NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16168, 23 March 1918, Page 7

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

LIFE IX GERMANY. "Christine," by Alice Cliolmondeley, is described as the first book of a new writer. The reader will be a little puzzled whether to regard it as a iceord of actual events, or a work of the imagination. It is the story of life in Germany, just before the war, told in a series of letters supposed to be written by a young English girl who goes to Berlin, in May, 3914. and is living there at the outbreak of t!:>e war. It certainly gives a very vivid picture of life in Berlin, as seen from a middle-class boarding-house, and for a brief period we are taken into il.e august surroundings of a Junker family. The descriptions of life and character could only have been written from personal acquaintance, but the story of the heroine's engagement to a young German lieutenant imposes a strain on the credulity of the reader. There is a very fine picture of Kloster, the great German violinist, from whom Christine takes lessons. He talks very frankly at times to his pupil:— "Wir Dcutschen," he says, and laughs, "are the 'easiest people in the world to govern, because we are obedient and inflammable. We have that obedience of mind so convenient to Authority, and we are inflammable because we are greedy. Any prospect held out to us of getting something belonging to someone else sets us instantly alight. Dangle someone else's sausage before our eves, and wo will go anywhere after it. Wonderful material for S.M." In this familiar, not to say irreverent fashion, does Herr Kloster refer to his Imperial Majesty. Subsequently he elaborates the idea: — "All these people, Mees C'hrees," lie said, "have Deen drilled, Do not forget that great fact. Every man of every class has spent some of the most impressionablo years of his life being drilled. He never gets over it. Before that, he has had the nursery and the schoolroom; drill, and very thorough drill, in anothar form. He is drilled into what the authorities find it most convenient that he should think from the moment he can understand words. By the time he comes to the military •service his mind is already squeezed into the desired shape. Then comcs the finishing off—the body drilled to match the mind, and you have the perfect slave. And it is because he is a slave that when he has power— and every man has power over someone—he is so great a bully." "But you must have been drilled too,"' I said, "and yoit're none of these things." He looked at me in silence for a moment, with his funny, protruding eyes. Then he said: "l am told, and I believe it, that no man really gets over having been imprisoned."

Christine on one occasion expresses horror to Herr Kloster, at the number of school-children who commit suicide in Germany, and the musician, nodding at the expression on her fyfe, said: — "Yes, we are mad. It is in this reign that' we've gone mad, mad with the obsession to get at all costs and by any means to the top of the world. "VV.e must outstrip; outstrip at whatever cost of happiness and life. We must be better trained, more efficient, quicker at grabbing than other nations, and it is the children who must do it for us. Our future rests on their brains. And if they fail, if they can't stand the strain, wo break them. They're of no future use* Let them go. "Who cares if they kill themselves ? So inMiy fewer that's all. The State considers that they are better dead." And all the while, while he was telling me these tilings, on the shore lay Kloster and his wife, neatly spread out side by side beneath a tree asleep with tneir handkerchiefs over their faces. That's the idea we've got in England of Germany— multitudes of comfortable couples, kindlv and sleepy, snoozing away the afternoon hours in gardens or pine forests. That's the idea the Government wants to keep before • Europe, Herr von Inster says, this idea of benevolent, beery harmlessness. It doesn't want other nations to know about the children, the dead, flung-aside children, the ruthless breaking-up of any material that will not help in the driving of their great machine of destruction, because then the other nations would know, he says, before Germany is ready for it to" be known, that she will stick at nothing. The book finishes tragically. The young lieutenant who remains faithful to Christine, is ordered off to the war, and the English girl buffeted, and illtreated, in attempting to escape from Germany, dies at Stuttgart on the morning of August Btli, 1914, of acute double pneumonia. (London: Macmillan's Empire Library.)

BRIEF NOTICES. The deeper agonies of the war—especially the loss of so many bright young lives —havo made people think as they havo never thought about the great problems of life, and especially the allabsorbing question as to whether this life ends all. One section of the public arc eagerly turning to spiritualistic literature, of which "Raymond" may bo taken as tho classic example—others are seeking comfort in the older faiths. To tho latter may bo recommended "Life in the World to C-ome," a series of very eloquent and thoughtful sermons by tie Rt. Rev. G. H. S. Walpole, D.D., Bishop of Edinburgh. (London: Robert Scott, Roxburgh House, Paternoster Row. Christ-church: L. M. Isitt, Ltd.)

Whitakor's Almanac, which may justly claim, we think, to be most useful as it* is the most popular work of general reference in the world, celebrates its jubilee this year. Tho 50th annual issue contains nearly a thousand pages of small print. The astronomical section has been revised and made more suitable for popular use, but the main new features, of course, are those connected with the war. Among these may bo mentioned the "British Empire Industries Section," consisting of a series of special articles upon products of the British -Empire, and goods manufactured or distributed by British firms. {London: 12 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row.) "House Painting and Decorating" is

! a'i illustrated manual dealing with th ! materials, methods, and lis . volved in house painting, staining, dis • tempering, and paper-hanging. { is a section written by an architect on artistic house decoration. The should he useful to the amateur as welt as to the voung painter and house decorator. (London : Casscll and to., Ltd.)