THE
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.
What Made the
Flower
Fade?
BRIEF FLOWER OF YOUTII
By Graham Meash
(Longmans, Green, 78. Gdj
NYONE who wants to write a novel exposing Fascism
--(any
established variety) is undor a heavy handicap. For there comes a point when brutality. arrives- and then the author finds that the whip and the blackjack have forestalled him. The truth
in more appalling than his fiction.
In this direct, sensitive story, Mr. Meath has solved the problem-and heightened the significanco of the talo-by leaving the horror, for the most part, to be implied. And the freshness of his approach the is only twenty-three) is extremely attractive.
ile records the tragedy of post-war Germany in na short scenes, in the first which wo meet Ittchard, a child of Ave, dreaming over Grimm's fairy tales. 'Once upon Limo a king was hunting in a great wood. When evening came, he stood still and, looking around him,"found that he had lost his way.
Richard wanted to lose himself in that wood, tro, ro, nine years later, he perounded his mother to take him for a holiday to the Bavarian Alps. It was An enchanted land to him, al.
though he had a glimpse of reality in the war-eripples hobbling along in a peaca demonstration in the streets of Nuremberg.
Three years pass' and he is in the forest once more, this time at a happy. democratic Thuringian school, where he falls in love with Erika and visits a family in Berlin. There he listens to endless discursions and a quite inno- rently involved in a Naal riot.
An interval at Oxford. The Hitler catlth. And Berlin again-a swirl of swastikas, marching men and blaring propaganda. Erika, by now a Bocial- 1st, is arrested, anil Richard is ex- pelled from the country for associating with a "political undesirable."
☆ ☆ ☆
Follows an interlude in the Pyrenees, 'where his exiled Derlin friends are struggling to win a living from a moun- tain farm. And then the last neene of all, The Withertog of the Flower." with Erika ahot in a desperate adven ture and grave-faced leglous of the Hiller Youth tramping through the
woods.
The story, aided by coincidence, has come full circle. For a moment Richard fancies he is still under the spell of those fairy tales. And then he looks down and sees the crushed blossoms ant the muddy leaves,
You will remember Brief Flower of Youth. If is the most moving first novel I have read for some time.
An English-
woman, by Hans fol. Delu tio
Younger,
THE HAPPIER EDEN By Beatrice Keari Seymour (teinemann, 78. Gd.)
PARE the plot and spoil the tale. Mrs. Kean Seymour is toe
forgot the importance of that literary proverb. Each member of the Herriard family in her latest story has a yarn as well as a character.
The children and grandchildren of a soured Victorian novelist, they struggle towards their conventions of security and comfort after their fashion.
But the book is mainly concerned with flome, a woman who
married beneath her and didn't mind in the very least until strange echoes from her husband's past disturbed her quiet,
It all comes right in the end, be cause the secret he had thought it best. to conceal from her turned out to be not so shattering as he had feared. And
Empire Surveys
THE BRITISH EMPIRE By a Study Group of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (azlard University Press, £50.)
A SURVEY OF BRITISH COMMON- **WEALTH AFFAIRS, 1918-1936, VOL. I.
PROBLEMS OF NATIONALITY By Professor W. K. Hancock- (Oxford University Press, 258.) THE EMPIRE IN THE WORLD My Sir A. Willert B K. Long and II. V. Hodson (Oxford University Press, 103. Gd.)
W
ITH the Imperial Confer- ence in sesalon, Imperial relations and Imperial prob- lems come well to the forefront of politics. So these three books come at the opportune moment.
But even apart from that they are For there is a more than welcome. lamentabis "hortage of good books..... perhaps because there is a lamentable Absence of thinking-about that very important but very strange organism. the Briush Empire.
The evolution of the Commonwealth alnce the war has been rapid and start- ling: facts have outrun both law and theory. It is time to take stock and revise outworn idens. And each of these books is more than helpful.
The British Empire is A survey- factual and thoughtful at once-of "the Countries." the Fabric" and
"the Problema." A masterpiece of concision, packed to the brim with in.. formation, amazingly objective in out look indispensable for anyone who- wants to understand.
Professor Hancock's Survey is not an encyclopædia of fact. It is rather a study of the new theory of the Em- pire" than of the Empire itself, 80, in accordance with good scientific prac
the tlee, it devotes most attention points where that thehry seems lcast satisfactory, to Ireland and India, to Palestine and Malia.
As an Australian Professor in an English University, knowing the other Dominionu well. Dr. Hancock sees his problems from more than one view-
zest point.
the Commonwealth steadily and whole." In page after page bis Survey is a challenge to one-angled and parochial thinking.
Lastly The Empire in the World, which like Omul is three inlres, ..
H
BOOKS
WEDNESDAY,
Edited by Roger Pippett
SPA
TUNBRIDGE WELLS
By Margaret Barton
(Faber and Faber, 158)
JULY 7,
1937.
SUTUS AUTA MAANA A
ISTORY, thank goodness, is not always in a relentless hurry. Sometimes she sits down in out-of-the-way places under the troes and just lazes the hours away.
She seems to have spent a lot of time being decora tively and interestingly dle nt Tunbridge Wells, where Miss Barton, a perfect gulde, admirably in formed and brilliantly evocative, takes us in this book.
An astonishing number of somebodies and nobodles. famous and Infamous, have been associated at ene time or another with these celebrated healing waters and Mink Barton, with a fund of knowledge, anecdote --and api quotation and a dry humour which keeps any kind of Good Old Days" sentimentality properly out of the picture, stages for us a fascinating pro- cession of royal and noble personages and their hangers-on, leavened with a sprinkling of poets beauties, writers, doclors and divines
We are present at the discovery of the pod of water, yellowish-red and scummy, tasting of iron and vitriol, to which Tunbridge Wells owes its existence. Mira Barton takes us through the Civil War, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, with ta cynicism and sensuality and artiacial versifying. the eighteenth century of Beau Nash and the nine teenth of Queen Victoria. Here are stories of bigamy in high pinees, gam. ing, sharping intrigues, religious ex- eltements, terary ardours and Queer People.
From "Portraits and Studies of Women," chosen and edited by J. Mathey (Fader and Faber, 68),
the curtain falls with the only dis- agreeable character taking an overdose of sleeping draught by accident and so ceasing to be a menace to the Her. riard happiness.
Not an epoch-making novel, but well- knit, idily told, plausible and enter- talning.
H
MARRIED PEOPLE
By Mary Hoberts Rinehart
(Cassell, 78. 6th.)
USBANDS and wives and the trinis of their lives are the subject of the ten short storica in thila book, another in- stance of a standardised product which comes up to specification. * Being American, they have more difficulties with fee-boxes and lemon- ple and keeping up with the Joneses- and less troubla with the vicar and the butler and hunt balls-than their opposite numbers over here.
These differences in the social habits of that strange but extremely virile race which we know so well in the magazines and meet so rarely in the flesh give Mrs. Rinehart's akelclics a allightly exotic interest.
But, according to the rules of popu. lar action, human nature is funda mentally the same everywhere, and to civilisations that border both sides of the long-suffering Atlantie are sull. dently alike to make English readers want to know how the various women in these tales cope with the problems of slimming, looldng younger than they really are, having daughters-in-" law about the hire or out-of-work husbands too prout to be kept and
so on..
Considering the apparent odds in favour of these wives fosing their hus bands or putting on welght, I am amazed at the cheerfulness of Married.. People.
R.P.
quartered into Something About
Mr Long writen lueldly of the poll. tical problems of the Empire. Mr. Hod- son lucidly of its economic problems,
Sir Arthur Willert, dealing with "The World Aronnel Us," subjects the foreign policy of the "Natlarial" Go. vernment to'svingeing criticism, whileh is the more telling because for must of the period Sir Arthur was a high off- cint of the Foreign Office,
It should open the eyes of some who
st belleve that there is a "Foreign
Omer line ou everything.
WE hear a great deal about MI.P.S. position.
W. N. K.
M. P.s
Wives
By
9%
ONE OF THEM
A Queer Person was the learned William Whiston, chaplain to Queen Anne, when Princess at Wales, who used to proceed with her toilet while he read through morning prayers in an adjoining room. Sometimes her Jadles deemed it expedient to close the door,
"One day, Whiston. happening to be on dufy when the door closed. abruptly ceased reading. At just the door reopened and the Princess, find. ing the service no further advanced, angrily asked why he had stopped 'Because, Madam,' he replied sternly *I do not choose to whistle the Word of God through a keyhole.'
Every page of this book, which pleasantly illustrated. has somethin on it of humour, charm, quaintness 0: vivid hislery. Put it on your bedside table and, like visitors to Tunbridg Wells, you will be a daily dippert
.....
S. F.
THRILLS
THE LADY IN THE MORGUE By Jonathan Latimer
A
(Methuen, 78. Cd.j MORTUARY, you would think, would be the place for stlife. Not at all. At any rate, not in Chiengo. Never.a dull. moment from the disappearance of the embalmed blonde until her head turns up shudderingly in the hands of Detective No. 1.
In two days," recalls a colleague, we start a fight bi a taxi-dance joint, find a murdered guy and don't tell the police, crash in on a dope mob, bust, in on a party, kidnap a gal, steni a car and rob a graveyard."
He forgot the drinks: Or, perhap he merely took them for granted These are the fastest moving, hard
to have wise. est drinking bunch cracked their way through an under- world with the grim authenticity of nightmare since The Thin Man,
By way of contrast turn to another of those h. O, Eberlinrt heroines doomed to be delivered from unhappy marriage or engagement only at the cost of being suspected of murder. There is also, in and th Glove (Collins. Ta, sd.), the usual faithful lover who, for reasons dificult ascertain, naves the body and 'causes trouble for everyone. 2.
to
Detection is muttled in a style which akip straight statement of facts and atmospiirre. The curicentrates on melting of snow becoines hostly fingers beating at a window sill. But let us be Intr...More than a million people have bought Mrs. Eberhart's ཨི ཝཱ, ༈
CONSIGNEES' NOTICES.
Question Time In School
IT is chiefly at question time that
the schoolmaster comes across Those gleams of humour which en- liven his existence. One teacher, who was taking the English literature class, announced that he would set them a paraphrase of Wordsworth's "Daffodils." By way of simplifying the task, he asked what the poet meant by the lines
ક્ gazed and Razed, but little
thought
What wealth the show to me
had brought."
A little, matter-of-fact maiden Immediately aliot up her hand. “The money he got for writing the poem, sir," she volunteered.
Sometimes the laugh le turned ngainst the teacher, as in the case of the master who asked, "Now, James, what are you doing-learning some- thing?"
"No, slet" answered Jumes quite seriously, "I'm listening to you.”
Then there was the master who was explaining the perplexities of civilisation to his class, and by way of Illustration he propounded, "If you go to the kitchen
cold, on a frosty morning, you may find that the water refuses to flow when you turn on the lap: Can any of you tell me why?"
"Please, sir," an carnest little maiden ejaculated, "you ain't paid the water rate."
Needless to say, it was a Cockney pupil who, when asked, "Where does the Rhine flow?" Innocently ans- wered, "Down the drain, sir."
It was in a London schoolroom also that the following incident hap- pened,
The children were being taught the different values of coins, and the teacher suddenly pounced on one inattentive little boy, pinced half a crown on the desk in front of the child, and asked unexpectedly, "What is that?"
Without a second's hesitation, the reply was eagerly offered, "Eads!"
Here is a story which proves that an unexpected reply, may be full of sound commonsense. The teacher was explaining the functions of the British Consul to his pupils.
"I' someone
took you up in an neroplane," he suggested, "and, after a long flight, dropped you in a foreign country, thousands of miles from your own home, can you tell me the first place you would go to?" "Yes, sir!" a little boy soberly answered, "The hospital"
Sometimes a child's answer will give an unexpected glimpse of the home conditions.
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Pres. Cleveland Pres. Coolidge Pros. Tatt
Pres. Hoover Pres. Lincoln Pres. Coolidge
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Via Shanghai, Kobe and Yoko- hama,
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In one school, the children had Hong Bank Bldg.
to
bcen asked to bring n, worm school for observation during the naturo study lesson.....
"Please, miss," one wee Inusie ex- cused herself, "I told mother we were to have, a
to take to worm school to-day, and she said, 'Oh! Take your father then,"
And there
case of the was the Itle ten-years-old girl who was naked about fourteen-years-old alster who had just left school.
21
"Oh!" she explained easily, "sho's no good at housework, so mother's going to send her to service."
It was sheer boastfulness which was responsible for this howler from
a little Glasgow inddle
"They asked me a lol, of questions he remarked at school to-day," chattily at night.
"What kind of questions?" "Well, they wanted to know where I was born. And I wasn't going to let them think I'd been born in a women's hospital so," he added airily, "I just said I was born in Hampden Football Park."
Here is a story which lustrates the film consciousness of the modern chlid.
It was April 23rd, and the "I wonder how school master naked, TE H
mang of you children
remember whose birthday it is to-day?"
speculating mentally whether would answer, "William
they Shakespeare" or "St. George," when to his complete bewilderment, they shouted out, almost with one voice, "Shirley
Temple's, sir."
One meets her at political
complete with husband of it. A slight-quite unconscious-HOLLAND-OOST "AZIE LIJN. N.V. but not very much about their recepilons,
One notices this also in Ministers" wives, and yet they are an interest- in smart morning coat and button- glow of superiorily surrounds her.
Members' wives hole. (The Older ing study.
have long learnt that their husbands wives, There in the Young Wito, who be- are busy at the touse" on these haves as if nobody had ever married occasions.)
谶
(HOLLAND-EAST ASIA LINE)
From: ANTWERP, ROTTERDAM, AMSTERDAM, HAMBURG, GENOA,
AND OTHER PORTS ··
"GAÄSTERKERK"
an M.P. before. She shows. tremen- Slie tries to look very self-assured THE wife who is not politically The Steamship
minded does not like limelight,
WAS
An original angle on history was effected by the pupil who was asked, "who was Thomas. Bocket?" dous keenness, haunts the galleries,
"Thomas a Becket," he pronoun- and It loves to take her friends and polut as she penetrates the crowd round put to them the Front Bench, cole- the tea fable, talking brightly with but work hard behind the scenes. having arrived from the above ports, ced, "led a dissipated life,
her husband, hoping people will She is helpful in the constituency, britles.
ned that all goods are being landed
asked what he Another pupil, think he is a friend she has just met. ofen Is her husband's secretary; but consignees of cargo by her are noti- took three nights to kill him."
she is not very spectacular, and at their risk into the hazardous and new of Solomon, insisted that he The policemen and messengera nll
or extra-hazardous godowns of the was very fond of animals. How did have, a friendly word with her, she She is praying for a friendly face. therefore not of much account in the
Holt's Wharf whence and/or from the make that out? he was asked. in so fresh and interested in every A charming personality in her own gay world. thing and so obviously enjoying her home. she is a little out of her Always popular is the wife who the wharves delivery may be ob"Because it says in the Scriptures
tained. self. I have a dim recollection of element here, rather doubtful about this feeling. It was pleasant while her clothes and the dashing now makes Jests about the constituents,
lipstick she was invelgled into buy- pompous
It lasted!
1937,
that he had 300 porcupines."
"10
Goods not cleared by the 13th July Ministers, her fellow
It was in the Scripture class also will be subject to rent. 4.p.m.
that wives, in fact, about everything-
All broken, chafed and damaged another pupil got the chance Then there is the Capable Wife, Ing.
Delightful to meet, she is considered packages are to be left in the 'go-
to perpetrate this howler. The lesson had been on Elijah and the who is president of this and chair-
downs where they will be examined She has an inferiority complex, a litle dangerous.
of Baal. The teacher explain a.Wharf. man of that, who runs the consti-
In contrast there is the wife who at Holt's. tuency and her husband too. One but fi determined nobody shall guess
Consignees are requested to apply how Eujah had built the altar and sometimes wonders why he is there it. She is not enjoying herself, but, thinks her husband is fulfilling a
after all, she can always write home mission, that to represent so many for a Revenue Officer in attendance put wood upon it, and had then cut at all-so, I think, does he
damaged
the bullock in pieces and laid them dutiable, carto
on the altar. Yet he joins in the general chorus to her friends about the "delightful thousands of people is a high calling. when
how she met the Doubtless very commendable senti- being examined the steamer must be
"And then, he went on, of admiration "My wife, you know, reception" and
Claims Lagalist ments on her part, but opt to be-
presented in writing within ten days commanded the people to All tour she runs the show. And the others Prime Minister.
after arrival of steamer, otherwise barrels with water, and to pour this talk of her na "Mrs. Bo-and-so, what The Older Member's wife is in come tedious.
woman!" A
over the altar. They repeated this hard quite a different category, She has a wonderful
On the whole these wives make a they will not be recognized.
Now why should all worker is this woman, who prides been opening bazaars and presiding
is not a very No Fire Insurance will be effected four times. herself on never having an idle over funcions for so long that one-brave show. Theirs
this water have been poured over life. There
frequent by the undersigned in any caso what- minute. She is an excellent speaker feels she must say, as she shakes ensy
the bullock on the altar?" and thrives on the, kudos she re- your hand, “It is a great pleasure for journeys, late nights, and one is ever.
practically husbandiess from Mon- Bills of Lading will be counter- me to be here to-day": celves and deserves
day to Friday. Possibly, like sailors, signed by
JAVA-CHINA-JAPAN LIJN N.V. She regards the whole business as that is why members and their THE-New Błambar'a wile is rather somewhat boring, but necessary to wives always seem to get on so well
-Hongkong, 8th July, 1937) andhrilled at her her status, and, she makes the best together. -----
DTC
He waited expectantly, and then an obviously domesticated little girl suggested, "Please, sir, to make the
A. W.
Agents.
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