(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
"A tough hide and some facility of expression"--to quote the author's
modest estimate of his qualifications--have enabled Rear-Admiral Sir
DOUGLAS BROWNRIGG to make his _Indiscretions of the Naval Censor_ (CASSELL)
the liveliest book of the War that has come my way. Thanks to the first
element in his make-up he managed to retain his difficult and delicate post
throughout the War, and only once came into serious collision with any of
his official superiors. As these included First Lords of such diverse
temperament as Mr. CHURCHILL and Lord FISHER, and First Sea Lords with such
diametrically opposite views regarding publicity as Lord FISHER and Sir
HENRY JACKSON, this was no small achievement. Thanks to the second element
he has written a book which scarcely contains a dull page. Whether he is
giving us a pen-picture of Mr. CHURCHILL conducting Admiralty business from
a sick-bed, with his head swathed in flannel and an immense cigar
protruding from the bandage; or explaining how the legend of Lord
KITCHENER'S survival arose from a trivial error that caused the news of the
_Hampshire_ disaster to reach Berlin a few minutes before it was published
in London, he always writes with directness and _verve_. Admiral BROWNRIGG
tells a good deal about the censorship, and illustrates his theme with some
excellent reproductions of naval photographs before and after the Censor
had "re-touched" them. He tells us even more about his work in a less
familiar _rôle_, that of Publicity Agent to the Silent Service. It was he
who arranged visits to the Fleet by more or less distinguished personages--
"BROWNRIGG'S circus parties," as they were dubbed in the gun-room--and who
engaged authors like Mr. KIPLING and artists like Sir JOHN LAVERY to
describe and portray the doings of the Fleet and its auxiliaries. It pains
me to learn, however, that "Passed by Censor" was only a guarantee for the
harmlessness and not for the veracity of the stories narrated; and in
particular that the famous "Q"-boat ruse of the demented female with the
explosive baby was a pure work of imagination.
* * * * *
Without any special heralding, Mr. ERIC LEADBITTER seems to have stepped
into the front rank, perhaps even to the leadership, of those active
novelists whose theme is English rural life. I emphasize the word "active,"
with of course a thought for the master of them all, the wizard of
Dorchester, at whose feet it would probably be fair to suppose Mr.
LEADBITTER to have learnt some at least of his craft. His new story,
_Shepherd's Warning_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN), is a quiet tale of life in a not
specially attractive village--a tale that conquers by its direct humanity
and by an art so delicate and so deftly concealed that the book has a
deceptive appearance of having written itself without effort on the part of
its author. It concerns a group of peasants, agricultural labourers,
inhabitants of Fidding, a village gradually yielding to the encroachments
by tram and villa of the neighbouring town. The simple annals of these
folk, and especially of one family, old _Bob Garrett_ and his grandsons,
provide the matter of a tale gentle as the passage of time itself, never
dull, instinct with quality in every line of it. Mr. LEADBITTER has a
method of concentration so pronounced that, once let his characters, even
his heroine, step outside the beam that he has focussed upon Fidding, and
they vanish utterly, till the working (apparently) of fate brings them back
again. Even the murder in his early chapters is so lightly touched upon as
to produce hardly any effect of violence. His sympathy with the life of the
soil, and the human lives that are so near to it, is clearly absorbing; the
result is that, to all save the confirmed sensationalist (piqued possibly
by the waste of good homicide), _Shepherd's Warning_ will also, I think,
prove Reader's Delight.
* * * * *
Mr. H. COLLINSON OWEN, formerly Editor of the soldiers' paper, _The Balkan
News_, would just love to trap you into an argument on the value of our
Macedonian campaign as compared with certain other war efforts. His book,
_Salonika and After_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), shows him thirsting to accept
battle for the cause he champions; and in the sub-title, _The Side-Show
that Ended the War_, he fairly throws down the gauntlet. But take my advice
and don't be drawn. He has a foreword from General MILNE to support him,
and an extract from LUDENDORFF'S _Memoirs_, and a quotation from _The
Times_. He has a very lively and convincing way of putting things too, and
once he gets his enthusiasm fairly in hand becomes an uncommonly powerful
advocate. Not that this volume is by any means just a piece of special
pleading; only the author is honourably concerned to show both the
importance and the severity of the war against the Bulgars, which he thinks
people at home were a little inclined to disparage. I certainly cannot
remember doing so, but, putting controversy aside, this book remains an
adequate first-hand account of an adventure so great as to demand an heroic
literature all its own, where it can be seen in true perspective. Mr. OWEN
deals delightfully with nights in Salonika clubland or the vagaries of King
"TINO", or with the more warlike matters culminating in the terrific
actions that held the enemy's left wing tight while our allies smashed his
centre. An excellent book, with illustrations above the average and a good
map handily placed.
* * * * *
Mrs. HENRY DUDENEY'S _Spade Work_ (HURST AND BLACKETT) is a queer story
queerly told. A musician and an art-and-crafty girl, both poor and both
dull, are engaged. The musician, visiting his _fiancée_, now well off and
installed in a comfortable village farm-house, lets the strong air of the
place get into his head and falls deep in love with a yeoman's daughter,
who in turn, stimulated by this experience, straightway succumbs (at her
first dance in real society, into which the great lady of the village, her
patron, has introduced her) to the suggestion that she shall spend an
unchaperoned night on a young blood's yacht, with results usual in
distressful fiction. However, after many tribulations she and her musician,
now duller than ever, are united, while the jilted craftswoman is left
"full of ideas, sumptious (_sic_), a little feverish" for village
industries which from my impression of her mentality I should judge would
be of a devastating order. Lovers of that charming little West-country
village in which the author sets her scene will not easily forgive her for
naming it and baldly cataloguing its houses and sundry points of its
environment, leaving out most that is the essential of its charm. It's
simply not done by authentic writers of fiction--barring house-agents.
* * * * *
Those who experienced the rapture of discovery in an exhibition last May of
caricatures by EDMUND X. KAPP may now rejoice (supposing them to command
the needful guinea) that they can recapture this pleasure through a volume
of twenty-four representative drawings collected under the apt title of
_Personalities_ (SECKER). Not for me to attempt detailed consideration,
even if it were not the duty of every amateur to fall a victim at first
hand to Mr. KAPP'S amazing art. But one can hardly pass without tribute
such things as the head of the Japanese poet on page 1 ("Seer of Visions"),
a really wonderful example of much meaning in few lines, or the WYNDHAM
LEWIS, the only drawing in the book in which a suggestion of cruelty tinges
the satire. Perhaps the most directly laughter-moving pages are those
devoted to the brilliant series of musical conductors; is this because we
have all stared our two hours into expert familiarity with these
variously-tailored backs? But indeed here is a volume of twenty-four
joys, or rather twenty-five, the last being anticipation of Mr. KAPP'S
further activities, which I for one shall await with very genuine
interest.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SQUEEZED IN AND SQUEEZED OUT.