IS 
LAISU & WATER 
September 13, 1917 
Novels of the Autumn 
1 
^ ■ "MIE autumn publisning season has begun, and 
every day witnesses the output of new books. At 
first the "influence of the war on fiction was .slight, 
it provided episodes but scarcely coloured thought. 
That stage has passed, and it is almost impossible to take 
up a new book that matters without feeling that the last 
three years have left an irradicablc impress upon literature, 
though even now it is not as deep as it will be during the 
next ten or twenty years. 
*,♦***• 
It is a little difficult to analyse the undeniable charm which 
pervades all the work of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, but one is 
inclined to attribute it to a gift of perennial youth which the 
gods have bestowed upon her pen. Close on a quarter of a 
century has passed since the present writer first reviewed 
one of her novels— and it was not her first by any mcafts— 
and he finds himself under the same spell 'when reading her 
latest hook, just published by Messrs. Mcthuen {Anne 
Lidvsorlh, .5s. net), which hinges upon recent events. Mrs. 
Sidgwick touches age with kindly reverence ; for middle 
age she reserves her undoubted power of irony, but her heart 
is with the young on the threshold of life. It was so in the 
old years ; " it is so to-day. All her sympathies are with 
youth ; she knows its troubles and its ambitions ; she com- 
prehends its perplexities, and if so straightforward a story- 
teller can be said to have a message, it is to the young : 
" Be honest with yourselves, run straight, be stronj,' and the 
world shall yield to you." This story is just a slight love- 
story of people of no "particular consequence except that they 
are the people that constitute England to-day, and who are 
fighting her battles for freedom, both on blood-stained 
fields abroad and in silent endurance at home. The scene 
changes from suburban Putney to glorious Cornwall ; al- 
though it is not difficult to realise with which environment 
Mrs. Sidgwick is the more enamoured, she is quite honest, as 
witness this one sentence-: " The more I sec of country life, 
the more I value the peace and seclusion of London." Had 
the reviewer the naming of the book, he would have called it 
Phahe Finds Herself: for the way in which a snubbed girl of 
nineteen emancipates herself from the domineering rule of a 
vulgar stepmother, and breaks off her engagement with 
an " impossible " CO. simply through love for a healthy 
boy in khaki, is the most delightful episode in the novel. 
* * « .« * 
Here is a curious fact. It would probably be difficult to 
find two living novelists more dissimilar than Mrs. Sidgwick 
and Mr. H. G. Wells, or two books more widely apart than 
Anne Lulworth and The Soul 0/ a Bishop, and yet underlying 
both is the same identical spirit. Which spirit is, that the 
future is to the young, and that the war has proved the 
future of England "to be safe, in that the youth of England 
was never stronger, healthier, or more true to itself than in 
this hour. This brings gladness to all, but perhaps more 
especially to those with whom life must be largely retrospect, 
. in that they know they are leaving their country in good 
hands, in better hands probably than those which guided 
its destinies in the generation or two that preceded 1914. 
« « * * He 
The junior officer of to-day has never been better portrayed 
than by Stephen McKenna in Ninety-Six Hours Leave 
(Methuen, 6s.), which tells how " the Kitten," on landing at 
Victoria with three friends, was tempted to impersonate an 
Italian prince, and' succumbed to the temptation, with the 
result that the ninety-six hours were very crowded indeed — 
especially when the real prince turned up. Mr. McKenna 
knows the junior officer very well, and, as one would expect 
of such a novelist, he manages to make the reader know the 
junior officer very well too, in which achievement he con- 
trives one of the most delightful comedies that has been 
written, since Mr. Hichens wrote The Londoners. The story 
is engrossing, with sparkles of wit on every page, and the 
reality of the characters is such that one bids them good-bye 
at the end of the ninety-six hours, with regret. All who 
have read Sonia are practically certain'to get this book, and, 
for those who have not, wc recommend them to make 
acquaintance with Mr. McKenna's work by way of " Kitten" 
and Patricia, the lady who was really responsible for th€ 
whole adventure. 
it tf * tt * 
The metliods with which Germany sought to Prussianise 
Alsace form the main tiieme of Hearts of Alsace, by M. Betham- 
Edwards (Smith Elder, 6s. net.). It is not the story of the 
book that counts so much as the scene in which the story 
is set. The author knows Mulhouse and the ways of the 
Alsatians, and she tells a simple story of life in a provincial 
town, the disappointment of a French Alsatian father at his 
daughter's determination to marry one of the conquerors 
forming the main incident, or rather motive, of the story itself. 
That story is a small thing, but what is so poignant ancl real in 
the book is the way in which tlicse people, oppiesstxl by their 
conquerors, retain their love for the Republic of which, in old 
time, Mulhouse elected to become a part. Certain ways of the 
German in peace are made plain ; it ought to be better known 
that, long before this present war, the French language was for- 
bidden to Alsatians, French pastors and priests were driven out 
and replaced by Germans, and every attempt was made to 
destroy the identity of Alsace with France. There is in the 
book a delightful picture of a German official : " Though very 
likely an honest man, a good husband and father, false codes 
of honour, exaggerated self-love and burgled authority, had 
vitiated, rather disproportioned him ; he was out of place., 
an anomaly." And when he went to interview French 
Alsatians, he carried a oig gold watch, the loot of an uncle in '70. 
***** 
The Way of the Air (Heinemann, 2s. 6d. net) — who to-day 
can resist a book with such a title as that ? We are all 
anxious to read all we can of the element in which so many 
wonderful things have been done and in which, . so many 
wis.; people tell us, the war is going to be ^on and lost. The 
author of the book, Edgar C. Middleton, has collected in it 
many fugitive sketches and articles he has written for the 
papers under the pen-name of " An .Mr Pilot," and has grouped 
them under three headings, " The Service Airman in the. 
Making," " On Active Service," and " Other Craft and the 
Future." He knows what he is writing about and, generally 
speaking, conveys his knowledge in an interesting manner. 
***** 
Whether he is back in the middle ages, recounting the 
"adventures of Beltane the Smith, or merely back a few 
years, telling of the ." amateur gentleman," or up in this 
present age, telling of Geoffrey Ravenslee in " little old 
New York," Mr. Jeffery Farnol is always concerned with the 
perfect man in quest of the perfect woman ; always, too, 
the quest ends happily, for to this type of story no other 
ending is possible. The Definite Object, Mr. Farnol's latest 
book (Sampson, Low and Co., 6s.), differs no whit from its 
predecessors in these respects. Mr. Geoffrey Ravenslee, 
American millionaire, is the perfect man in search of an ob- 
ject to make life worth living. He sets out for Mulligan's, a 
tenement building — and there the object is waiting. It is, 
of course, the perfect woman, and though Mr. Geoffrey Ravens- 
lee is what ha is, there are just the right amount of obstacles 
in the way to show the stuff of which he is made. 
***** 
It is magnificent, but it is not life ; it is, as the authoi 
through one of his characters admits, a chapter out of the 
history of " the beautiful city of Perhaps." Yet it is not 
melodramatic, for Mr. Farnol does not deal in melodrama 
but in high romance. Geoffrey and Hcrmione are merely 
the prince and princess of the fairy tale brought up to date, 
and the Dickensian host of minor characters who surround 
them, and help to make their story, give them such an air 
of reality that all who know their Farnol will welcome this 
new work from his pen, partly because he has, in a large 
measure, the saving grace of humour, and partly because it 
is in the nature of man and woman to delight in tales of 
high ideals realised. Mr. Farnol does not bother about 
realism, or attempt to solve social problems ; he tells a good 
story, and tells it well, and in this his latest work there is 
good proof of that statement. 
t^' TOR ^^^^ 
i GOGGLES 
I WIND- SCREENS 
Xj^WlNPOW5 
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THE ONL.Y ^ 
SAFETY CLASS 
