SHORTER NOTICES.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1913, 22 November 1913, Page 9

SHORTER NOTICES.

Socialists, especially Socialists of the Puritanical kind, will not, I am afraid, enjoy the prefatory note to Mr. Sidney Dark's amusing story, "Tho Man Who Would Not Be King" (John Lane; per Whiteombo and Tombs), Still less, I fancy, will they, being, as a rule, humourless folk, like the story itself, which relates the curious -experiences of one Fenfmore Slavington, to whom is left the Slavington model soap factory, and the Slavington model village, What then happens to the heir, hitherto merrily irresponsible on an allowance of £500 a year, is told by Mr. Dark in a. vastly entertaining maimer. Fenitnore Slavington is . frankly an inefficient: and prefers to remain so, especially as he finds such a congenial soul to share his views on co-partnership and the" "uplifting" of the working classes—plus fat dividends for the uplifters. • Quite a jolly book, this, although I am afraid. Mr. Ramsay Maedonald and.the Fabianswould pronounce it unutterably frivolous. - - ' ■ -The author of "Major Greville, V.G., a Talo of tho Great Boer War" (Sampson, Low and Co., per George Robertson and Co.), is Senator the. Hon. 'G. G. Munnik, of the South African. Union Parliament.. Deported to, India, the author beguiled the tedium of his captivit-y by writing..this >tpry, his hero being founded upon a real personage. Thestory deals in detail with many of t!w leading events of the earlier part of the war, and is really more an- historical sketch than, a novel. Boers, British, and natives all ptay jjarts in the drama; even Oom Paul Wte.self isf here. ,Mr,' -Munnik's story,. w J hich is inscribed "To tho memory of the brave meii of two nations once enemies, now friends," gives many curious and interesting -sidelights on the memorable struggle for and agiainst the maintenance of British supremacy in South Africa.