IN SHORT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22521, 1 October 1938, Page 20

IN SHORT

Abstracts and Brief Chronicles

Viscount Lymington, the author of Famine In England (Witherby. 271 pp. 7s 6d net), advocates a food reserve, mainly consisting of cereals for human and animal food, to cover one year’s needs in case of war. Under cover of this reserve against urgent emergency. Great Britain’s soil fertility should be “regenerated, largely through a renaissance of mixed farming and an increase in animal production. This should be made possible by a revaluation of all farm products. The author discusses such industrially-caused evils as soil erosion and waste of water and of organic matter, and, taking the view that physical and moral standards are declining, argues that the agricultural policy he advocates should help to save the nation from this fall. There are numerous loose statements and inaccuracies. Australia, e.g., has 5,000,000 inhabitants; or “Butter in New Zealand Is at times 50 per cent, more expensive to her consumers than is New Zealand butter in England”; or “Proper systems of farming can raise the gluten content of bread- by 50 per cent.” On the whole this book is more a collection of the author’s opinions on a variety of subjects than a treatise firmly based on wellassembled facts.

Put together by John Irving and Douglas Service, with neat decorations by Beryl Irving, The Yachtsman's week-end Book (Seeley Service and Company Ltd, 588 pp. 8s 6d net) is a pretty example of the art of varying and combining between- covers what serves for use and what for delight. Practical sections include “The Potted Pilot” (a short account of the elements of navigation), “Weather Portents,” “Stars,” “Bends, Hitches, and Ornamental Knots,” “Stores and Provi-

sions,” “Signals,” and so on. When you read John Irving in “The Sea Cook,” you move in the harmony of use and delight; so also when the same contributor writes of "Drinks —Soft and Hard.” Yachtsmen who are also fishermen or fowlers or students of bird-life are not forgotten. “These Things Have Pleased Me . . .” is a collection of literary pieces that the yachtsman will read with intimate pleasure; and—if a man likes to have his shelves stocked for him—a list for a yacht’s library is well composed. The glossary of sea terms is the proper, sober close. Perhaps, though, not wholly sober: the curious may turn to the entry under “bring up.”

Talks supplied to broadcasting stations in the United States and Canada by the Travel and Industrial Development Association of Great Britain and Ireland are collected in Introducing Britain (Allen and Unwin. 304 pp. 7/6 net.), a book which ranges from London (four

talks by Thomas Burke) to the English Village (Humphrey Pakington), from the social experiments of a modern industrial city like Birmingham (Kenneth Matthews) to the old charm of the English lakes (Betty Arne), from the extreme south, where A. K. Hamilton Jenkin discourses upon “Th"' Delectable Duchy.” to the extreme north, where Janet Adam Smith serves as guide to the Highlands and Islands. About 20 contributors are represented in the 33 talks, which well deserve the permanence of print. There are, besides, a dozen good photographs.

Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich (Angus and Robertson. 327 pp. 7/6.), transmits “the famous Andrew Carnegie formula for money-making, based upon the 13 proven steps to riches.” Mr Hill learned it from Carnegie himself, as a boy, accepted the suggestion that he should spend “twenty years or more,” preparing himself to “take it to the world.” and has seen it, in a much shorter time, “passed on to more than one hundred thousand men and women who have used it for their personal benefit.” Some of these, says Mr Hill, “have made fortunes with it.” Others, he says, have used it to create “harmony in their homes.” And now anybody can have it for three half-crowns.

A new volume in the Century omnibus series issued by Hutchinson and Co. Ltd. is A Century of Spy Stories, edited by Dennis Wheatley. This vast collection—it runs to more than 800 pages—contains 30 stories, by authors among whom it is sufficient to name Bernard Newman, Gilbert Frankau, Sydney Horler, Valentine Williams, John Buchan, and Sir Philip Gibbs. Some are “true” stories, such as Major Thomas Coulson’s account of the trial and death of the celebrated Mata Hari. The English price of this treasury is 4/6 net.—Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

Joan Kennedy, well known as a novelist and also as the. writer of “This Marriage Business,” discusses in A Torch on Woman (Hutchinson. 255 pp. 7s 6d net.) such questions as sex equality and race suicide, women’s disabilities (and privileges) under laws that discriminate between the sexes, women and war, the domestic problem, careers for women, and so on. She writes pointedly and frankly but with jut seeking to startle or shock.—Through Whitcombe and Tombs Ltd.

Mr Arthur Duxbury, who is styled on the title page “lecturer and consultant in elocution and public speaking,” has based Dare Yon Speak in Public? (English Universities Press Ltd. 170 pp. 5/- net.) on “many years’ experience in teaching men and women to become fluent, confident, and effective speakers on the platform, at the banquet, and at the board meeting.” An interesting feature is a collection of “great speeches.” set out with illuminating comments. —From W. S. Smart.

Contract players whose interest in the Stern-Austrian system has been aroused by the victory of the Austrians over Ely Culbertson’s team in the international tournament at Budapest in July of last year are given a full opportunity to_ analyse the rival methods in Beating the Culbertsons <T. Werner Laurie Ltd. 128 pp. 5s net.), in which Dr. Paul Stern sets out the 96 hands played, with declarations, opening leads, and results, and critically comments on them.

The St. Gyres Lecture on the subject of myocarditis was fpunded and endowed in 1926 by the widow of Viscount St. Gyres in memory of her husband. In Myocarditis (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 152 pp. 10/6 net.) six of the first seven lectures are printed; those by J. Strickland Goodall (two). Professor K. F. Wenckebach. R. O. Moon, John Cowan, and John Hay. The seventh lecture, number 5 in the series, by Sir Thomas Lewis, is not included because no record is available.