BOOKS AND WRITERS

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20908, 13 September 1939, Page 5

BOOKS AND WRITERS

PROSPECTS OF MANKIND BOOK BY H. G. WELLS “ FATE OF HOMO SAPIENS ” The prospects of mankind as a whole are the subject of a forthcoming volume by Mr 11. G. Wells entitled “ The Fat of Homo Sapiens,” announced for ealy publication by Secknr and Warburg. Besides summing up the presentday situation and setting out in full the scientific, social and political implications of his philosophy, Mr Wells analyses many of the world movements of to-day, and presents a number of pen-portraits of leading statesmen, including Mr Chamberlain, President Roosevelt, M. Stalin, General Chiang Kai-shek and Herr Hitler. ABORIGINAL tales TO CHARM CHILDREN DISPLACE FAIRY STORIES Aboriginal grandmothers' tales might eventually displace Continental fairy tales and become the fairy stories of Australian children. The acting-ethnologist at the Adelaide Museum, Mr C. P. Mountford, made this suggestion during the week. Mr Mountford said that the aborigines believed that in the beginning many se«ni-human beings were created from animals, birds or plants. Tribal groups bore the names of these ancestors, and some aborigines were “Crowmen,” some “Wombatmen” or “Kangaroomea," or “Grubmen."

COMMENTS AND EXTRACTS

LIFE IN A CONVENT FORMER NOVICE’S 'NARRATIVE CONDITIONS IN GERMANY Alyse Simpson, who, in “The Gonj vent ” narrates the story of life in a I German convent entered for one of ! the usual reasons that breed a desire I lor withdrawal from the world. i sweetheart had not turned up at the j specified time to claim her. so. filled i with an emotion which she mistook ■ for religious fervour and a determina- ! Lion towards self-sacrifice, she be- ! came a novice in a convent not far j from her home. The sorrow of her | parents, the disapproval of her friends j and the disgust of an old uncle who I had intended leaving his money to her, affec.t her decision not at all. in fact, opposition only adds to her exaltation and persistence in her desire for selfimmolation. There follows the moving story of what life meant for those women who had voluntarily shut themselves away from the world in the 'Convent of the i Mystic Rose with its beautiful sur- | roundings of mountain, field and valj ley. Throughout the story the author's tone is reverent, for she says, “ It is I not any enmity to .religion that i speaks, but my memory of much suf- ! foring.” To tiie unbiassed reader, tlio perusal of this hook lias its moments of disgust and even horror, but, in spite of this, there is a feeling of being against a force whose power over a certain type of mind is unbreakable. From the beginning it is evident lo the reader, though not, at first, to the writer, that she is not of the stuff of which saints are made. Dirt and Discomfort Her critical attitude toward the dirt, discomfort and disease-breeding conditions under which the nuns live and to which in time they grow indifferent,

remains throughout her stay. -She could never quite reconcile herself to the madness and the tuberculosis that seemed to be taken as a matter of course, but continual hard work dulled the edge of one's perceptions. Describing the daily life, she says:— | “There may have been a* little dis- | content among us, here and there, oc- ! casionally when we happened to forget j the divine reason why we were there, j but soon even that died down. Noi thing mattered in time, there was just , work and sleep. It was what every- • one in the end wanted most, a little I warmth and a few hours of forgetful J sleep, and, of course, continual assurance that our sacrifice was indeed acceptable to God and our youth was not going to waste in vain.'' Opposition from Sisters In time the chief opposition to those who would have them re-turn to the , NVol ’ld comes from the sisters themselves. Although strictly against the rules, it is perfectly safe to let a . father see the daughter whom he has come to take away because of a letter , which he has received describing the i conditions under which she is living, j Mhen he meets the young woman who ! has once been his daughter, he knows ! that he is beaten. Bereft of individuality, living in a world apart from bis, i she listens patiently to his pleadings, j but seems hardly to hear him. What I he has to say has ceased to have any | real meaning for her. One night the little novice, the writer of the story, slips away hack to the world and a normal human life. She takes into her confidence two of her young friends and promises to return to visi-t them in 20 years’ time. This visit is described in the last chapter, one of the saddest, from the ordinary point of view, in the whole book. IRISH CHARACTER LIKENESS TO THE JEWS AN INTERESTING NOVEL Boswell, or Dr. Johnson, was right when he said the Irish never speak well of one another. In “My Cousin Justin" Margaret Barrington has, however, gone far beyond this arid arraignment, and is no singer of an empty day. For, with considerable courage, she has essayed to interpret Irish character, which is more elusive than a Riverina mirage. “We Irish have this in common with the Jews," says Justin. “We do not seek to change the evil we find, we exploit it. . . . The Jews and the Irish, they make the best shyster lawyers, the best gangsters of society, though we do not make the best criminals. We operate the best within the law. Yet of all the peoples on earth we have the deepest love of justice." Accept the premis and the story, if not logical, is at least intensely human. Lou Delahaie and Justin Thoraud, cousins, were brought up in their grandfather’s two-centuries-old house near Glasthule, 'their grandfather being a linen manufacturer and a Protestant, whose choleric mastery made the children liken him to Moses when he was threatening to smash the Tables of the Law. Perpetual Strife Perpetual strife existed between the youngsters of the manor and the village children, led by riotous Egan O’Doherty. Justin was nervy, remote, aristocratic. Lou gentle, affectionate, and mildly intellectual. Their parallel lives led her to fall in love with Justin, and when he brought home Nell as his wife she grieved deeply. Nell, pretty and filled with high spirits, was patently no fit mate for the brooding, aloof Justin. She described herself as “born a happy English child with a mug of beer in her hand.” Winning an exhibition, Lou went to Dublin, became a journalist, and was engulfed in the Great War, and in the distressing rebellion of 1916. Egan O'Doherty, who hated the English, breaking into her life, and, though she knew he could not stick to one woman for more than a few hectic weeks, she married him, only to deplore his bloodthirsty plottings, and his wild drinking bouts. A Bitter Price Paid One day she met Nell, who, in Egan’s hearing, said that she was living with Captain Musgrave of the Black and Tans. Fearful, Lou begged Egan to forget what he had overheard, and he promised, hut a few mornings later the papers announced that Musgrave and his woman-friend had been murdered in their flat. Egan disappeared. Like the bad penny, he turned up over and over again, and, knowing him for a wortliless beast, Lou's love survived his blackguardism. She paid a bitter price for her allegiance before the loading was extracted from the Dice of Fate.

Miss Barrington evidently loves Ireland and the baffling racial traits of its people; and so will her read-