LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2944, 2 December 1916, Page 10

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

"Flagships Three." "Flagships Three," by Captain C. E. U. Bean (Hodder and Stoughton, per Whitcombe and Tombs), was first published in. 1912. The new edition of tins excellent book, • which was written with the idea of educating Australians on the subject of the Navy, and which includes some excellent descriptions of life on board the vessels of the Australian squadron, should find a host of new readers. The author is widely and favourably known: as, the official Australian war correspondent at Gallipoli and on the Western front. "Flagships Three" should be read by everybody who is interested—and who is not?— in the important part played in the war by the Australian warships. E. V. Lucas in Small Doses. Mr. E. ■■ V. Lucas, admittedly the most genial of novelists and pleasantly allusive of' lattor-day English essayists, has already made two selections from his various books, in "A Little of Everything" and "Harvest Home," both published in Messrs. Methuen's admirable Shilling Library (New Zealand price, Is. 63.). 'A third volume, ''Variety Lane," has now been published in the same series, by Messrs. Metlruen. This- includes extracts from Mr. Lucas's more recent works* such as "A Wanderer in ' Venice;" "Landmarks," and "Loiterer's Harvest," and two of his older and less known books, "Anne's Terrible Good Nature" : and "Willow and Leather." The volume also contains a number of essays and sketches, now republished for the first time, from "Punch," "New , York Life," the ■ "Standard," and tho 'Star-", The volume thus possesses a special interest for all Lucas lovers, in that it contains much that has not previously appeared in volume form. Better books to dip into during a spare hour could not well be found than those delightful volumes of selections from this ever popular writer. I warmly >commend tho "Latest Lucas" to my reader's. A Parallel from Froissart. Apropos to some remarks on the brutality with which the German's treat prisoners of war, made by Abbo Aubry in a recently-published book, a correspondent of "The Times' "., Literary Supplement has unearthed a curiously pertinent passage in Froissart's famous "Chronicles." "The English and Gascons (wrote the famous old chronicler) are of such condition that they put a knight or a squire courteously to ransom; but the custom of the Germans, and their courtesy is of no such sort hitherto. I know not how they will do henceforth—for hitherto they have had neither pity nor mercy on Christian gentlemen who fall into their hands as prisoners, but lay on them ransoms to the full of their estate and even beyond, and put them in chains, in irons, and in close prison like thieves and murderers; and all to extort the greater ransom." Evidently the Hun was just the same "blonde beast" five centuries ago he is to-day. Five centuries from now he will probably be still the same. Stray Leaves. Gilbert Cannan, whose "Peter Homuncuhis," "Old Mole," "Hound the Corner," and "Three Pretty Men" were all so deservedly popular, has a new story coming out very shortly, entitled "Mendel." The hero is a young Polish Jew, who, teaching himself to paint, is carried by his talent through many circles of society, and is plunged into the hothouso atmosphere' of Bohemia, both in London <ind Parfs. The motif of the story is the effort of the hero to find a right relationship between the .Tcwislmoss of his breeding and the spirit of tho Christian world in which he finds it so difficult to live. Some small sensation, it may be remembered, was caused in the'religious world by tho retirement of tho Itev. 11. J. Campbell from the pastora'to of the London City Temple and the announcement that the erstwhilo stalwart Nonconformist had joined ■ the Anglican Communion. In his recentlypublished book, "A Spiritual Pilgrimage," Mr. Campboll gives tho reasons which led to his much-discussed retirement. Inter alia, he says: "Tho two sources of my spiritual life are the Ulster Presbyterianism of my childhood and the Anglo-Catholicism of my Oxford days. To the latter, humanly speaking, I owe my soul. In evangelical phrase, I was born again within it —and this apart altogether fiom purely theological considerations." Hugh F. Spender, a member of a family which includes moro than one well-known journalist, is publishing a first, novel, "Tho Machine," in which ho writes .of parliamentary and journalistic life in London. H. C. Bailey, who wrote "The Faco

of Clay" and other well-known historical novels, lias written a new story, "The Gamesters/' for Messrs. Methuen and Co. Frederick the Great' is a prominent figure theroln. Among tho recently-fallen officers, Captain H. Cullcn Gouldsbury, of the Royal Berkshire _ Regiment, and attached to the King's African Rifles, was tho author of soma -remarkable books of verse, mainly about South Africa. _ His "Songs Out of Exile ("Rhodosian Rhymes)" was published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin in 1912, and one of the reviews said of it that Mr. Gouldsbury had "done for tho whito man in Africa what Adam Lindsay Gordon in a measure accomplished tor the Commonwealth, and Kipling triumphantly for tho British raco." It was followed in 19U by another volume of poems entitled ''From the Outposts." Two now Australian books will shortly be issued in London by the "British Australasian," Ltd. One is "Tho Children of Kangaroo Creek," by Frances Fitzgerald, a delightful story of Australian children, told with much humour and charm by a Victorian writer, formerly well, known for her short stories in tho "Bulletin," "Australasian," and other Australian papers. For some years she has been on the staff of a London weekly, and has contributed to-the "Windsor" and othei well-known magazines, but this is her first appearance in hook form, flic other is "An Enchanted Garden," the collected versos of A. M. Bowyer Hosman a South Australian, who wrote the words of the well-known song "God Be Witt You," and who has contributed verse to the "Bulletin" and other Australian papers. For some years she has been a frequent contributor to the "Westminster Gazette," "Bookman," Ween," etc., in London.