THE NEW BOOKS

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19633, 20 July 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

THE NEW BOOKS

A WOMAN AND WAR. Ethel Mannin’s Latest Novel. OAOTUS, By Ethel Mannln (Jarrolds). ■Miss Mannin’s new novel is mainly a character study of a woman "conchie” during the Great War. It is quite an interesting study and in addition some of the sketches of minor characters, especially the Scottish farmers, arc very true to life. There is, however, nothing outstanding about the hook.

Elspeth Rodney, the heroine, has been educated more by her freethinking old uncle, a retired sea captain, than by her parents or her teachers. In her ' adolescence she gained, from old Uncle Andy’s -calm philosophic scepticism and humorous irony a turn of mind which made her a sort of social outcast even to her relations during the war years.

In 1914, shortly after her father’s death, Elspeth goes on a tour of Germany and there experiences for the first time the emotions of love. For some weeks she lives in a new world with Karl, her handsome young German lover. Then comes the warcloud and Elspeth just reaches 'England again on the eve of the British declaration.

Shaken by her separation from her lover and hating the wave of militarism which sweeps over England, she shrinks from active war work and retires to her uncle's farm In Scotland as a “ land 'girl." Here openly and seoretly despised and jeered at by her aunt and her cousins, she sets to work with an air of Indifference until the arrival of two German prisoners on/the farm. To the younger and more cultured'of these she is attracted, first as a solace for her loss of Karl, but soon by real love. This section which portrays the dour, harsh, war minded aunt and the jealous 'uncharitable daughters in the Scotch homestead and their shameful treatment of the German prisoners Is the best part of the book.

The final section shows Elspeth left In middle age with memories of what might have been but for the futile horrors of war, yet solaoed by the cultivation of her rare and mysterious cactus plants and the training of her little nleoe. In 'this section we have touches of Miss Mannin’s light satire which is directed against the pleasure loving would-be-modem mother of the nineteen thirties.

■ln an apostrophical epilogue Miss Mannln appeals to mankind and womankind to rise in revolt against a system which will produce again the pain, terror, horror, cruelty and futile 'sacrifice of the years 1914 to 1918.

—E.H.B.

BLOOD RELATIONS. By Phillip Gibbs (Hutchinson). Sir Philip Gibbs’ new book should be among the best of best sellers. It has all the virtues of the best seller. It is.always interesting. It is about pleasant- people and normal people. It is about them and their doings; and not about of their subconscious minds. And it is essentially a topical book. For it is about the attitude of European peoples to war, a profoundly topical subject. The author’s pacific purposes shine on the surface. But they do not spoil the story. He has taken a subject which seems 'Obvious enough for a pacifist novel. His hero is a German and his heroine is an Englishwoman. They are married a few months before war breaks out. They settle in Berlin. Then the war comes and for four years the Englishwoman is left stranded in Germany. Her husband is at the front. Iler German friends are kind but it is only natural that the feeling against England should hurst forth occasionally. “England has behaved very badly,” they used to say. It was never much more condemnatory than that, but It was enough to make life intolerable.

The war ends. The price of defeat begins to be paid. And England seems still to be behaving badly. She backs up French greed at Versailles. She is a party to the continuance of the allied blockade for months after the armistice; a blockade which resulted in the permanent enfeeblement in health for millions, and death for at least hundreds of thousands. As pass the years of serfdom in which she labours do pay off her impossible war debt, Germany loses any wavering faith she ever had in the goodwill of her former enemies. She decides she must' look to herself. And at last the time brings forth a man. The word “Destiny" comes to the lips of the people again about the same time that Adolf Hitler comes above the horizon.

The wheel has come full circle, according to Sir Philip Gibbs. In Germany now there is the samo pride and the same fears that there were in 1914. That pride and those fears exist because Germany has been driven in upon herself. Branded with guilt which now even tho most bigoted of Tories admit was not entirely hers, she alone was compelled lo a defenceless passivity. Other nations had contracted under the Treaty to disarm, but they had broken the Treaty. And now 'that Germany 100, lias renounced it other nations pass pious resolutions decrying such breaches of honourable agreements.

■Not many of us perhaps need persuading now of tlie futility of war. But at a time when it is fasliionable to put all the blame on tlio wicked armament matter it is a good tiling that so popular a writer as Sir Philip Gibbs should devote himself to explaining one country and people to another. When all has been said that can bo said about ultimate causes it remains true that wars are made possible by misunderstandings between people, people who have different characters and different ideals because they belong to different nations. To understand everything is to pardon everything. That French proverb is the truest word on the subject. The thanks of the world are due to .Sir (Continued In next column.)

HELP FOR THE TOURIST. A Guide Book to New Zealand. TOURING IN NEW ZEALAND. By A. J. Harrop, Ph.D. (Cambridge), Rfl.A. (N.Z.). “There is much more sunshine than in Britain, and even in winter, in sheltered sunny places no cardigan or .coat is necessary, while a shady hat is indispensable.’’ AVe have not needed our shady hat lately and we would not willingly part with our coat and cardigan. But then perhaps we have not 'been in any sheltered sunny places. Though that indeed is because there have not been many sheltered sunny places 'to go to.

It would be unfair however to suggest that Dr. Harrop often attains such a level -of entertaining inaccuracy. He is for the most part thoroughly accurate and thoroughly dull. The author is not indeed concerned -to write anything more than a guidebook. One feels however 'that he might have permitted himself an occasional literary flourish and even, now and again, a Joke. He -claims in his preface that he has avoided superlatives. It is, in a way, a relief to be able to read descriptions of our -country which are not -penned in language suggested by the advertising expert. At the same time a book which is Intended to be read by the holiday-maker should not be written In a workaday style.

However It is The bad old tradition -of guide books to be dull; and perhaps it is too much to expect that it can be lived down. Fortunately the traveller does not have to read more than a little at a time.

One cannot help lamenting onoe again that Dr. Harrop has made our history so -dull. He has served it up in scraps In dealing with the places of historical Interest, a highly fatiguing procedure for those not already familiar with the story.

—D.B.P.

THE CALL OF LONDON. Colonial Journalist at “Home.” THE JOYOUS PILGRIMAGE. By lan Donnelly. (Dent.) This book, says Mr Donnelly, is the story of months that realised- a dream. “ Perhaps it is too much to expect that a mere diary (and the hook does not purport to be more than a diary) should communioate the rapture of realisation. Mr Donnelly has his moments of fine writing in which he strives to convey to the reader something of the glory of the English countryside, something of what the pictures in the Tate gallery meant to him. But he falls to convey -the emotional stress of his experiences; though he does convey the fact that the occasion and the country, its sights and sounds, beyond all, its associations, does arouse the spirit within. But lie has not the gift of rousing the' spirit likewise by the mere telling. And as an account of the English character the hook is defective because it is disjointed. There is material for a book in what !Mr Donnelly saw at Lords, in the East End, at Oxford. But Mr Donnelly -has not bothered to write the book. He lias merely collected the materials from which it might have been made. One feels that the journalist (for all 'ihe author’s literary'interests) is uppermost. It is the conviction of journalists that twenty inches of continuous written matter are beyond any man’s endurance. This craftsmanlike maxim seems to be behind those -short paragraphs—all of them good journalistic “ stories ” of which the book is composed. Indeed these short paragraphs were fit to be presented to Fleet Street with a minimum of alteration. Perhaps Mr Donnelly as a shrewd journalist had that idea in mind in case Messrs Dent had proved unpropitious. Mr Donnelly’s story contains the records of many interviews with celebrated people, both writers and politicians. One cannot help feeling that he -might have spent hi-s time better. If you say you are a journalist and go round worrying poets and novelists for interviews you deserve to get very little. And you are not likely to get very much. The subject of the interview will naturally throw up a wall of protective reserve (which is usually justified). And If you ask him all the obvious questions you must not be surprised to get all -the obvious replies. It is well known, for instance, what Mr J. 'B, Priestley thinks about the highbrows. It is little advantage that Mr Priestley has said it all-again for Mr Donnelly’s benefit. One -sin -can scarcely be forgiven Mr Donnelly. He decries Mr Wodeliouse, and does not pause to give reasons for so curious a lapse of taste. —D.B.P.

THE POPULAR BOOKS

■ Books in greatest demand at the Hamilton Public Library are: — Fiction. —Blood 'Relations (Phillip Gibbs); Honour Come Back (Naomi Jacob); The Camberwell Beauty (Louis Golding): The Stars Look Down (A. J. Cronin) ; Men Never 'Know (Vicki Baum); Blandings Castle (P. G. Wodehouse) : Annuals of a Little Shop (Anno llepple). Non-Fiction. —in llic Steps of the Master (11. V. 'Morion), Tramp Royal in Spain (Mall. Marshall), Cry Havoc (Beverely, Nichols); The Joyous Pilgrimage (lan Donnelly) ; Cromwell (Hilaire Belloc).