NOTABLE BOOKS. 



?>^S 



CHRIST IN FICTION. 



'Di,: Fool in Christ. By Gerhart Kaupt- 

 mann. (Translated )»y Thomas Seltzor.) 

 (Methuen, 6/-.) 



The Proiihcts. By P. P. Shcehan. (Un- 

 vvin, 6/-.) 



Two presentments by modern authors 

 of what they suppose the Christ would 

 be Hke if He were embodied on earth 

 at the present day have recently 

 appeared. "Fool in Christ'" will be 

 eagerly read by those who know the 

 work of the great mystical German poet 

 and playwright, who has so lately been 

 awarded the Nobel prize for literature. 



Emmanuel Quint, the son of a car- 

 penter, is described as wandering penni- 

 less, ragged, without any rights, at the 

 mercy of the law. He is agonised be- 

 cause of the conventionalism and un- 

 reality of the Church's teaching, and 

 compelled by irresistible impulse to 

 speak to the people, calling out to them, 

 " Here in this world suffering is happi- 

 ness. Blessed are ye when men shall 

 hate you." Necessarily, Quint sets the 

 beaureaucrats of German\- at defiance. 

 From place to place he is driven forth 

 with contumely, but from time to time 

 is surrounded by earnest souls who 

 attach themselves to him, believing him 

 to be the Saviour. 



A terrible catastrophe occurs, when a 

 young girl, in whose family he had been 



received as a guest, leaves her home and 

 follows him, no one believing that Quint 

 can be innocent of her abduction. 

 Stoned, evily treated, falsely accused 

 of murder, he, when released from 

 prison, wanders away into the country, 

 knocking occasionally at doors, and 

 when questioned answering", " I am 

 Christ ; give me a night's lodging." 

 None take him in, and, months after, his 

 body was found, a rigid, crouching 

 corpse above Et. Gothard's Hospice. 



Does Hauptmann really intend to 

 portray a modern Christ in this aimless, 

 wandering weakling? The strength of 

 the book lies in the wonderful descrip- 

 tion of the Silesian peasantry. 



The other novel, " T Jie Prophet^' tells 

 a story much more akin to our Anglo- 

 Saxon ideas. The preaching of Mr. 

 Sheehan's hero, the Professor, is much 

 the same in essence — God is love. God 

 is in us, and there is nothing real but 

 that. But his action is different. Both 

 Quint and the Professor j^erform 

 miracles, but the latter appears to us 

 as a person having power, authority, 

 and a calm benignity more in accord- 

 ance with the idea of the Saviour bred 

 in us from childhood than is the Quint 

 of Gerhart Hauptmann. 



THE PASSING OF THE TURK. 



'With the Conquered Tttilc. By Lionel 



James. (Nelson. 2/- net.) 



Turkey and the war are, of course, 

 very much to the front this month. We 

 ha\e a bird's-eye view of the war as seen 

 with the Turkish Army by the veteran 

 correspondent of T/ie Tunes. Lionel 

 James, with its large type and fine illus- 

 trations, taken mostly from the lllits- 

 Iratcd London News. It is as impos- 

 sible as it was to the war correspondents 

 themselves to avoid hearty laughter from 

 time to time in spite of the horrors of 

 warfare therein described and the awful 

 pathos of the debacle in the Turkish 

 Army. Incidentally Mr. James gives 

 us the nicknames of one or two of the 

 correspondents, Mr. Donovan being 

 " Dumpling," Ashmead-Bartlett " the 



Jew's Harp," and Ward " the diplomat," 

 James himself being " the Centurion." 



lT'/f/( the Ti(rl\s ill Throee. { Heiiieniann, 

 10/- net.) 



Another volume is that of Mr. Ash- 

 mead-Bartlett, " With the Turks in 

 Thrace." Here we get, as in Mr. James's 

 book, a mi.xture of pathos, suffering 

 bravel}- endured, and light-hearted ac- 

 counts of difficulties overcome which no 

 one but a war correspondent himself 

 could possibl}- describe One little note 

 in Mr. Bartlett's memoir shows up ver)' 

 strongly the mistakes of the British For- 

 eign Office. He sa\-s : "All other For- 

 eign Embassies a])]-)ear to exist for the 

 purpose of helping the subjects of their 

 respective nations. The British, on the 

 other hand, appear to exist for the ex- 



