“Colonel Malone’s attitude is one of a somewhat suspicious solicitude; he is aware of the danger of being taken in, and this gives to his report an air of special authenticity. Perhaps the most interesting chapter is that dealing with the Red army.”
+ Freeman 1:167 Ap 28 ’20 300w
“Colonel Malone’s book will be popular among sympathizers with Soviet Russia, especially those of a more or less conservative stripe. It explodes the grosser fabrications about Russia without implying too much violence against what cautious folk conceive to be a properly centered world. Its superficiality from this point of view may prove an asset: for no one can deny that it is essentially a superficial study.” Evans Clark
+ − Nation 111:47 Jl 10 ’20 750w R of Rs 61:556 My ’20 60w The Times [London] Lit Sup p90 F 5 ’20 150w
MANDER, JANE. Story of a New Zealand river. *$1.75 (1c) Lane
20–4462
A story by an author apparently familiar with the country of which she writes. For its beginnings it goes back a full generation to a pioneer age in a new country. Alice Roland is as unfitted for this life as her husband is fitted for it. An English woman, adrift with a young child, she accepts Tom Roland’s offer of marriage and goes with him up the river to the wild country where he is to carve out his fortune. She has never loved him, and finds her life, with its hardships and recurrent child bearing, dreary enough. Then love for her husband’s partner, David Bruce, comes to complicate the situation. Alice’s scruples and David’s loyalty to his partner keep them from transgression. In the meantime Alice’s daughter, Asia, grows up, with ideals very different from her mother’s, with a sure knowledge of what she wants, and she doesn’t let the fact that the man she loves is already married stand in her way. There are good pictures of the New Zealand landscape and of its developing civilization.
“She lacks confidence and the courage of her opinions: like the wavering, fearful heroine, she leans too hard on England. There are moments when we catch a bewilderingly vivid glimpse of what she really felt and knew about the small settlement of people in the lumbercamp, but we suspect that these are moments when she is off her guard. These serve nothing but to increase our impatience with Miss Mander. Why is her book not half as long, twice as honest?” K. M.
− + Ath p49 Jl 9 ’20 600w