatened on the title-page. They are the same old stuff; and some people like it.

"The Sun, The Stars, and The Unl verse," By W. M. Smart.

The newest particulars about the planet Mars are contained in an excellent popular astronomy which is published to-day.

Mr Smart, who is chief assistant in the Cambridge University Observatory and speaks with great authority, thus sums up the results of recent research: The planet has an atmosphere thinner probably than the earth's; the seasonal disappearances and growths of the polar caps suggest the presence of a limited amount of water on the planet's surface, confirmed by the spectroscopic detection of water vapour in the Martian- atmosphere . . In 1908; temperature observations indicate that Mars, juudged by our own terrestrial standards, is at best a cold and chilly planet; the seasonal changes observed in the dark areas appear to indicate the existence of some form of vegetation. "And what are the 'canals'? There is now little doubt as to their objective reality. Mr Trumpler, who assiduously observed Mars at the 1924 and 1)26 oppositions with the great refractor of the Lick Observatory, states his opinion as follows: 'Perhaps the network system of canals should be identified with depressions in the surface which, by higher temperature and accumulation of moisture, produce more luxuriant vegetation and thus become visible. . .' The earth teems with life of every form, the moon is cold and dead; somewhere in between comes Mars, a decaying world, its evolutionary course nearly run."

Lowell, the astronomer, evolved a theory of a dying race in a desert world lo explain Mars. It will be noted that Mr Smart in his most useful and interesting book docs not deny the possibility of some form of life. But the cold must be intense; it is for most of the year a frozen world, unless heat comes from the inferior of the planet.