OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
Mr. John Hastings Turner, who had already to his credit a play, a novel and various successful revues, has now produced, in A Place in the World (Cassell), what is, I understand, to some extent a fictional version of his play. How far this may be so I am uncertain (not having seen the play), but I am by no means uncertain that it makes here a wholly admirable story, one moreover that shows a notable advance in Mr. Turner's art as novelist, being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of Madame Iris Iranovna, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the wildest farce, since the effect of Iris upon her unfamiliar surroundings was naturally devastating. Mr. Turner however has chosen the more ambitious path of high comedy. In Iris herself, and even more in the kindly old vicar who so unexpectedly confronts her with her own weapons of wit and worldly wisdom, he has drawn two characters of genuine and moving humanity. I shall not tell you how the conflict (essential to real comedy) works itself out, nor after what fashion the empty brilliance of Iris is humiliated and transformed. If I have a criticism of Mr. Turner's method, it is that, as with Bunthorne, a "tendency to soliloquy" is growing upon him which will need watching. But he clothes his reflections pleasantly enough. Already known as what the old lady called "an agreeable rattlesnake," he has now proved himself a story-teller of conspicuous promise.
Von Falkenhayn's General Headquarters 1914-1916 and its Critical Decisions (Hutchinson) seems an honester book than Ludendorff's; less political, less querulous, less egoistic. Von Falkenhayn, who was War Minister when the War began and retained his office after he had superseded Von Moltke as Chief of the General Staff, shows himself incurably Prussian, refusing even to consider the possibility that any State which could wage war effectively would hesitate to do so from any ethical or humanitarian scruple. "Don't bother about a just cause, but see that it appears just before men," he seems to say. "The surprise effect of gas (at Ypres) was very great," is all the comment that tragic episode draws from him. He was a submarine campaign whole-hogger. But he has his own soldierly virtues of modesty and loyalty, and refuses to air his personal grievances in the matter of his supersession by the Hindenburg-Ludendorff syndicate. If, as seems likely, he speaks the truth, as he had opportunity to see it, we must revise our too flattering estimates of the German superiority in numbers and attribute a good deal of the stubbornness of their defence to their quicker appreciation of the character of siege war. The holding of front-line trenches with few men and consequent immense saving of life was, according to the General, practised by the German Command long before we discovered its value. He gives a reasoned criticism, which has to the layman a plausible air, to the effect that the relative failure of Joffre's great combined Champagne-Flanders offensive of 1915 was due to the overcrowding of the attacking armies. General von Falkenhayn, though he has a prejudice for the German soldier, can bring himself to testify to the valour of his British and French opponent. A readable and conscientious account of a difficult stewardship.
I wish I could feel as enthusiastic about The Booming of Bunkie (Jenkins) as Mr. Peter McMunn, who, falling off a motor-cycle, landed in that quiet Scots village and proceeded to turn it, by a series of stunts, into a well-known watering-place. He undertook the job, I gather, partly for a joke and partly for the bright eyes of Evelyn Kirbet, whose father put up the money for the purposes of publicity and propaganda. The transformation of a hamlet into a seaside resort has been treated as a sort of psychological romance by Mr. Oliver Onions in Mushroom Town, where the human beings are a background as it were for the bricks and mortar; Mr. A.S. Neill, having chosen to make a farce of it, has provided a hero who believes in humorous advertisements, and has evidently persuaded the author to take him at his own valuation. This is hardly to be wondered at, since Mr. McMunn seems always keener on popping his puns than on selling his goods. Specimens are given of speeches, press articles, posters and cinema productions, but the fun rages with the most furious intensity round the golf links, where eighteen holes have been compressed into the usual space of one and the winner stands to lose drinks. There are also some parodies of Robert Burns, some jokes about bathing-machines and some digs at the Kirk. One has been, of course, before to seaside places that were a bit too bracing, and I am afraid that the air of Bunkie leaves me cold.
I really think that The World of Wonderful Reality (Hodder and Stoughton) may come to be something of a test for your true follower of Mr. E. Temple Thurston. You recall the ingredients that went towards the first, or Beautiful Nonsense, book? Sentiment in the slums, Venice with a very big V and poverty passim might be regarded as its composition. Well, here you have John and Jill home again; no more Venice, a palpably decreasing sentiment and only poverty to fill up with. I am bound to confess that I found John's protracted preparation for his nuptials rather less than enough as subject-matter for a whole book. Of course all this time there remained Amber (you recollect her; she "also ran" for the John stakes), and at the back of your mind a comfortable conviction that two strings are still better than one. Having censured the book for insufficient plot, I had better not proceed to give away what there is. I will content myself with a personal doubt as to whether John and Jill will quite reduplicate their former triumph—and that for various reasons, not least because (for purposes of sequel, I suppose) even Jill herself has been permitted so grave a lapse from the attitude of stand-anything-so-long-as-it's-slummy-enough that so endeared her to her former public. Touch that and the bloom is indeed gone.
With the Chinks (Lane), a volume of the "Active Service Series," treats of the training of Chinese coolies for work with the Labour Corps in the B.E.F. The special interest of the racial type was, for me, exhausted by the charming photographs; the task remaining for Mr. Daryl Klein, Lieutenant in the Chinese Labour Corps, of so conveying the atmosphere as to absorb the reader's attention, was not achieved. On the two main aspects of the topic, the origin in China and the result in France, he makes no serious attempt. I got no clear impression of the coolie at home or of why he took to being an ally, and I was left with but the vaguest conception of the unit in France, since the narrative ended at the disembarcation. Lastly, I have with regret to complain of one sentence in particular, where he tells us: "It is high time I said something about the officers." He had, from the general reader's point of view, already said too much. It is a pity to have to speak thus moderately of a war-book obviously written with care and treating of an enterprise which must have cost much labour in the achieving and, in the achievement, must have duly contributed to our victory. For those personally involved it will be a welcome memento. For the conscientious historian it will have a certain unique value. And in fairness it must be added that in the latter half there are touches of humour and humanity which make the reading easy and pleasant.
It has been my lot, and I am far from complaining about it, to read many war-books, but never has my luck been more completely in than when With the Persian Expedition (Arnold) fell into my hands. Major Donohoe, while never losing sight of his main object, finds time to tell us a number of entertaining stories with a sedate humour which is most attractive. Seldom has an expedition set out on a wilder errand than this of the "Hush-hush" Brigade, or, as it was officially known, the "Dunsterville" or "Bagdad Party." It was commanded by General Dunsterville, and briefly its objects were to combat Bolshevism, train Persian levies, prevent the Huns and Turks from threatening India by way of the Caspian Sea, and a few other little things of the same nature. The men of this "party" were picked men, and it is enough to say that their courage was as high as their numbers were few. It is indeed a mystery why any of them escaped with their lives, for, as experience proved, it was one thing to train Persian levies and another to get them to fight when they were wanted to. And without the levies the "Hush-Hush" party was outnumbered again and again. I could have wished that the excellent map which is firmly embedded in the binding had been detachable, for the interest of the chronicle compelled me constantly to refer to it, and I suffered great distraction.
"Is he a sailor, Mum?"
"Yes, Darling."
"Then where's his parrot?"
Sidelights of Song (Long), by Mr. Gilbert Collins, contains a few sets of verse which have appeared in Punch.