(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
So charged is it with liable-to-go-off controversy that I should
hardly have been astonished to see Mr. H. G. WELLS'S latest volume,
_Russia in the Shadows_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), embellished with
the red label of "Explosives." Probably everyone knows by now the
circumstances of its origin, and how Mr. WELLS and his son are (for
the moment) the rearguard in that long procession of unprejudiced
and undeceivable observers who have essayed to pluck the truth about
Russia from the bottom of the Bolshevist pit. What Mr. WELLS found is
much what was to be expected: red ruin, want and misery unspeakable.
The difference between his report and those of most of his forerunners
is that, being (as one is apt to forget) a highly-trained writer, he
is able to present it with a technical skill that enormously helps
the effect. Our author having been unable to deny the shadow, like
everyone else save perhaps the preposterous Mr. LANSBURY, the only
outstanding question is who casts it. The ordinary man would probably
have little hesitation about his answer to that. Mr. WELLS has even
less. He unhesitatingly names you and me and the French investors and
several editors. Well, I have no space for more than an indication of
what you will find in this undeniably vigorous and vehement little
volume. But I must not forget the photographs. Some of these, of
devastated streets and the like, have rather lost their novelty.
Unfortunately, however, for Mr. WELLS as propagandist he has also
included a number of the most revealing portraits yet available of the
men who are hag-riding a once great nation to the abyss. I can only
say that for me those portraits put the finishing touch to Mr. WELLS'S
argument. They extinguish it.
* * * * *
The pictorial wrapper of _A Man of the Islands_ (HUTCHINSON) is
embellished with a drawing of a coffee-coloured lady in a costume that
it would be an under-statement to call curtailed, also (inset, as the
picture-papers say) the portrait of a respectable-looking gentleman in
a beard. In the printed synopsis that occupies the little tuck-in
part of the same wrapper you are promised "an entrancing picture
of breaking seas on lonely islands and tropical nights beneath the
palms." In other words Mr. H. DE VERE STACPOOLE as before. Lest
however you should suppose the insularity of this attractive
pen-artist to be in danger of becoming overdone, I will say at once
that the six tales from which the book takes its name occupy not much
more than a third of it, the rest being filled with stories of varied
setting bearing such titles as "The Queen's Necklace," "The Box of
Bonbons," and the like--all frankly to be grouped under the head of
"Financial Measures." This said, it is only fair to add that the
half-dozen _Sigurdson_ adventures--he was the Man of the Islands, a
bearded trader, murderer, pearl thief and what not--seem to me a group
of as rattling good yarns as of their kind one need wish to meet,
every one with some original and thrilling situation that lifts it far
above pot-boiling status. I could wish (despite anything above having
a contrary sound) that Mr. STACPOOLE had given us a whole volume with
that South Sea setting that so happily stimulates his fancy.
* * * * *
Mr. S. P. B. MAIS has not yet extricated himself from the groove into
which he has fallen. It is not a wholesome groove, and even if it were
I should not wish an author of his capacity to remain a perpetual
tenant of it. In _Colour Blind_ (GRANT RICHARDS) we are given the
promiscuous amours of a schoolmaster, a subject which has apparently a
peculiar attraction for Mr. MAIS. _Jimmy Penruddocke_, who tells the
story, left the Army and could not find a job until he was offered a
mastership at a public school. The school rather than _Jimmy_ has
my sympathies. There was nothing peculiarly alluring about this
philanderer to account for the devastating magnetism which he exerted
upon the female heart. To describe all this orgy of caresses could
hardly have been worth anyone's time and trouble; certainly it was
not worth Mr. MAIS'S. I say this with all the more assurance because,
greatly as I dislike the main theme of this novel, there are many good
things in it. There is, for example, _Mark Champernowne_ (_Jimmy's_
friend), a finely and consistently drawn character, and there are
descriptive passages which are vividly beautiful and also some
delightful gleams of humour. I think that when Mr. MAIS'S sense of
humour has developed further he will agree with me that a man who
loved as promiscuously as _Jimmy_ and then wrote over three hundred
pages about it could, without much straining of the truth, be called a
cad.
* * * * *
For many reasons I could wish that England were China. It would be
nice, for instance, to address the HOME SECRETARY as "Redoubtable
Hunter of Criminals" and to call the Board of Exterior Affairs (if we
had one) "Wai-wo-poo." I should like my house also to be named "The
Palace of the Hundred Flowers." I think there are about a hundred,
though I have not counted them. But in China it is above all things
necessary to be an ancestor, and this may lead to complications if Mr.
G. S. DE MORANT, who appears to be much more at home with the French
and the Oriental idiom than the English, is to be trusted. _In the
Claws of the Dragon_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN) describes the experiences of a
young lady named _Monique_, who married the Secretary to the Chinese
Embassy in Paris and was obliged, after visiting her relations-in-law,
to reconcile herself to the introduction of a second wife into the
family, in order that their notions of propriety might be respected
and an heir born to the line. When she had consented she returned to
Paris and wrote the following cablegram from her own mother's house:
"You have acted as a good son and a faithful husband. Bring back with
you the mother of our (_sic_) child." And so, the author evidently
feels, it all ended happily. His book is an interesting and amusing
presentment of an older civilisation, but if it won't strain the
_Entente_ I am bound to say that I disagree with his conclusions.
* * * * *
I fear it may sound an unkindly criticism, but my abiding trouble with
_Broken Colour_ (LANE) was an inability to get any of the characters,
with perhaps one exception, to come alive or behave otherwise than as
parts of a thoroughly nice-mannered and unsensational story. Perhaps
it was my own fault. Mr. HAROLD OHLSON (whose previous book I liked)
has obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, done his best for these
people. It is a tale of two rivalries: that for the heroine, between
the penniless artist-hero and a pound-full other; and that in the
breast of the p.a.h., between the flesh-pots of commerce and the
world-well-lost-for-Chelsea. It is typical of Mr. OHLSON'S care that,
though one would in such a situation nine times out of ten be safe
in backing Art for the double event, he makes so even a match of it
between _Hubert_ and _Ralph_ that he leaves the heroine ringing the
door-bell of the one immediately after kissing the other. You observe
that I was perhaps really more interested in the contest than
my opening words would suggest, but it was always in a detached
story-book way; except in the case of a mildly unsympathetic
secretary, represented as having spent too much time in the
contemplation of other persons' affluence, also as owning an
expensive-looking stick that made him long to be as rich as it caused
him to appear. I hate to think that there can have been anything here
to touch a chord in the reviewing breast, but the fact remains that
_Mr. Burnham_ stands out for me as the only genuinely human figure in
the book.
* * * * *
Blessed, no doubt, is the nation or the man without a history, but
blessed too is the biographer who has something definite to write
about. Mr. C. CARLISLE TAYLOR, in putting together his _Life of
Admiral Mahan_ (MURRAY), the American naval philosopher and prophet,
must have felt this keenly, for rarely can a man whose work was so
important that he simply had to have a biography have done so few
things of the kind that help to fill up a book. The Admiral not only
foresaw the great War before 1914; he even suggested definite details
of it--for instance, the loyalty of Italy to Western civilisation and
the final surrender of the German fleet; yet in himself, though the
writer draws an attractive picture of his home and religious life,
he was only a kindly Christian gentleman who lectured to a few naval
students. This is not the stuff to turn into a thrilling life-story,
yet his studies on _Sea-Power_ in relation to national greatness must
certainly be reckoned among the prime causes of world-war. They set
the Germans trying to outbuild the British fleet; more fortunately
they were an inspiration to naval enthusiasts in this country also.
Mr. TAYLOR has a pleasant chapter describing the immediate recognition
and welcome his hero received in England, while it has taken quite a
number of chapters to do justice to all the written tributes to his
genius that the energetic author has collected. Personally, if ever I
had been in doubt about it, I should have been quite willing to take
that genius for granted some time before the end, and could indeed
recommend the volume much more happily if it were reduced by about
half. It will be valuable mainly as a necessary work of reference.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _Artist_ (_condescendingly_). "I DID THIS LAST SUMMER.
IT REALLY ISN'T MUCH GOOD."
_Candid Friend._ "NO, IT CERTAINLY ISN'T. BUT WHO TOLD YOU?"]
* * * * *
Our Well-Informed Press.
"At Kensington Palace the ground frost registered 9 deg. Fahr.,
which represents 23 degrees below zero."--_Evening Paper._
* * * * *
"WELLS HITS BACK AT CHURCHILL."--_Sunday Paper._
Not the Bombardier, as you might think, but BERT WELLS.
* * * * *
Transcriber's notes:
Page 481: Tristan d'Acunha--this spelling also appears in the
previous issue of 'Punch'.
Page 488: Single quote corrected to double quote.
Page 493: Replaced missing double quote.
Page 494: Replaced missing opening quote.
Page 498: Removed extraneous closing quote.