(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
Few will deny that, in writing _The Life of Lord Kitchener_ (MACMILLAN) so
soon after the death of the great Field-Marshal, Sir GEORGE ARTHUR has at
least displayed the courage of his affection, since to publish such a work
in a time of controversy like the present is inevitably to trail a coat of
many colours, each a challenge to some particular prejudice. If, however,
one can avoid any such attitude of _parti pris_ and regard these three
dignified volumes simply as the record of a great man by one who best knew
and admired him, they will naturally be found of compelling interest. The
three main chapters, so to say, of the story, Africa, India and Whitehall,
will each call up vivid associations for the reader; each has been told
carefully, with just sufficient detail. Perhaps circumstances made it
unavoidable that Sir GEORGE ARTHUR should, if anything, rather overdo the
discretion that is the better part of biography; certainly in the result
one gets what might be called a close rather than an intimate study of a
figure that in life was already almost legendary. If any man of our time
was fittingly named great this was he--alike in his single-minded
patriotism, his success and that touch of austerity which no anecdotes of
exceptions can wholly disprove. In surveying his career of merited triumphs
one remarks how often it was given to him--as at Omdurman and Pretoria--to
redeem early disaster, and one feels again the pity of it that he might not
live to see his noblest task accomplished at Versailles. No doubt the last
word upon KITCHENER OF KHARTUM cannot be written yet awhile; in the
meantime here is a book that will have its value as history hereafter, and
is to-day a grateful tribute to one who nobly deserved gratitude.
* * * * *
Personally speaking, I could find it in me to wish that Mr. MAURICE HEWLETT
would consult a good man about the Saga habit, which appears to be growing
upon him, to the loss (or so I think) of all those who were lovers of his
more human and companionable fiction. But I repeat that this is no more
than individual prejudice, based on the fact that these Norse chronicles
(of unpronounceable people in prehistoric times) leave me singularly cold.
This apart, however, _The Light Heart_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL) may be admitted
an excellent sample of its kind. It is all about the friendship of
_Thorgar_ and _Thormod_, with the former's untimely death, and the
punctilious attempts of the latter to fulfil his social obligation in the
matter of exterminating the slayers of his friend; also, as second theme,
the love of _Thormod_ for _King Olaf_, and the ending of both of them--and
of the tale also--in the heroic battle of Sticklestead. One way and
another, indeed, you seldom saw a short book that contained more bloodshed,
or in which love-making (oh, Mr. HEWLETT!) played a smaller part. There was
a "slip of a girl" in the early chapter of whom I had hopes, but sterner
business caused her to be too soon eliminated. Skill and learning _The
Light Heart_ has in plenty, and an engaging suggestion of the early
artistic temperament in the character of _Thormod_, fighter and song-maker.
But I fall back on my old complaint of being left cold; and that I should
suffer that way from the work of Mr. HEWLETT gives you the measure of our
loss.
* * * * *
In his last grim and terrible work, _Realities of War_ (HEINEMANN), Sir
PHILIP GIBBS has fairly flung aside the restraint, enforced or
self-imposed, that marked his despatches from the fighting fronts, to
present war, the horrible, senseless nightmare, as it really appeared to
him. His work as a correspondent emphasised for him the accumulated
miseries of thousands rather than any individual's share, and his point of
view is as remorselessly gloomy as can be imagined. He is detailed in
disgust; he is passionate in pessimism. He presents not only the soldier's
distaste for trenches and machine guns, and his desire for the things of
familiar life, but also, with surprising vehemence, his hatred of generals
who give blundering orders from comfortable billets in the rear, or of
munitioners in England who keep optimistic in spite of bad news from the
Front. He does not pretend to be quite fair in his criticisms, for
obviously the higher command had to keep out of the firing-line and
somebody had to work--and hard too--to supply the torrent of munitions
demanded. Sir PHILIP admits all that, but in a kind of agony calls on God
and man to realise the meaningless horror of it all and forbid, at any
price, the possibility of its recurrence. If sometimes unjust and nearly
always tragical, the book none the less is free from anything like
hysteria.
* * * * *
Mr. WARD MUIR writes with one eye on the evening papers, and the very title
(not to mention the wrapper) of _Adventures in Marriage_ (SIMPKIN) lures us
without any sense of difficult transition from the news of the day to the
realms of romance. Fifteen stories are contained in this book, of rather
unequal length and merit, nearly all of them dealing with a tense situation
between husband and wife, several of them calculated to lift the hair, and
one or two sufficiently ingenious in mechanism, I should think, to raise a
curtain. The adventures are not all unhappy, and the author would seem on
the whole to balance the scales fairly evenly between those who desire to
reform the Divorce Law and those who would rather reform the world. With
the exception of the first the tales are all effectively told and, if the
machinery is fairly obvious, it does not click too much. The last on the
list is much lengthier than all the others, belonging to the classic
magazine school, which ransacks the bowels of the earth for a new and
terrible setting. Here the heroine, a beautiful Chinese girl, is discovered
by the hero, a missionary, in the cinnabar caverns of Hang Yiu, where the
workers have never seen the light of day, are mostly blind and spend the
intervals of labour in opium sleep. I like this yarn and recommend it to
the attention of anybody who feels that marital squabbles are beginning to
pall.
* * * * *
An excellent purpose will have been served by _German Spies at Bay_
(HUTCHINSON) if it is carefully digested by those scaremongers who during
the War insisted that spies were as plentiful as sparrows in Great Britain.
Mr. FELSTEAD tells us the truth, and, though it may offer too little of
sensationalism for some tastes, it is very comforting to read. The fact is
that the spies of the enemy were pounced upon so promptly and had such a
harrowing time that both their quantity and quality gradually sank to
something very like zero. It is no exaggeration to say that most of the
miserable creatures who came spying to this country never had a dog's
chance from the word "Go." One cannot waste one's sympathy upon those who
for mercenary motives consented to be spies, but I am glad that Mr.
FELSTEAD pleads on behalf of such men as CARL LODY. "Some day," he writes,
"when the nations of the world grow more sensible, there will be two
methods of treating spies. Those who can prove patriotism as the inspiring
motive will be dealt with as prisoners of war; the hirelings will be
condemned to the death they richly deserve." The rules, as they stand,
decreed that LODY had to be shot, but, if he could have received the
treatment which brave men have a right to demand all the world over, I do
not believe that even the most rabid Germanophobe would in his heart have
been sorry.
* * * * *
_Mountain Memories_ (CASSELL) must, if honestly named, concern itself to a
certain extent with mountains, but even those of us who have never felt the
smallest wish to climb can read it with great pleasure. For although Sir
MARTIN CONWAY does mention some of his mountaineering feats this book is
concerned primarily with the spirit rather than with the body. "A
Pilgrimage of Romance" is its sub-title, and, though there can't be many
Pilgrims who have done better climbing, I doubt if any more difficult feat
stands to his credit than this of putting these impressions of the quest of
beauty so clearly and delicately before us. The least deviation from the
path of modesty would have led him into trouble, but he never makes it.
"Reader," he writes, "if you and I are to be real comrades we must share
the same adventures of fancy and of soul.... My fairies must be thy fairies
and my gods thy gods. Hand-in-hand we must thrill with a single
rapture--'_le coeur en fleur et l'ame en flamme_.'" For myself I am well
content (whether he addresses me in the second person singular or plural,
or both--as here) to have vicariously achieved such heights in the person
of so admirable an agent.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE HOUSING SHORTAGE.
[It is suggested that those who occupy houses containing more
accommodation than they need should be compelled to allow their
superfluous rooms to be occupied by less fortunate people.]
_Visitor._ "IT'S ALL RIGHT, SIR. I'VE CALLED TO SEE MISS SPRIGGINS--THIRD
FLOOR BACK. I'M 'ER FEEONCY. YOU DON'T 'APPEN TO KNOW IF SHE'S AT 'OME?"]
* * * * *
"A 'CAESAR' COMMENTARY.
'The Trial Scene' from 'Julius Caesar,' as given at the Coliseum this
week, struck me as somewhat dull, or should we say out of place?
Detached from the body of the play, the scene must have perplexed some
of the audience unfamiliar with the written word."
_"The Rambler" in "The Daily Mirror."_
Possibly he would have preferred the "Tent Scene" from _The Merchant of
Venice_.
* * * * *
"WILD ANIMALS.--I have been told that when men are attacked and eaten
by wild animals there is no sensation of pain. Can anyone who has had
experience confirm this?"--_Weekly Paper._
Referred to Sir A. CONAN DOYLE.