PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 25 July 1929, Page 10

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

Although "Tho Galaxy," by Ertz was but recently published, the popular demand wis so great thai Messrs Hoddcr and Stoughton have already issued a fourth edition. The work which lias been acclaimed as tho best, yet produced by the writer, gives the life-story of Laura Deveroll. born in 1062, and passing through the wars, tribulations, fashions, fads, ways of living and thinking from that time- to this. The daughter of parents wlto understood none of their children, Laura grows up into a lovely, intelligent and sensitive girl, far from" happy at homo, but seeing no career for licrsclf but marriage. Against her father's wishes —for "trade' is still barely within the social pale—she marries an armaments' manufacturer with whom she is wildly in love. Her marriage partly estranges her from her brother, an idealist and a rebel against, materialism; her husband brings her disappointment and infidelity, and it is not until her children are settled and of age that she consents to follow her own heart and go away with Sendlev, a German with an English mother. The War breaks in upon the happy married life that her first husband's death at last makes possible, and Sendler suffers three years of'internment. Her son is killed," but sho eventually finds in her little grandson something of both her son and brother over again. Standing on an island refuge at, Hyde Parle Corner one night in January of the present year, she looks up at .the Milky Way (or Galaxy), which sho has always loved. Half blinded by tho stare, sho steps'off the island and is struck by a car. Under the ether during the operation that is necessary she sees tho thousand joys of her life* streaming across her vision like the stars of the Milky Way. It is a dramatic ending, concluding with a reiteration of a portion of the strikingly impressive beginning. Several correspondents have written asking our opinion of Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front," a German version of the alleged happenings in and behind the fighting lines in the Great War. <A copy duly came to hand from the publishers (per Alf Robinson). The work has received more attention than it deserved from the Press and we do not propose to review it at length. That it contains much that is impressive and that-: exposes some qf ..the horrors of war is unquestionable, even if there aro exaggerations and inaccuracies in do tails as some critics have pointed out. That it could have been equally effective in that respect without resort to unnecessarily coarse or even filthy incidents is just as certain. If those objectionable features were included for "big > sa|le" ' purposes—-criticism and controversy calculated to increase sales was obviously anticipated by the preliminary publicity "stunts"—they have achieved their object. If the alleged object of the book—to prevent more war—is even half as! successful as the salesmanship methods shown, it may be it was worth while. Not otherwise.