“The entertainment of hundreds of thousands with ‘healthy’ literature is a great and worthy office; but the author can only give out what is in him. If I write of wretched and strange things, it is because these move me most. Happiness needs no understanding; but these darker things—they are kept too much from sensitive eyes and polite ears; and so are too harshly judged upon the world’s report. I am no reformer; I have never ‘studied’ people; and I have no ‘purpose,’ unless it be illumination.
“What we all need today is illumination; for only through full knowledge can we come to truth—and understanding.”
ii
Burke’s new book, The London Spy, is described by the author as “a book of town travels.” Some of the subjects are London street characters, cab shelters, coffee stalls and street entertainers. The range is very wide, for there is a chapter called “In the Streets of Rich Men,” which deals with Pall Mall and Piccadilly, as well as a study of a waterside colony, including the results of a first pipe of opium (“In the Streets of Cyprus”). Mr. Burke tells a good deal about the film world of Soho and is able to give an intimate sketch of Chaplin. Perhaps the most charming of the titles in the book is the chapter called “In the Street of Beautiful Children.” This is a study of a street in Stepney, with observations on orphanages and reformatories and “their oppressions of the children of the poor.”
Thomas Burke was born in London and seldom lives away from it. He started writing when employed in a mercantile office, and sold his first story when sixteen. He sincerely hopes nobody will ever discover and reprint that story. His early struggles have been recounted in his Nights in London. He married Winifred Wells, a young London poet, author of The Three Crowns. He lives at Highgate, on the Northern Heights of London. He hates literary society and social functions generally. His chief recreation is wandering about London.
iii
There is very little use in doing a book about China nowadays unless you can do an unusual book about China; and that, precisely, is what E. G. Kemp has done. Chinese Mettle is an unusual book, even to the shape of it (it is nearly square though not taller than the ordinary book). The author has written enough books on China to cover all the usual ground and, as Sao-Ke Alfred Sze of the Chinese Legation at Washington says in his foreword, Miss Kemp “has wisely neglected the ‘show-window’ by putting seaports at the end. By acquainting the public with the wealth and beauty of the interior, she reveals to readers the vitality and potential energy, both natural and cultural, of a great nation.” Three provinces are particularly described—Yünnan, Kweichow, Hunan—and there are good chapters on the new Chinese woman and the youth of China. This book has, in addition to unusual illustrations, what every good book of its sort should have, an index.
In view of the title of this chapter I have hesitated over mentioning here Albert C. White’s The Irish Free State. Whether Ireland now should be numbered among the places to go or not is possibly a matter of heredity and sympathies; but at any rate, Ireland is unquestionably a place to read about. Shall we agree that the Irish Free State is one of the best places in the world to go in a book? Then Mr. White’s book will furnish up-to-the-minute transportation thither.
The book is written throughout from the standpoint of a vigorous and independent mind. It will annoy extreme partisans of all shades of opinion, and will provoke much discussion. This is especially true of the concluding chapter, in which the author discusses “Some Factors in the Future.” The value of the book is enhanced by the inclusion of the essential documents of the Home Rule struggle, including the four Home Rule Bills of 1886, 1893, 1914 and 1920, and the terms of the Treaty concluded with Sinn Fein.
Whether Russia is a place to go is another of those debatable questions and I feel that the same conclusion holds good. A book is the wisest passport to Russia at present. Marooned in Moscow, by Marguerite E. Harrison, is not a new book—in the sense of having been published last week. It remains about the best single book published on Russia under the Soviet government; and I say this with the full recollection that H. G. Wells also wrote a book about Soviet Russia after a visit of fifteen days. Mrs. Harrison spent eighteen months and was part of the time in prison. She is an exceptionally good reporter without prejudices for or against any theory of government—with an eye only for the facts and a word only for an observed fact.