NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16156, 9 March 1918, Page 7

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

"THE OPPRESSED ENGLISH."

In this little book "lan Hay," whose "First Hundred Thousand" ha 3 delighted an enormous public, sets Himself to defend the unboomed Englishman, whose solid merit goes unrecognised, chiefly through his own fault— if it bo a fault to abstain from ..elfadvertisement and boastful speech. The theme is, of course, far from being a new one, but the war has emphasised the Englishman's envious situation in innumerable ways, and lan Hay handles the subject with spirit and humour. The Englishman, he says, is "too whipping boy of the Empire." He Joes moat of the work, but he has to taSe all the kicks without receiving any ha'porth of praise.

In the war of to-day, for instance, whenever anything particularly unpleasant or unpopular has to be done —such as holding up neutral mails, or establishing a black-list of neutral films trading with the enemy—upon whom does the odium fall? Upon "England"; never upon France, and only occasionally upon Great Britain. The people and Press interested thunder against "England's Arrogance.'' Again, in the neutral days, when an American newspaper published a pro-British article, Potsdam complained that the entire American Press was being bribed with "English" gold. A German school teacner is greeted by her infant class with the amiable formula: "Good morning. teacher. Gott strafe England!" (Never "Britain," as a Scotsman once very rightly complained to me.)

On the other hand, when there is any credit going round, it is not assigned to England., Canadian or Australian or Scottish or Irish troops take a ridge, and the'.credit is given (eagerly by the English) to Canada or Australia or Scotland or Ireland. When English boys gajn a victory it appears as a "British" victory. The reason for this can be found in the placidity and phlegm of the Englishman, and tlso, it is suggested, in the fact that England, not being a small or new nation, has lost tho habit of "making a cantata" about its achievements. Lan Hay analyses the English character, contrasting it witn the character of the Scot, the .Vclshman, and cho Irishman, and then proceeds to discuss the Irish question. He has little difficulty in showing that it is Ireland and not England, the Irishman and not the Eriglishtnen, that stands in the way of a settlement. In nothing is the Englishman more seriously misunderstood and more deeply wronged thar. in this matter. Lan Hay concludes his bright and sensible little book with a clever paragraph in which a large truth is disguised as a quaint paradox:

But I have said enough to demonstrate to unbiased observers the present deplorable status of that unfortunate country England. Today her ehief ofiices of State aro occupied by Scotsmen of the most rutluess type; Wales supplies her with Prime Ministers; while Ireland approp iaces all liei: spare cash and calis her a blood-sucker. When dm War is over, and. the world leisure to devote itself, to certa.n lon-postponed domestic reforms it is most devoutly to be hoped that the case of that unhappy } JUt , lot undeserving people, the English may be take* mWd/snd that they be

granted some measure, however, plight, of political freedom. Altci that we must do something for Poland. We notice that the edition is extensively advertised as having been suppressed in .England. 1 ' This is a little misleading. The Australian edition (now under review) is for copyright reasons, not allowed to bo imported into England. The same restriction applies to all colonial editions of copyright works. There is an English edition of Tan Hay's bock identical in matter with that under notice, and no restriction is placed on its free circulation. (Sydney: Angus and Robertson; Christchurch: L. M. Isitt. Ltd.) NELSON'S HISTORY OF THE WAR. Vol. 18 of Nelson's History of the War covcrs the period from the German overtures for peace at the end of 1916 to the American declaration of war. It describes the clearing of Sinai and the fall of Bagdad, and includes a remarkably clear and graphic account of the Russian Revolution. Mr John Bucbaa considers that the death of Gregory Rasputin, whose squalid story has just been told in the columns of "The Press," was the first act in the Russian Revolution. In regard to the fall of the Emperor, which was received among the Allies with mixed feelings, the historian remarks that "even those who warmly aoclaimed the revolution, and recognised the hopeless inadequacy of his rule, could not view without some natural regret the fat© of a rnpn who, since the first day of the war. had been scrupulously loyal to tho Alliance; who, as was proved by his creation of the Hague Conferences, had many generous and far-sighted ideals; and who, on the admission of all who knew him, -was in character mild, oourfceous, and humane." He goes on to say:— The House of Romanov deserved its fate. ]t had allowed itself to become an anachronism in the modern world, a mediioval fragment in line neither ■with the bludgeoning German absolutism nor the freedom of Italy and Britain. A stronger man than Nicholas might have established an efficient autccracy with the complete assent of his people; a wiser man could have transformed the Tsardom into a constitutional kingship. Nicholas wavered between the two, and was incapable of the sustained intellectual effort necessary to follow either course. His sympathies were, cn the whole, liberal; but he was easily swayed by his entourage, and especially by his wife. He did not blunder from lack of warning. The Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovitch told him the trutK ihe preceding Christmas, and was banished for his pains. Your first impulse and decision are always remarkably truo and right. But as soon as other influence supervenes you begin to waver, and your ultimate decisions aro not the same. The worst influence was the wife whom he deeply loved. The Empress Alexandra i'eodorovna will live in history with Henrietta Maria of England, and 'Marie Antoinette of France, as an instanco of a devoted Queen who dethroned her consort. In her eyes popular leaders were no more than traitors, to whom she hoped some day to give short shrift. She was possessed with whimsies about divine right, and her one object in life was to hand on the Itussian crown to her son with no atom of its power and glory diminished. Her shallow and neurotic mind, played upon by every wind of., superstition, was incapable of distinguishing true men from false, or of discerning the best means of realising her ambitions. In the end she had so surrounded herself and her husband with scoundrels and charlatans that tho Court stank in the nostrils of decent citizens, and "when it was assailed there was none" to defend it. The autocracy collapsed from its own inherent rottenness. The revolution succeeded not because it was well planned or brilliantly led, for there was neither plan nor leading. It won because there-was no opposition. The old order ended at the first challenge, for it had become mere lath and plaster." Other chapters aro devoted to tho situation in Austria, tho new Government in and the breaking of American patience. Mr Buchan considers tliat for the Allies to think they could treat with Austria as an independent unit was as barren a hope as that of detaching the German Socialists from their national causo. (London : Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd. Price, Is 6d not.)

A NOV FL OF THE NORTH FLEET

Among tho -writers who hare given us an insight into tho work of tho Navy during tho war, "Bartimeus," the author of ''Naval Occasions," holds a high place as one who uses his pen with humour as well as with force. In "The Long Trick" ho has now given us what is described as his "first fulllength novel." It gives a picture of lifo day by day with tho North Fleet, and is rather a series of sketches than a novel in the ordinary sonso of tho word. Perhaps better than any other book which has yet been published, it gives us an idea of the work which the men of the lloyal Navy are doing for the Empire, and how they set about it. In a chapter entitled, "Sweethearts and "Wives," we get a pleasant insight into the lifo of a village in tho far north, now enjoying unwonted prosperity owing to tho influx of wives of oHiccrs anxious to be near their husbands. As an .example of tho author's powers of description, we may quoto the following extract, telling us what the officer on watch on a warship sees as he looks down at the familiar forecastle and teeming upper deck, thirty feet below: — "Seen thus from above, tho grey, sloping shields of the turrets, each with its great twin guns, looked like gigantic mythical tortoises with two heads and disproportionately long necks. It was the dinner hour, and men were moving about_, walking up and down, or sitting about in little groups smoking. Some wero playing cards in places sheltered from the wind and spray; near tho blacksmith's forgo a man was stoop- . ing patiently over a small black object. Thorogood raised His glasses for a moment, and recognised the ship's cat, reluctantly undergoing instruction in jumping through the man's hands. Tho cooks of the messes were wending their way -in procession to the chutes at the ship's side, carrying moss-kettles containing scraps and slops from the mess-" dock dinner. For an instant the officer of the watch, looking down from that altitude, and cut off from all sounds but that of the wind, experienced a feeling of unfamiliar detachment from the pulsating mass of metal beneath his feet. He had a vision of the electric-lit interior of the great ship, deck beneath deck, with men everywhere. Men rolled up in coats and oilskins, snatching half-an-hour s sleep alonpr the crowded gunbatteries, men writing letters to sweethearts and wives, men laughing and quarrelling, or singing melancholy ditties as thev mended worn garments; hundreds and hundreds of reasoning human entities were crowded in those steelwalled snaces, with his boundless hopes and affections, his sonarate fears and vices, and conceptions of the Deity, and his small, incommunicablo distresses. - . . Beneath all that again, far below tho

, j surface of the grey North Sea, were r! men, moving about purring turbines r j and dynamos. arid _ webs of i stupendous machinery silently oil- _ | ing, testing, and adjusting a thou- _ j sand moving joints of metal. There a wore adjoining caverns lit by the 5 j flare of furnaces that, shone red on x j the glistening faces of men, silent - ! vaults and passages, whero the pros ! jectiles wore ranged in sinister array, s and chilly spaces in which the elecj. trie light was reflected from the burnished and oiled torpedoes that hung r in readiness abovo the submerged 1 tubes." s Wo must also give ourselves the : pleasure of reprinting the following : tribute to tho fishermen who have done such valuable work in .tho war: — '"If the truth be told, the past had known no great love lost bea tween the destroyers and the fishing fleet. Herring-nets round a prof pellor are not calculated to bind r .hearts together in brotherly atfec- . tion. Perhaps dim recollections of 1 bygone mishaps of this nature had i soured the destroyer commander's X heart towards the steam-drifter. At ! tho outbreak of war, however, the j steam fishing fleets became an arm of the great Navy itself, far-reaching ■ in ins own squadrons. They exf icjiangod their nets for guns and 5 mine-sweeping paraphernalia; they 3 became submarine hunters, minesweepers, fleet-messengers, and patrollers of tfie great commerce seaways in the South. They became 1 a little Navy within the Navy, in fact, already boasting their own peculiar traditions, and probably as . large a proportion of D.S.C.'s as any ' other branch of the mother service. p They are a slow, crab-gaited coni- ' munity that clings to gold ear-rings 1 and fights in jerseys and thighboots j from which the fish-scales have not altogether departed. Ashore, on | the other hand (where their women . rule), they consent to the peaked cap and brass buttons of his Majesty's > uniform, and wear, it, moreover, i with the coy self-consciousness of a bulldog in a monogrammcd coat. 5 Link Jry link they have built up a , chain of association with the parent Navy that will not be easily broken when the time comes for these little 1 auxiliaries to return to their peaceL ful calling. They have worked side by side with the dripping submart ine; they Tiavc sheltered through ; storms in the lee of anchored battlej ships; they have piloted proud cruit sers through tho newly-swept clian--5 nels of a mine-field, and brought a . battle-cruiser squadron its Christmas [ mail in the teeth of a northern blizzard. In token of these things, s babies born in fishing villages from r the Orkneys to the Nore have been.j christened after famous Admirals and men-of-war, that tho new genoL ration shall remember." l We can cordially recommend this book to our readers. (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd.; Christchurch: J Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd.). "THE OLD FRONT LINE." . ' Under this title, Mr John Masefield has given a graphic description of tho . old front lino of the British Army as it . was when the battle of the Somme began. Wo doubt if any other writer could have given lis a book of pure description of battle lines and still retained tho reader's interest throughout. The hook is not a prose ©pic like tho samio author's "Gallipoli," but we gather that this description of the line will be followed by an account of our people's share in the battle, and this should give Mr Masefield a fuller scope for his great literary powers. Every student of the war ought to read this book, because, in conjunction with the photographs, it gives such a clear description of the conditions under which the war on the W T estern front is carried on. Mr Masefield anticipates that after the .war' we shall have to imagine to a very large extent what he now doscribes. He says:— "When the trenches are filled in, and the plough has gone over them, the ground will not long keep the look of war. One summer with its flowers will cover most of the ruin that man can. make, and then these places, 4 from which the driving back of tho enemy began, will be hard indeed to trace, even with maps. It is said that even now in some places tho wire has been removed, the explosive salved, tho trenches filled, and the ground ploughed with tractors. In a few years' time, when this war is a romance in memory, the soldier looking for his battlefield will find his marks gone.. Centre Way, Peel Trench, Munster Alley, and theso other paths to glory will bo deep under tho corn, and gleaners will sing at -Dead Mule Corner." (London: William Heinemann.' Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs. 3s 6d.) • BRIEF NOTICES. Business men will find very useful "The Customs Tariff of New Zealand," issued in handy form, by Messrs Whitcombo and Tombs. Tho volume includes Minister's decisions. It is crossindexed, shows preferential rates, and gives exchange foreign monoy tables and a quantity, of other useful information. The "Daily Mail" Year Book for 1918 maintains its high character as a valuable and inexpensive work of reference. As usual, it contains special articles bv authoritativo writers on a number of the most important questions of tho day. (London: "Daily Mail," Carmelite House. E.C.; Christchurch: Simpson and Williams, Ltd.)