OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
MR. H.M. HYNDMAN brings to Clemenceau: the Man and his Time (GRANT RICHARDS) a specialised knowledge of the intricacies of French politics, personal friendship with his subject and a sympathy not discounted by profound differences of opinion. Here is one veteran fighting man writing a brilliant (I don't use the word as a cliché) chronicle and commentary of the battles of another, battles which cover the same period and were fought broadly for the same causes. But the French Radical extremist could never see his way to subscribe to the Socialist creed. His stalwart individualism, in part temperamental, was also as a political working faith the result of a distrust of logic divorced from the experience and responsibility of actual administration. Somewhat similarly the English Socialist refused to let logic press him into the premature Internationalism of so many of his associates, nor did he share their trust, so ruthlessly betrayed, in German Social Democracy as having either the power or the serious intention of thwarting German Imperialism. If a man's achievement be rightly gauged by the difficulties he has overcome, then M. CLEMENCEAU, called unwillingly and unwilling at the most desperate crisis of the destiny of a distracted and dispirited France hammered by the enemy's legions and with the pass ready for sale by false friends, may well justify Mr. HYNDMAN'S verdict on him as the statesman of the Great War. The man who came into the War a mere Tiger will go out of it an authentic Lion.
"Miss BERTA RUCK" is among the few writers from whom I can really enjoy stories about the War. She has an engaging way with her that can turn even that (at least the more endurable aspects of it) to favour and prettiness. And in The Land Girl's Love Story (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), a theme after her own heart, she has given us what is, I think, her best achievement so far. It is an excellent slight tale of two heroines who took their patriotic turn at the work of the land army on a Welsh farm, and the adventures, agricultural and (of course) amorous, that befell them there. It is all the best-humoured affair imaginable, refreshingly full of country airs and brisked up with a fine flavour of romance. "Miss RUCK" has the neatest hand for this kind of thing; she permits no loose ends to the series of love-knots that she ties so amusingly. So the finish of the comedy deserves the epithet "engaging" in more senses than one: with a Jack to every Jill, and the harvest moon (as promised in the cover picture) beaming upon all, the couples paired off to everyone's entire satisfaction. A tale that will be safe for a succès fou with all who have worn the smock and the green armlet; while I can well imagine that ladies less fortunate may find their enjoyment of it tempered with a certain wistfulness.
German Days (MURRAY) is a plain tale of everyday life in Germany before the War, with just those gaps in it which would naturally occur in the narrative of any one observer who also hadn't been aware at the time that she was observing. "A POLISH GIRL (C.B.)" has written this account with an engaging frankness and an apparent lack of exaggeration which distinguish it among books of its kind. It is largely a record of school days, and "C.B.," as the child of a Polish Jew of good standing living in Posen, suffered slights and insults and met with injustices which a "true German" would not have had to endure; but she does not seem embittered. Her picture of the German at home has not made me yearn to renew my acquaintance with him, but it seems to explain the origin of some of his most unpleasant qualities. Since, as "C.B." and other writers would have us know, the German soldier was cowed by physical suffering in peace-time it is small matter for wonder that he became a brute in war, or that the citizen, to whom everything used to be verboten, has, since the bureaucracy which regulated his smallest actions went to pieces, shown very little ability to regulate them for himself. The terrible pact, by which in the ten years preceding the War thousands of German women bound themselves to combat the predominance of the landed classes, which was making life for ordinary people a slow starvation, is one of the things which I am induced to believe, because "C.B." has dealt so faithfully with others of which I knew already. Of books on Germany from within there have been very many, but there is still room for such books as this.
You must not be shocked to find that Captain HARRY GRAHAM has (apparently) abandoned the lighter fields of literature for the heavy plough-land of Biography. What is, I believe, his initial venture of this kind lies before me in Biffin and His Circle (MILLS AND BOON), a record of the career of Reginald Drake Biffin, that eminent author with whose works (The Bolster Book, and others) the public is already familiar; though, by a pardonable confusion, they are more usually associated with the name of the present biographer. It may be said at once that, if a life of Biffin had to be written, Captain GRAHAM was emphatically the man for the task; indeed, from the preface, with its absorbing account of the inception of the work in certain alleged convivialities between author and publishers, to the final chapter, there is not a page that is not calculated to inspire the reader with profound (and in my own case frequently uncontrollable) emotion. Nor is the work valuable for the central figure alone. Of each member of the Biffin circle Captain GRAHAM tells (nay, repeats) some anecdote that forms a tribute at once to the fertility of his research and the industry of his invention. I should not omit to add that the volume is enriched with some admirably reproduced portraits of members of the Biffin circle, as also by an index that is itself a monument of inaccuracy so subtle that it must be traced to be appreciated.
Mr. REGINALD BLUNT has scored another brilliant success with The Wonderful Village (MILLS AND BOON). It is one of his Chelsea books of anecdote, gossip and good talk of which he possesses the secret. He knows how to create the right Chelsea atmosphere and he is most artful in leading his readers on, just as a little dog shows himself every now and then at a decoy and thus draws the inquisitive ducks after him till they drift in with all exit cut off. At one moment Mr. BLUNT gives you a glimpse of that bloodthirsty butcher, KING HENRY VIII. Then you pass to ANNE BOLEYN, CATHERINE PARR and the PRINCESS ELIZABETH. Further on there is a delightfully humorous account by WILLIAM DE MORGAN of his attempt to induce CARLYLE to become a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings: "He promised to think it over, chiefly, I think, because Sir JAMES STEPHEN had rather implied that the Society's object was not worth thinking over. He added one or two severe comments on the contents of space." The various Chelsea potteries are not omitted, and there is an account of the wonderful set designed and executed by the WEDGWOODS for the EMPRESS CATHERINE OF RUSSIA. Of this, in 1909, about one thousand pieces were surviving. Who shall say where those are now? I may add that the author's profits on this book are to be given for the assistance of our blinded soldiers and sailors at St. Dunstan's.
The title of Miss F.E. MILLS YOUNG'S The Shadow of the Past (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) does not refer to the youthful transgressions of any of her characters, but to the cloud which the Boer War left behind it, to burst ultimately in rebellion. I do not know any novelist who brings to her work a greater sympathy with or a finer feeling for South Africa than Miss YOUNG, and if her moderate methods do not find favour the reason can only be that for the moment moderation is a rather unpopular quality. As regards the actual story given to us here I find myself unable to accept the hero, Guy Matheson, with any great enthusiasm. Fresh from the kissing of one girl, he at once falls heavily in love with another. Number One, however, secured him in the end, for he discovered that his feeling for her was real affection, while passion had been responsible for his affair with Number Two. But I fancy that he would still need a little watching. Intermingled with his love affairs is a tale of racial prejudice and intrigue which is told with restraint and skill. Holman, a German agent who had dropped an "n" for his better security, is an obnoxious person, in whose underhand work I can quite readily believe.
Footnote 1: [(return)] Physical training.