I MISSED MY WALK– But I Bead Some Books

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 94, 10 April 1941, Page 10

I MISSED MY WALK– But I Bead Some Books

By

K.

S.

HE chaps at the office said: "What about a walk?" They say it every day as soon as they finish their cigarettes. The routine is fixed: 12.30 strikes, desk drawers are slammed, we munch our sandwiches and argue about the grand strategy of war, smoke one cigarette, then stand up and say, "What about a walk?" I always go, not because I’m worried with indigestion, but because it is nice to get out on sunny days. But ten to one we are out, and do the unvarying circle-along the road on the sunny side to pass the local newspaper office in case there is any news pasted up outside, then back by a different street but still on fhe sunny side. On the way we pass dozens of other office workers, all dressed like us, all strolling along on the sunny side like us, and all about the same pace, They're probably saying exactly the same things as we are saying, too. When It Rains But to-day was wet, so I hived off on my own to the chief bookshop of our town, to enjoy a Scotsman’s read, For years I have popped into that shop for a quiet peep into the new books, At one time I reckoned on doing a book at three standings, but now I belong to the Public Library and take them home to tread at my leisure. But I still drop into the bookshop on wet days and potter tound among the really new books which I don’t seem to be able to find at the Public Library. My taste runs to history and biography, to personal stories of artists, writers and actresses, doings behind the scenes in politics and the theatre, life in America, travel at sea, memoirs of foreign correspondents, and detective novels. ‘The front of the bookshop counter always has a display of the latest pamphlets and I always look them over, toobooks are dear, but I don’t mind 6d. for a pamphlet. I couldn’t help noticing today that every one of the pamphlets on show — about 20 in all — dealt with the Home Guard or with personal participation in the war in some phase or other. There were booklets on Elementary Drill for the Home Guard, Small Arms Training, First-Aid books of all kinds, pamphlets about the Lewis Gun, Map Reading, Military Law, Physical Training and so on. Not Since Douglas Credit These booklets must be selling like hot cakes. There must be hundreds of ordinary men and women in this town not only studying military and first-aid books, but buying them-an aspect of the war I have not seen commented on yet. In fact, there hasn’t been anything like this mass-buying of pamphlets since the spate of booklets and magazines on Douglas Credit about eight or nine years ago. I remember then that there were dozens of pamphlets about it-describing the new Zion of Alberta, explaining the famous report of the committee of the London Chamber of Commerce. "The A plus B Theorem Simplified" and what not. In New Zea-

land alone, there were two weekly magazines to cheer on the faithful: "Plain Talk," which lived up to its title, and "The New World." An Australian weekly "The New Era," also sold well here. Then a bit later (I think), there was a rush of similar writing on the U.S.A.’s own special fad, Technocracy. What happened to all the copies remaining unsold when the tide went out?

Piles of those old copies, if they could be unearthed, would make a win for the boys collecting waste paper, Once It Was Religion My bookshelves are cluttered with bodéks and pamphlets on subjects which have gone out of fashion-useless shelf scrap. But I don’t make the mistake of imagining there is anything new in that fact. My parents’ bookshelves are equally cluttered up with lumber (by which I mean simply books that are no longer read). The only difference is that their lumber is not about currency, it is about science versus religion. At the time of the great rationalist and fundamentalist controversy in the eighties between Gladstone and Huxley, hundreds, and indeed probably thousands of small books were published on one side or the other. I still own a number of paper-covered doublecolumned "R.P.A. Cheap’ Reprints, 4,000,000 copies sold," Haeckel’s "Riddle of the Universe," "Huxley’s Lectures," "Modern Science and Modern Thought," by Samuel Laing, Essays by Emerson, Hume, McCabe, Ernest Clodd, Renan, J, S. Mill, Thomas Paine, Ingersoll, and other worthies of the period. I haven’t even opened the covers of them for years, My children probably won’t even know who Ingersoll and Paine werethough I hope they won’t completely overlook Emerson,

Then there wete the Christian books which copied the same style of presentation. They, too, have descended into the abyss of time, until the only one I can remember to-day is "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," by Henry Drum-mond-a worthy old fighter, too. It won’t be many years I hope before the books on Home Guard training are equally gone with the wind, not because modern war changes rapidly, but because the issue will have been decided. The Oxford Pamphlets on World Affairs and all their imitators will have gone, too. I have a theory that among the few things worth buying now are the long panoramic novels — you can’t read them standing at the counter of a bookshop and certainly not in the lunch hour.

W.R.

K.