JOHN BUCHAN'S ROMANCE.

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 49, 26 August 1933, Page 19

JOHN BUCHAN'S ROMANCE.

"A Prince of the Captivity" is the title of John Buchan's newest novel (Hodder and Stoughton). The hero is Colonel Adam Melfort, who cheerfully goes to prison for the crimes of his wife. Prison, of course, puts an end to his military career, but when tho war comes he is much too useful a man to be permitted to fight in the ranks. He is engaged, by a branch of the Intelligence Service, and. docs his work so well that he is not only restored to his rank, but given tho D.S.O. (with bar) as well. But what then? What job is there left for a man to do who will never allow himself to take his, natural position as a leader of men? The rescuo of an Arctic explorer, gloriously done though it is, is a mere incident Where lies his real work? He decides to devote himself to tho finding of men capable of leading the country. There is a good man in the Labour Party; there is a priest who can stir more than one class of the people; there is a rich peer who_ does not mind offending his political friends, They all fail him, but he does not despair. A pre-Hitlerian German Chancellor suggests himself for the part of European saviour, and the good Herr Loeffler owes . his life more than .once to the colonel, whose skill at disguise is second only to that of the immortal Holmes. And it is Herr Loeffler who tells him what he has long been suspecting: tho chief enemy against whom all his efforts must now bo directed if tho world is to be. saved is the multi-mil-lionaire, Warren Crccvey—the brilliant, materially-minded Creovey, who, above all others, stands for "big business." So the great game is continued, in this country and that, and by the irony of fate Adam is called on to save his enemy's life at the expense of his own. But this time he has not failed, for it is a changed millionaire who returns horne —a fit man, one may hope, to play lender.