(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
I always open a new book by GERTRUDE ATHERTON with a pleasant
grace-before-meat sensation of being already truly thankful for what I
am about to receive. And it is hardly ever that I am disappointed. I do
not mean to tell you that her latest story, which bears the attractive
title _Perch of the Devil_ (MURRAY), will eclipse the record of all that
has gone before; but it need not do that to be well worth reading. It is
a tale of mining life, set against a background of claims and veins and
drifts and ores--things that I for one delight to read about because of
their infinite possibilities, the romance of the gamble that is in them.
There is plenty of this gamble in _Perch of the Devil_ (the mountain
township where the miners lived). _Gregory Compton_, the hero, makes his
pile all right, and has some rare moments in doing it. He would have
been happier if he could have enjoyed prosperity, when it came, for its
own sake and for that of his pretty wife. But, though he bestowed upon
her all the luxuries that successful mining commands--frocks and cars
and European travel--it was another woman, _Ora_, who had his heart. And
unfortunately she was the wife of his partner. It is with this quartette
of characters that Mrs. ATHERTON works out her tale, an unusually small
cast for a story of 373 pages; but you will hardly need to be told with
what sympathetic and subtle skill she depicts them. Her art is, as
always, extraordinarily minute and close. The two women especially are
made to live before us with a great effect of actuality. She has wit,
too, of a dry, rather grim, kind. I liked her comparison of _Gregory's_
emotion on finding himself in love with _Ora_ to that of a small boy
despising himself for a second attack of measles before he discovers the
later complaint to be scarlet fever. You must read this book.
* * * * *
In no industrial survey of the present situation have I seen any
reliable estimate of the probable output of patriotic romance. Yet the
figures seem likely to be impressive. One of the earliest samples is
before me now. It is called _The Gate of England_ (HODDER AND
STOUGHTON), with the sub-title, _A Romance of the Days of Drake_, and is
in every way true to its admirable type. What I mean by this is that it
contains everything that you expect and are glad to find--a Virgin
Queen, imperious and quick of retort, with a generous eye for the claims
of gallantry; a hero who simply could not be more heroic; villains (of
Spanish name, priests, murderers, all a regular bad lot), and the right
proportion of female interest and humorous relief. Need I give you the
details? How the hero, Captain of the Queen's body-guard, saves Her
Majesty's life (a scene with a genuine thrill in it) and is rewarded by
her. How he goes in command of an expedition against Channel
freebooters, and finally ends up as an agent of the British Intelligence
Department, finding out things about the army of His Grace of Parma,
then at Dunkirk awaiting conveyance by the Spanish fleet. He seems,
however, to have been something of a failure in the way of intelligence,
as by lack of this the hero managed to get himself and his companion
imprisoned for spies (which indeed they were), and was only rescued by
the intervention of DRAKE as the god from the machine. A pleasant, if
undistinguished, tale that will be enjoyed by the young of all ages. It
is a minor point, but when one finds the hero called _Christopher
Stone_, and another character rejoicing in the name of _Gabriel Ray_, it
is hard to acquit the author of some poverty of invention. His own name
(I had almost forgotten to mention) is MORICE GERARD; and he has done
better work.
* * * * *
_Pan-Germanism_ (CONSTABLE) is a seasonable cheap reprint of a study of
that egregious creed by ROLAND G. USHER, an American Professor of
History. With an almost cynical candour and detachment the author
analyses the origins, assumptions, justifications and pretensions, and
foreshadows with some insight the miscalculations, of those who have
essayed to direct the destinies of modern Germany. It is as well that
this essay comes from a neutral pen; it would else be discredited as a
freak of prejudice. Pan-Germanism, as here seen, is the _reductio ad
absurdum_ of the doctrine that all is fair in war--and peace. It is no
less than blank anarchy, philosophic and practical, and indefinitely
less workable as a theory of international life than that of the so long
discredited Sermon on the Mount. The honest Briton can find here solid
justification of his cause. Perhaps it is not altogether unwholesome
that our national withers don't entirely escape wringing. We are a
little guilty, but much less guilty than our arch-opponent; so thinks
this sober and wide-eyed critic.... Certainly, and the more
significantly since it is without direction or intention of the writer,
one sees behind all the tragedy of these dark weeks and of the long
months and years to come the sinister picture of a man of no more than
common earthly wisdom saddled with responsibilities that might well
break the nerve of a council of the gods. Is it well, if the matches
must be kept in the powder-magazine, to let the children in to play with
them?
* * * * *
Illustration: PERHAPS THE LONDON PUBLIC WOULD FEEL MORE SECURE IF OUR
GUARDIAN AIRSHIP WERE MADE IN THIS PATTERN.
* * * * *
That he will arm the German cat and dog
The KAISER swears in language hot and heady;
He leaves the swine out of his catalogue
Because the swine, it seems, are armed already.
* * * * *