(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
_After the Day: Germany Unconquered and Unrepentant_ (JENKINS) is
the kind of thesis-book which it is wise to read in a deliberately
incredulous mood. Mr. HAYDEN TALBOT is an American newspaper man of
immense resourcefulness but, I should judge, of a not conspicuously
judicial habit of mind. That, perhaps, is hardly a newspaper man's
business. He is after copy, and certainly there's good enough copy in
his interviews with Count BERNSTORFF and Dr. RATHENAU, and one
must admire his feat of getting out of these and seven other German
publicists, including MAXIMILIAN HARDEN, the draft of a manifesto to
the people of America, composed in the hope, vain as it happened,
that the KAISER would break his long silence and sign it. It is the
author's theory that it is the inner camarilla, working for a speedy
restoration of the monarchy, that is responsible for the certainly
uncharacteristic reticence of Amerongen. Mr. TALBOT also interviewed
HINDENBERG, whom he found a "broken-down, inconsequential, garrulous
example of senility" LUDENDORFF, who was very stiff and proud and
rude; and the _fiancée_ of the man who sank the _Lusitania_. His
general idea of Germany is summed up in the remark of Mr. MANDELBAUM,
of New York: "All this talk about Fritz being down and out is all
bunk!" Germany is full of energy and hate; she will soon be a monarchy
again; will undersell the world; is assiduously preparing for air
supremacy as the way to _revanche_. I take it that this is not so
much a book as a _réchauffé_ of newspaper articles, which alone
will account for its formlessness and frequent changes of plane. Mr.
TALBOT, confessing to a total ignorance of the German tongue, seems
quite unconscious that this imposes certain limitations on his
capacity to make an adequate survey of a difficult problem.
* * * * *
I may confess at once that I finished the first chapter of _The Woman
of the Picture_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) in a mood of slight derision,
induced by Mr. G.F. TURNER'S allowing one hero to say of the other
that he had "the interminable limbs" of an aristocrat. To the end of
the book indeed I was uncertain whether such occasional lapses were
meant to illumine the character of the supposed speaker or were
unintentional. But again to quote, this time a phrase in which Mr.
TURNER clearly shares my own delight, "before we were through with
the affair" such details had ceased to be of moment. The plain fact is
that _The Woman of the Picture_ is the most breathless, irresistible
piece of convincing impossibility you have read for ages. I decline to
struggle with any transcription of the plot. On the wrapper you
will observe the woman stepping bodily out of the picture, like the
ancestors in the whisky advertisement; this, however, is a symbolic
rather than an actual presentment. But there is plenty without it:
a rightful heir, mountain castles amid the eternal snows, a villain
(with sorceries), half-a-dozen attempted murders and the most
hair-lifting duel imaginable. Soberly considered the whole business is
a riot of delirium, belonging flagrantly to that realm where all the
world's a screen, and all the men and women merely movies. But the
unexpected charm of the book is that with the possible exceptions
noticed above) it is told with a touch of distinction, even of
subtlety, that invests its wildest audacities with an atmosphere of
fantastic truth. In short, if Mr. G.F. TURNER has done nothing else he
has at least enabled the fastidious to enjoy the thrills of a shocker
while retaining their self-respect.
* * * * *
In the first of the three stories, each about a hundred pages in
length, which make up _Gold and Iron_ (HEINEMANN), it is hard to
escape the conviction that Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER between the lines,
"So you thought that CONRAD was the only JOSEPH who could throw a
man and woman together on a mysterious coast in the most strangely
romantic circumstances, and provide a thoroughly groolly scrap into
the bargain. Well, here's another little _Victory_ for you." He
seems definitely to challenge that air of the extraordinary and the
inevitable combined which Mr. CONRAD so subtly conveys. It is a big
effort, and I don't feel that the author quite brings it off, yet I
cannot think of anyone but Mr. CONRAD who would have come nearer to
doing so, and the fight in the dark in this story is one that even
after the War will make a reader catch his breath for half-a-dozen
pages at least. In the second and third stories, which actually deal
with gold and iron (the first of the three is called "Wild Oranges,"
though perhaps "Blood Oranges" would have been a better title),
the writer returns to a happier _métier_, and deals with an America
remarkably interesting and wholly novel to me, an America where
foundries and railways are in their infancy and crinolines are worn.
Saloons, bowie knives and bags of gold-dust are all too familiar to
us, but who, on this side of the Atlantic at any rate, ever remembers
the quiet towns with Victorian manners to which the diggers belonged
and returned? Both "Tubal Cain" and "The Dark Fleece" are excellent
yarns and wonderful pieces of pictorial reconstruction as well.
* * * * *
After reading _The Searchers_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), I seriously
think of myself joining His Britannic Majesty's Secret Service.
All the fun and firearms, and ever, at the conclusion, a startling
surprise for your friends and admirers, among whom you stand cool,
calm and collected. _Anthony Keene-Leslie_ did not deceive me
when, upon his first introduction as a secret servant, he modestly
disclaimed the thrills and excitements commonly attributed to his
trade. I knew that many pages would not be turned before he would
land us in the middle of some crimson intrigue; mysterious strangers,
disguises, cryptic and invaluable manuscripts, urgent telegrams,
codes, Italian hidden hands, Scotland Yard, pseudo-taxicabs, clues
and things. But let others beware of Mr. JOHN FOSTER, a most ingenious
manipulator of the old stock-in-trade and possessing a rare sense of
humour. For the reader to pit his wits against the author's is,
in this instance, to be completely "had" and to become under the
necessity (about page 265) of taking off his hat, not only to the
secret servant but to a mere minion of the "Yard" also. Two minor
points emerge from a close study of the book. The first is that the
author is undoubtedly a barrister himself; if I am wrong on this point
I finally withdraw my threat to join the Service. The second point is
that he knows his Scotland even as well as he loves it. In the result
you have two merits, which together amply discount the element of
cheap sensationalism: one merit is the logical development of the
story, and the other is its beautiful setting. I don't know whether
it is due to the Scottish climate or to the legal atmosphere that
the author omits all reference to the feminine sex or affairs of the
heart; but anyhow it seemed right and meet that women should be
left at home when men were engaged upon such violent and dastardly
business.
* * * * *
From certain internal evidences, mainly orthographical, I am led to
suppose _The Branding Iron_ (CONSTABLE) to be of Transatlantic origin.
This, no doubt, explains my unfamiliarity with the name of Miss
KATHARINE NEWLIN BURT, also certain minor points, notably the fact
that the story, though by no means badly told, suffers from what I can
only call a plethora of plot. As I followed the developments of its
intrigue and tracked the heroine from untutored savage, wife of the
wild Westerner whose excusable suspicions caused him to brand her as
private property, to the moment of her triumph as the bejewelled idol
of theatrical New York, the conviction grew upon me that here was a
tale surely predestined to be the screen that covers a multitude of
melodramatics. Presently indeed the suggestion became so insistent
that I went further and began to wonder whether I was not in fact
reading a "story-form" of some already triumphant film. Certainly
the resemblance is almost too pronounced to be fortuitous; from the
sensational branding scene, through cowboy stunts, to the up-town
playhouse, where a repentant and wife-seeking hero recognises his mark
upon the shoulder of the leading lady--and so to reconciliation, slow
fade-out, and the announcement of Next Week's Pictures. But though it
is impossible not to suspect Miss BURT of having an eye to what poetic
journalism calls the Shadow Stage, this is by no means to belittle
her mastery of the colder medium of print; and I hasten to acknowledge
that, upon me at least, _The Branding Iron_ has left a distinct though
possibly fleeting impression of good entertainment.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE RELUCTANT PEGASUS.