i8 
LAMJ & WATER 
November 2, igi6 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
WE cannot learn too much about our Allies 
at such a time as this, and they, to judge 
from the books which are being abundantly 
published and eagerly read in their countries 
and our own, cannot learn too much about us. This is 
as it should be. Without mutual understanding there 
cannot be effective co-operation. 1 have been reading 
several such books recently. 
***** 
I-ct us give place of honour to the French, the pioneers 
of modern European civilisation. Many of us are too 
apt to think that we know all about France. We all 
read French books, more fcr less ; talk the language, less 
or more, and have been to Paris for a holiday or two, and 
have found there jirecisely what we expected to find, 
a discovery that has left us more profoundly ignorant 
than before. It is well, therefore, to have a guide to 
France, who knows, as it were, the Paris of the French- 
man and not of the cosmopolitan. Laurence Jerrold has 
before now placed at our disposal his intimate knowledge, 
his understanding and his powers of detached observation. 
We are glad, even at the expense of some repetition, to 
have his information brought up to date in France <>/ 
To-day (John Murray, 7s. 6d. net). Here, even 'if we do 
not always accept the author's judgment on every phase of 
French life, we have abimdant material on which to form 
our own. Here we have reasoned judgments, founded on 
well-compiled evidence, on such topics as why the Frencli 
military system is so essentially democratic ; what dis- 
establishment has done for the Church ; why the birth- 
rate is stationary and likely to remain so ; how the 
philosophy and literature of France are founded on reason, 
and, above all, how France went to war, the most 
consciously united country in Christendom. These are 
only a few of the many important topics which Mr. Jerrold 
discusses in his comprehensive survey. Their treatment 
gives his book its permanent value, but it should be 
added that incidentally he gives a very fresh and instructive 
little sketch, from the French point of view, o^ military 
operations from the opening of the war to the German 
failure before Verdun. This is distinctly a book not only 
to read but to possess. 
***** 
Miss Winifred Stephens has faced in The Soul 0/ 
Russia (Macmillan and Co., los. 6d. net), a harder 
task than she undertook last year when she gave us a 
similar collection of literary and pictorial matter to 
express Tke Soul of France. Yet the very reason that 
made her new book more difficult to compile makes it 
more interesting and more valuable. W^e all of us think 
we know something about France ; most of us know tliat 
we know little or nothing about Russia, even though we 
may not have committed "the English blunder about 
Russia, " on the subject of which G. K. Chesterton con- 
tributes a characteristic note, in which he says of the \ i< w 
of the two English parties on the Russian : " One pictured 
him as everlastingK' parading with a knout in tlie 
Ural mines, and tjic other as everlastingly lurking witli a 
rifle in the Khyber Pass." Few F^nglisli writers ha\t' 
done more to remedy this blunder than Maurice Barini;, 
several of whose sonnets are deservedly given places of 
honour in the various sections of this volimie. Yet we 
are many of us still very ignorant, and in the urgent desire 
for enlightenment which a common war in a great cause 
has (piickened. The Soul of Russia comes as a very welcome 
acquisition. 
***** 
" Mighty is the world of ideas which teaches us how 
to bear ourselves towards the world of external facts." 
These words in an essay on "• Shakespeare's Influence in 
Russia." which >3'estor Kotlyarevsky contributes to The 
Soul of Russia might well be taken as a motto for the 
compilation. For the rest its scope can best be described 
in the words of the editor : " In art, it extends from the 
early icon, the tenth-century folk-song, and the homely 
creations of peasant industry to the music of Stravinsky, 
the paintings of Goncharova, and the elaborate repre- 
sentations of the Russian ballet. It describes a circle, 
so to speak, in the tendency to revive the archaic ex- 
hibited by Stelletsky's pictures. In the domain of 
literature, poems, tales, and critical essays portray the 
influences which direct, the ideals which inspire, and the 
ardent sentiments which impassion contemporary 
Russian thought." It only remains to be added that the 
proceeds of the book's sale are to be devoted to the admir- 
able work which is being undertaken by that most 
significant of all war committees, that of the All Russian 
Union of Zemstovs, in aid of Russian refugees. 
***** 
So much for our Allies, what of ourselves ? In Through 
French Eyes (Constable, 6s. net), M. Henry D. Davray 
describes in a complimentary fashion, which it were 
churlish not to acknowledge, Britain's effort in the war. 
Though his book consists of little more than a series of 
journalistic articles on such subjects as visits to munition 
works, to training camps and to the British lines in France, 
the stages by which compulsory service was introduced in 
England and the memorial service to Miss Cavell, it is 
continually illuminating from the point of view from 
which it is written. Particularly is this the case with 
the final chapter, " How War has Transformed the 
English." In this M. Davray points out that, while it 
was the call of La Patrie that instantly made France one, 
" tlie unanimity in his (the Englishman's) case is based on 
the words ' honour ' and ' justice.' " But, he thinks, we 
have now got over that. 
***** 
I have before me three novels of very different types, all 
of which have something to commend in them. J-et me 
take the most topical first. It is a translation of a I^utcli 
novel called A Young Lion of Flanders (Headley Bros., 
3s. net), and has the added attraction of four illustrations 
by Raemaekers. With a view to impressing on the 
younger generation the horrors of war, its author, J. van 
Ammers Kveller, has written a very vivid and graphi' 
story, all founded in fact, of the Gerinan surprise ol 
Belgium. For the youthful reader the glamour of th( 
young hero's adventures will no doubt defeat the author- 
object, and outweigh the ugliness of " the .unholy thing.' 
Meanwhile, it is a book to read. Farm Servant (G. 
Allen and Unwin, 6s.), is a book of a very different type, 
a patient and well-written variant of an old theme of the 
problem novel days, the liaison and subsequent marriag( 
of two of different classes in society. Its author, E. 11. 
Anstruther, has some sense of character and will pro- 
bably make better use of it on some subsequent occasion. 
Finally, for a bonne bouche, here is a really exciting and 
well-constructed detective novel. It is called At 1.30 ; 
is written by Miss Isabel Ostrander, evidently an 
American, and is published by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall, 
Hamilton, Kent and Co. (6s.), but wild, horses would not 
drag from me what it is all about. 
Dead Cities of the Orient 
OF all the Asian mysteries none appeals to the modern 
mind more strongly than the dead cities of the Orient 
which abound. Tyre and Nineveh, Palmyra and 
Babylon are only representatives of others whose 
names are unknown or almost unknown in western region-. 
There is no deeper tragedy than these ruins of mighty capital- 
that in their day housed the highest civilisation, the most- 
affluent prosperity that it then seemed possible for man to 
boast of. And they perished, usually by the perversenes 
of mankind, working through war, slaughter and slavery. 
And Nature would complete the devastation, now by with- 
drawing the main source of life which is water or, again, by 
burial beneath shifting sands or, as in Ceylon, by casting over 
the wasted places a heavy shroud of jungle. 
Anuradhapura, the capital of Ceylon, was but a name for 
centuries. Until less than a hundred years ago, the site of 
it was imknown, but then came the curious .Anglo-Saxon, 
with his indomitable quest of adventure, and bit by bit 
its secret has been penetrated, its tragedv unveiled until 
{Continued on page aol 
