A VALEDICTION.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20272, 14 August 1937, Page 20 (Supplement)

A VALEDICTION.

“ Farewell Spain.” Kate O'Brien says that Nero's example is good enough for her. Rome is burning; he is content to fiddle. In the future she sees nought but dull impersonalities, and monotonous standardisations. She cannot face it; she must look back, not forward and In the Immediate past her journeyings in Spain stand out limned with interest and illumined with her love of the country and the people To-morrow, she says, tourism, like liberty, will be dead. Through Galicia, the Asturias, the Basque country, and the province of old and new Castile, the writer moves. She writes In the first person with delightful informality, cheerfully giving the guide-books the lie when she feels like it, and taking the reader into her confidence with a frankness that makes him feel that, being at her side, he is more than ready to argue the' point with her. “Farewell Spain." a memory of a pre-war wandering, was written after the war bad broken out. Although its presence is felt, its grim actualities do not obtrude. Indeed, in her final chapter she leads her reader to the hope of a future greatness and peace which -she feels this people so deeply deserves. “Farewell Spain.” By Kate O'Brien. (Helnemann.)