OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
In the war-after-the-war, the bombardment of books that is now so violently raging upon all fronts, any contribution by a writer as eminent as Lord Haldane naturally commands the respect due to weapons of the heaviest calibre. Unfortunately "heavy" is here an epithet unkindly apt, since it has to be admitted that the noble lord wields a pen rather philosophic than popular, with the result that Before the War (Cassell) tells a story of the highest interest in a manner that can only be called ponderous. Our ex-War Minister is, at least chiefly, responding to the literary offensives of Bethmann-Hollweg and Tirpitz, in connection with whose books his should be read, if the many references are properly to be understood. As every reader will know, however, Lord Haldane could hardly have delivered his apologia before the accuser without the gates and not at the same time had an eye on the critic within. Fortunately it is here no part of a reviewer's task to obtrude his own political theories. With regard to the chief indictment, of having permitted the country to be taken unawares, the author betrays his legal training by a defence which is in effect (1) that circumstances compelled our being so taken, and that (2) we weren't. On this and other matter, however, the individual reader, having paid his money (7s. 6d. net), remains at liberty to take his choice. One revelation at least emerges clearly enough from Lord Haldane's pages—the danger of playing diplomat to a democracy. "Extremists, whether Chauvinist or Pacifist, are not helpful in avoiding wars" is one of many conclusions, double-edged perhaps, to which he is led by retrospect of his own trials. His book, while making no concessions to the modern demand for vivacity, is one that no student of the War and its first causes can neglect.
It is not Mr. L. Cope Cornford's fault that his initials are identical with those of the London County Council, nor do I consider it to be mine that his rather pontifical attitude towards men and matters reminds me of that august body. Anyone ignorant of recent inventions might be excused for thinking that The Paravane Adventure (Hodder and Stoughton) is the title of a stirring piece of sensational fiction. But fiction it is not, though in some of its disclosures it may be considered sensational enough. In this history of the invention of the Paravane Mr. Cornford hurls a lot of well-directed bricks at Officialdom, and concludes his book by giving us his frank opinion of the way in which the Navy ought to be run. It is impossible, even if one does not subscribe to all his ideas, to refrain from commending the enthusiasm with which he writes of those who, in spite of great difficulties, set to work to invent and perfect the Paravane. If you don't know what a Paravane is I have neither the space nor the ability to tell you; but Mr. Cornford has, and it's all in the book.
A stray paragraph in a contemporary, to the effect that the portrait of the heroine and the story of her life in Baroness von Hutten's Happy House (Hutchinson) is a transcript of actual fact, saves me from the indiscretion of declaring that I found Mrs. Walbridge and her egregious husband and the general situation at Happy House frankly incredible. Pleasantly incredible, I should have added; and I rather liked the young man, Oliver, from Fleet Street, whom the Great Man had recently made Editor of Sparks and who realised that he was destined to be a titled millionaire, for is not that the authentic procedure? Hence his fanatical obstinacy in wooing his, if you ask me, none too desirable bride. I hope I am not doing the author a disservice in describing this as a thoroughly wholesome book, well on the side of the angels. It has the air of flowing easily from a practised pen. But nothing will induce me to believe that Mrs. Walbridge, putting off her Victorian airs, did win the prize competition with a novel in the modern manner.
Mr. Alexander Macfarlan's new story, The Inscrutable Lovers (Heinemann), is not the first to have what one may call Revolutionary Ireland for its background, but it is by all odds the most readable, possibly because it is not in any sense a political novel. It is in characters rather than events that the author interests himself. A highly refined, well-to-do and extremely picturesque Irish revolutionary, whom the author not very happily christens Count Kettle, has a daughter who secretly abhors romance and the high-falutin sentimentality that he and his circle mistake for patriotism. To her father's disgust she marries an apparently staid and practical young Scotch ship-owner, who at heart is a confirmed romantic. The circumstances which lead to their marriage and the subsequent events which reveal to each the other's true temperament provide the "plot" of The Inscrutable Lovers. Though slender it is original and might lend itself either to farce or tragedy. Mr. Macfarlan's attitude is pleasantly analytical. It is indeed his delightful air of remote criticism, his restrained and epigrammatic style queerly suggestive of Romain Roland in The Market Place, and his extremely clever portraiture, rather than any breadth or depth appertaining to the story itself, that entitle the author to a high place among the young novelists of to-day. Mr. Macfarlan—is he by any chance the Rev. Alexander Macfarlan?—may and doubtless will produce more formidable works of fiction in due course; he will scarcely write anything smoother, more sparing of the superfluous word or that offers a more perfect blend of sympathy and analysis.