PAMPHLETS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24896, 8 June 1946, Page 5

PAMPHLETS

ECONOMIC POLICY K ; J- Ha rrod’s A Page of British Folly (Macmillan. 60 pp.) cogently ecnnnmi tbe CaSe Anglo-American c So-operation, together with ■J. e minded nations,”, towards the needs defined in article icJto °*rj he . M u tua l Aid Agreement of He , 1S disturbed because parliament and public have not been awakened to a clear understanding of the advantages of such co-operation, and of the insignificance of the sacrifices it calls for in comparison with the losses and burdens of any alternative ’5 his i e^ ay ou ? ht t 0 be read in New Zealand, as attentively as in Britain. U.S.S.R.

Four years ago the Royal Institute of international Affairs met a wide and growing demand for impartial and authentic information by issueing Miss Kathleen Gibberd’s Soviet (124 pp )- O ut °f Print since 1943, because of the paper shortage, it has now been revised and reissued; and its value is even greater in the present world situation than during the war.

Ahother R.1.0.1.A. pamphlet, a study of the background against which Russian foreign policy must be viewed, is Martin Wright’s Power Politics (68 pp). He makes the excellent point that Britain and France form “the bridge between America and Russia,” and that “the decisive stress of the power politics of the next half •century” will fall on their alliances with Russia.

Soviet News, London, issues speaches by J. V. Stalin and V. M. Molotov (to their Moscow constituents, immediately before the February election), a very interesting and well illustrated survey of Sport in the Soviet Union, and Mr Mikhail L. Lipetsker’s Property Rights of Soviet Citizens— which will have its surprises for some readers. The conduct of Russian policy in Poland, leading to the Yalta agreement and the establishment of the present Government, is critically reviewed by Ann Su Cardwell in The Case for Poland (Ann Arbor, Michigan. 92 pp). The facts look even worse in systematic retrospect, than they did in procession. THE ARTS

The Melbourne University Press issues Henry Seidel Canby’s essay, A New rand Speaking (30 pp.)—an essay “on the importance of a ’national literature.” The ground is that of Dr Canby’s lecture in the Canterbury College Hall, last year, but more extensively and closely covered. Those who heard him will welcome the opportunity to refresh and nourish their memories.

Published for the British Council, lan Finlay’s Scottish Art (Longmans, Green and Company. 42 pp.) is the more valuable and delightful because it ranges far beyond the graphic arts: e.g., into architecture, and crafts such as those of the silversmith, the weaver, and the printer. His section on art in the restricted sense covers the ground from the sixteenth century to the present day, and it is rich ground indeed. There are many fine photographic illustrations, amdfig which Geddes’s Scott and Raeburn’s Macdonell of Glengarry are superb rivals.

Miss Ngaio Marsh’s A Play Toward (Caxton Press. 32pp.) “sets forth ideas that have accumulated during fifteen years of sporadic play-produc-ing in New Zealand.” It, is too modestly described as “a note on play production.” It is on the one hand a wholesome plea for the advance of the amateur theatre, with a warning against the dangers of mere prosperity for the repertory movement, and on the other it is full of practical—and not less thoughtful—suggestion for all who take part in a play, those in the audience as well as those on the stage or in the wings.

E PLURIBUS UNUM A lecture to Bedford College students by the Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, Dr. E. A. Benians, is printed by the Cambridge University Press in Race and Nation in the United States (48 pp.). “The United States was born on the Atlantic seaboard, of the political wisdom of colonial leaders; the American nation was born in the Mississippi Valley of the practical needs of the incoming people,” admitted by the victory of the liberal views of Madison. The close of the long period of expansive settlement turned the tide of immigration from the frontiers to the cities; and with this change the problems of assimilation were restated, economic and political fears became influential, and the open door was partly shut. Nevertheless, the great experiment in “the welding of mankind” has reached “an unequalled achievement,’’ and is still in process; and Dr. Benians identifies the material and political conditions which have favoured it and equates with them the “unique power” of American idealism, the “sense of a mission,” the binding democratic faith which is “the magic of American citizenship.” A few careful, spacious pages are devoted to the specific racial problem of the negro.

A PUBLISHER REPORTS Mr Walter Buckler, who founded Useful Publications about six years ago, gives in Poblishing for Pleasure and Profit (48 pp.) an interesting account of his experience and of the working practice to which it has directed him. A chapter on the economics of publishing, for example, is one that anybody who thinks of setting up as publisher with narrow resources, as Mr Buckler did, should carefully reckon with.

X-Wd Mr G. R. Hutcheson’s first book of crosswords is now followed by Wizard Crosswords No. 2 (A. H. and A. W. Reed.). There are 30 puzzles, of varying difficulty, with solutions at the end of the book.