December 5, 1918 
•LAND 6? WATER 
17 
Recent Novels 
1D0 not know liovv far my weakness for novels about 
the future is responsible for my pleasure in The Apostle 
of the Cylinder, by Mr. Victor Rousseau (Hodder and 
Stoughton, 6s. net) ; but I feel obliged to mention my 
weakness in order that the reader may make any 
discount he thinks necessary. However tliat mav be, I find 
this book a very fascinating fantasia on the subject of the 
scientific state. It would take too long to explain how 
Lazaroff contrives to project himself, Arnold, and Esther 
forward in a state of suspended animation into the future 
and how, by a miscalculation, they all awake at different 
times. The world which Arnold finds is one built on severely 
scientific lines, in which the population is graded according 
to its correspondence to the requirements of the eugenists, 
where Nietzsche, Haeckel, and Wells are revered as prophets 
of the new order, and where government is in the hands of 
a scientific oligarchy of eugenically fit persons, Arnold 
arrives in time to sec'tliis order overthrown by the reawaken- 
ing spiritual faculties of man. The story is full of ingenious 
detail and makes an admirable satire on modern scientific 
materialism. I like particularly the touches by which Mr. 
Rousseau shows how science develops into a particularly 
bigoted religion — the ([uarrel whether Force is of the same 
substance as Matter or a like substance, in which "the Sames 
conquered the Similars by virtue of a proclamation from 
Boss Rose," and the "Vienna Creed." 
The Orchard of Tears, by Mr. Sax Rohmer (Methuen, 6s. 
net), is another fantastic book — equally fantastic and equally 
charming in a different manner, which suggests to me very 
forcibly what might be the result of a collaboration between 
Miss Marie Corelli and Mr. R. W. Chambers. Paul Mario, 
the hero, is a great poet who sets out to redeem the world by 
revealing the ancient mysteries and preaching the doctrine 
of reincarnation". He was certainly well qualified for the 
job. His intellect was "almost deiform," and, "listening 
for the Pythagorean music of the spheres, he sometimes 
became deaf to the voices of those puny lives about him." 
His reputation " was greater than that of Gabrielle d' Annunzio 
or Charlie Chaplin." (Gabrielle, I take it, is a celebrated 
rnovie-actress ot whom I have not heard ; the spelling of ■ 
her name i^ Mr. Rohmer's own.) He is prompted, though 
he does not know it, by Satan himself, who assumes the some- 
what conspicuous nom de guerre of Jules Thessaly, and gives 
himself away by being impossible ty photograph. Eventually 
Paul is killed in an air-raid — or, rather, as Mr. Rohmer puts 
it, " His body was scattered like flock by the wind ; his 
spirit was drawn into the ceaseless loom.',' I like this book. 
I can put my hand on my heart and declare that I shall read 
it again. Nevertheless, Mr. Rohmer used to be our Prince of 
Shockers ; and I am sorry he should have deserted that 
genre for what is known colloquially as "the weep-book." 
For, though I have enjoyed The Orchard of Tears, I feel 
inclined to say to him, in the words that Burbage used to 
Shakespeare on the first night of King Lear : " Too much of 
the sob-stuff, William ; too much of the sob-stuff." 
But we should be slow to quarrel with any of our pleasures ; 
and for this reason I hesitate a little before saying that some 
of Mr. Pett Ridge's skill seems to have deserted him in Special 
Performances (Methuen, 6s. net). He still displays enough ■ 
skill to hold our attention ; and his situations are well- 
devised. The titled lady, whose Kentish Town ancestry, of 
which she was ignorant, came out suddenly on Hampstead 
Heath on Bank Holiday, and led her into complications with 
a skipping-rope, is a promising subject ; and so is the trawler 
captain, e.talted by Admiralty employment. But Mr. Pett 
Ridge does not, if I may use the expression, get the last 
drop of juice out of his subjects, as he used to ; and, since his 
themes are usually slender, this sometimes means that there 
is verv little juice indeed. 
Mr. Frederick Sleath, in Sniper Jackson (Jenkins, 6s. net), 
is fortun;itc in having for subject an aspect of trench-Iifc 
which has not yet been written to death. His account of the 
adventures of a sniping section in the salient is well and 
vividly done, apparently from personal experience. Many 
of the incidents seem to come straight from life ; and there 
is an almost Defoe-like reality about the whole of the narrative. 
Mr. Street and the War 
We have had, to be frank, more books about the war than 
anyone could want. Every fool who, has put his nose inside 
a training-camp or a military hospital, or who remembers 
having seen Enver Pasha on the railwaj'-station at Budapest 
has rushed away and written it all down. We have had 
books about the lives of flying men, submarine men, hospital 
orderlies, and temporary women clerks, and every class of 
war-book has included a good many that were merely bad. 
What we have not had, until Mr. G. S. Street filled up the 
gap with At Home in the War (Heinemann, 3s. 6d. net), was" 
a book about the experiences of the reflective civilian pur- 
suing his ordinary occupations as best he could., 
Mr. Street, who is precisely the man one would have 
selected for the job, has done the job very well indeed. He is 
uniformly sensible, obsetvant, and acute ; and in the matter 
of expression he is — than which no more can be said— 
uniformly Mr. Street, uniformly the graceful and original 
essayist. This book only looks like an historical document 
because all books written in times when history cannot be 
kept out of the private lives of even authors tend to have 
that appearance. It is really only the same Mr. Street 
strolling through life with widely opened eyes and a very 
elegant pen ; but that is the kind of man who often composes 
an historical document without knowing it. His First 
Emotions and The Great Response are both extraordinarily 
good and exact, though they were written nearly three years 
after the moment ; and his reflections on all the civilian 
aspects of the war, how it affected age, how it affected youth, 
liow it changed our notions of proportion, how much it did 
and how much it did not mix classes — his reflections on all 
these topics skilfully disentangles the truth from the non- 
sense that has been talked about each one of them. I feel 
inclined to recommend the book to soldiers who want to 
understand what their civilian friends have been thinking 
before picking up life with them again, just as civilians have 
done their best ib keep pace with the experiences of their 
soldier friends by reading this book and that about the 
trenches. 
Various Volumes 
Five escapes from prison in one volume is good measure ; 
and the five escapes recorded by Mr. Wallace Ellison in 
Escaped ! (Blackwood. 6s. net) ought to satisfy him for a life- 
time. Unfortunately, all the escapes but the last broke down 
short of the frontier — on one occasion with tragical ludicrous- 
ness because Mr. Ellison disabled himself by eating a piece of 
shaving-soap under the impression that it was chocolate. 
At least he was succcissful turning the hardest corner by the 
help of a kind-hearted Berlin street-walker, whom he very 
suitably compares with De Quincey's benefactress. The 
result was freedom for him and for us another thrilling narra- 
tive, which will bear comparison with those which have 
preceded it. Owing to Mr Ellison's passion for liberty, he 
spent most of his time in prisor , and therefore gives few 
pictures of Ruhleben hfe, but cot respondingly more pictures 
of German prison life ; r nd in this connection, in the light of 
recent events, it is inter ssting to note an opinion he quotes 
that the authorities sougl it to impair Dr. Liebknecht's reason 
by their treatment of him. in gf .ol. Mr. A. G. Hales, if one is 
to take his word in My Life of Adventure (Hodder and 
Stoughton, Tis. net), ha 5 spent even more time than Mr. 
Ellison in escaping — chi efly from predicaments into .which 
his own enterprising nal urc landed him. But his word must 
be taken. A man who has been, among a great many other 
things, an actor, a silver -mxnc. r, an opal-prospector, and mem- 
ber of a Macedonian g ucrrilh .-band, has no need to invent 
adventures even to wri tc so bi eezy a rough-and-tumble book 
as this. 
In The White Eagle, of Pola, •id (Hodder & Stoughton, 6s. 
net), Mr! E. V. Bens'jn suggests , perhaps a little too empha- 
tically for tact, that <:he Allies are less concerned with Poland's 
beautiful eyes than with the nee cssity of barring Germany's 
easterly ambition.;. But he analyses the factors of the 
Polish problem w ith care, and giM es his reader a good basis 
on which to arri,v^ ?it his' own roni 'lusions. Peter Bell. 
