NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17109, 2 April 1921, Page 10

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

BOLSHEVISM.

The Bolshevist regime in has been the subject of many volumes, but after reading them all, one remains full of doubt upon many important points. This is not unnatural, because the means have not yet existed for anyone to study Soviet Russia over a *ong period and on the spot, and with a thoroughly impartial mind. Almost every writer on the subject has been animated by a strong desire to see th» best and say the best of Bolshevism, or by an equally strong determination to say only the worst of it.. Mr BertranJ Russell alone of the writers who have published their impressions m --booiv form took a cool and to Moscow, but even Mr Russell: was on occasion either misinformed on .some 'points or'careless of facts m striving for an effect. The book tnat has*, attracted most attention is that by.,Mr H. G. Wells, "Russia in the Shadow? (Hodder and Stoughton). Mr/AVeIU spent only fifteen days in Russia, and he is not able, therefore, to do more than record the general impression, made upon his mind. His dominant impression 'of things Russian is of a -vast, irreparable breakdown":.. "Amid-this vast disorganisation an emergency Government, .supported "by a disciplined party-of; perhaps 150,000 adherentsthe Communist Party—has taken control. It has—at tine price of mucft shooting—suppressed brigandage, established a sort of order, and security in the-eshausted towns, and set up a crude Russian system." Yet it is ""he only possible Government i» Russia at the'present .time.'-' JThe misery of Russian }ife.at the.present time has sometimes been greatly over-stated, but the* actual conditions'as Mr Wells describes them, are nearly too painful to read about. . Everything that makes life tolerable is nearly exhausted—food, clothing, freedom, and the life of the mind. Especially painful is Mr Wells a account of the'jilight of the intellectuals —Glazounov giving up composing because he can obtain no paper, Pavloii pursuing his researches m a, study piled up with the carrots he gr.ows to keep himself alive. "Ruin; primary Russian fact at the time. The revolution, the .Communist rule, is quite secondary to that;'.. It is something that has happened':in'the ruin and because of the mm." '.What Mr Wells insists upon is that the (.Communists did not pull down Russia to her present plight, and that if the Communists were overthrown Russia's condition would be as evil as ever. In "he meantime, although Moscow has some great administrators, such as 'M. Krassin, the ordinary work of the Government jis shockingly done. The slackness a,nd inaccuracy are indescribable.' This is a natural result of the fact, to which Mr Wells bears eloquent witness, tihat the Communi&ts are besotted Marxians with no clear- idea of what they mean or what they aim at. •And in the future P Unless the preseut Government is assisted by tflie Western Powers, the Russian people "will' become a sort of human.swamp in a state of. division, petty civil war and political squalor, with a famine whenever t'he harvests are bad,- and they will be .breeding epidemics for the rest_ of Europe.' They will lapse.towards Asia." Like other visitors, Mr Wells obtained an interview with Lenin. Lenin, "of course, is a man. of genius, and anything hut a. doctrinaire Marxist like his followers.;. He says franldy that the Russian revolution is notlhing more than the inauguration of an age of •liniitless experiment.. He is under no : , illusions as .to the immensity and complication of the project: of Communism, and,'; it is Sear he' realises . that the peasant is the great danger, '-. '"■■■'% Of a' different scope from in the Shadows" is "Bolshevist Russia." ,-by G. E; Raine and E. Liftoff (Jfisbet, Ltd.). This is written from the antiBolsUievist' standpoint, and is a historical outline of events in Russia since the fall of the Czar. It suffers from the authors' intention to present Bolshevism as nothing but an exhibition of bloodshed and tvronny. Bloody and! cruel Bolshevism-, has been, and every intelligent person knows that Communism means the obliteration of liberty and the-perishing, of all those nerves and fibres and joints of social life that are nourished by the liberal principle. But 'nowadays "most people desire to know something more about Bolshevism than that, because most people are anxious to know what is best to be' done about Russia. ,Xeb Messrs Raine and Luboif's book is usefill for its * facts : and documents, the most valuable of ..which are the Labour [decrees and. tihe'ySoviet Constitution. ! : (Copies from Whitcombe and Tombs, Lid.V -■-■ ■ '

A NEW ENCYCLOPAEDIA,

The war has brought aoout/so .many changes in the life of mankind—changes in their apparatus of existence and in the territories of many peoples, and a re-shuffling of the personnel of leader-pre-war encyclopaedias are far mote out of date than a twenty year old work was in iyj.4. i'or this reason there is room for a'good general encyclopaedia on a smaller scale than the "ibntannica." Xnere is tne further consideration that far more people tnan before desire a working knowledge of the world they live.in. Jo meet tnis. demand, and to provide information that is feauy up-; to-date, M%ssrs Nelson and Sons have brought out the "New Age JEncyclopairlia'' in ten handy volumes. We have tested its cleim to accuracy, and have found that it is thoroughly dependable. It does not profess to be exhaustive, but it gives the essential facts very tersely and clearly, and for those who wish for fuller information under any heading there is usually a list of the latest and most authoritative works. It is exceedingly up to date, some of the information being as late as the middle of'last year. To "Relativity," for example, six colu&ns are given, concluding with a short bibliography. The war, naturally, accounts for a large proportion of the 35,000.articles, and there are few. events «in the struggle Which are not tersely recorded,with the main facts and exact dates. We have not attempted to check these,_ but in the two columns' summarising New Zealand's part in the great war it becomes evident that the compiling staff took care to obtain the exact facts from official reports. The publishers claim that the encyclopaedia "presents the essential facts of the New Age at »■ glance,'' and it is a claim justly made. The: ten ,volumes make one of the most efficient c works of general reference that we know of.

NEW NOVELS.

One of the most charming of recent novels is 'Adam of Dublin," by Cpnal O'ltiordan (Norreys Connell). Adam is a. small Dublin newsboy, whose pennies rgo to buy whisky for his putative father, a ruffian pn the majestic scale who iB so startlingly alive that he must have been some real character in the underworld of Dublin. Adam is rescued from his villainously hard life by Father Innocent Feeley,. a simple and saintly little priest, who unhappily is of -no avail, to save Adam from the cruelty of Father Tudor, for Whom there is only the excuse that he is, essentially, a mSiiiac The story ends with Adam looking forward to a new life with some enchanting friends, and with the author promising .another ."story," in which, it is clear, we shall see the fuller.bloom of ; the love and yearning of the boy. Mr' O'ltiordan is, full of humour, pity, and gentleness, and a fine artist, as most men have been who in their manhood have remembered sharply all the workings of their minds when they were tiny children. As foe his philosophy and

spirit,, we have them in this passage: "According to our lights, we do not see it to be the province of the artist to paint in detail the merely sordid. It is his duty to realise the worst for himself, but he must be careful how ho allows that dread knowledge to colour .his narrative, lest he suffer his reader to see the broad ocean of life as a mere whirlpool of despair. If his experience lead him so to regard it, let him cherish the logic of silence, and refrain, from adding another stone to the monument of nothingness. He that despairs is logically dead; if he live, his life is a farce, and the expression of his opinions an impertinence." (London, Collins, Sons, and Co.).

There continues an insatiable demand for novels of the Wild West, and al though the public that makes the demand cannot be very discriminating, there must be somewhere in it the beginnings of an ability to prefer . the writer who writes of what he knows to the writer* who turns out movie films according to recipe. Ralph , Kendall, the author of "The Luck of the Mounted," a story of the Mounted Police of the North-West of Canada, was himself «. member of' that hard-working and •well-disciplined force. That he enjoyed the life is evident from the zest with which he # tells his excitng tale of crime arid criminal-hunting, and his unflagging energy in elaborating his breezy pictures of the interesting char-acters-in the tale. An excellent "mansize" Btory (as the Americans have it) of open-air and wide spaces, with a sound but unusual murder motive, and a tremendous cliriiax. (London: John Lane. Christchurch: Whitoombe and Tombs, Ltd.) . •

THROUGH THE WEST INDIES.

One of the great walkers of the world is Mi* Harry Franck, whose footjourney of hundreds of miles up and down the Andes, is 130 far his greatest feat in pedestrianism, and his account of it his best-known book. He has now completed a journey through "/he Antilles, but not on foot, and he records his opinions and impressions in a large "volume, "Roaming Through the West Indie's." His general impression seoms to be not unlike that made upon an American whom he quotes: "We could.well afford to buy all the West Indies on the basis of the price paid to Denmark, if the sellers would agree to remove all the populatiuon." Anyother arrangement, Mr Franck adds, 'would prohably prove a poor bargain. It is impossible. to be dull with Mr 'Franck. When he hears a_ conversation on a train in Carolina on his way South, this is what ne hears:— , *

•Say, d'you hear about Bud Hampton?" •

"Wh'at Bud done nowP" > "Why, las' week Bud Hampton shot a buck niggah't weighed ovah two hundred pound." Reassured by this that Mr Franck is a man, to follow, one follows him. with pleasure, enjoying chiefly his pungently expressed disapproval of most things in the Antilles, which, is the ever-present. spice of a narrative liveliness kept up for nearly 500 large and closely-printed pages. Havana w full of Ford cars; nobody dares to .walk, since the slightest exertion means a bath, of perspiration:—"The Ford has taken charge of Havana, like an army of occupation. Unfortunately, a Ford and a Cuban ohauffeur make a bad combination. The native temperament is quiclv'-witted,! but it is scantily gifted with .patience. In the hands of a seeker, after pesetas a 'flivver'' becomes a • prancing, dancing steed, a snorting charger that knows no-; fear and yields to no rival. Apparently some Cuban Burbank lias succeeded in crossing the laggard of our northern, highways, with. the kangaroo. The. whisper of your destination in the driver's ear is followed by a leap that leaves the adjoining facades a mere blur, upon the retina. A traffio jam ahead lends the snorting ,beast wings; it has a. playful way of alighting on all' fours in the. very heart of any turmoil. If a pedestrian or a rival "pesetagatherer "is crossing the street feet beyond, your time for the next nineteen feet-and_eleyen inches, is a email fraction of a second over nothing. Brake linings Eeem'to acquire a strangle hold from the Cuban climate. If the opening ahead is but tlie of a hand; the Havana Ford has some secret of making itself still more slender. I have never yet seen one of them climb a palm-tree but there fe no reason, to suppose that they would hesitate to undertake that simple feat, if a passenger's destination were among the.fronds." Ready at any moment to write thus briskly, the author travelled through Cuba, Haiti, Porto Rico, the chain of islandsj leading down to Trinidad, along the Venezuelan coast to Panama, and thenqe to Jamaica and back to New York. Of particular interest and value is hfe' account of the American and British methods with the negro, who in Haiti is, the Cubans say, "The animal which most nearly resembles man." There 4s a . great deal of quiet rivalry between Britain and America in the West Indies, and we gather that in. the French, and British colonies opinion is divided amongst the colonists concerning the suggestion sometimes made that the United States might be given control over the islands. (New York: The Century Co. Christ--church: Whitcombe and Tombs, Ltd.)