1938-02-26 — Page 15

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THE HONGKONG · · TELEGRAPH.

MOMENT

Books-Edited by Roger Pippett

PORTRAIT of a

M-

"ICHAEL BAKUNIN has his duly dishonoured place in Marxian legend: and his name was much used in that vocabulary of nbuaivo denunciation in which Commun- ism has always been so rich-until it was replaced by those of more fashionable villains.

For most of the outer world he is a rather dim figure-the Russian anarchist whose revolt against Marx split and de- stroyed the First International.

Yet what a man it was that is thus half- forgotten or only remembered in dreary polemics. One of the most fantastic figures of his own, or any, age. What a aukeet for the blographer: but missed until Professor Carr drew this careful but brilliant portrait (Michael Bakunin, by E. H. Carr. Macmillan, 255.) of the 'great robol,

Rebel is the right word for Bakunin. He was the passionate, dynamic, furious,

undisciplined embodiment of permanent revolt. Revolt against anything and everything—as inconsistent as it was torrential. Sprang by some genetic miracle from a respectable family of Russian small landowners and officials, his strange fate led him to things unforeseeable when, rest- less, expelled from the army, in love, for the moment, with Hege- Han philosophy, he left his native Premukhing for Berlin.

He Loved It

For thirty years-with a brief interval in Siberia ho fared stormlly across Europe, arguing, quarrelling, borrowing, fascinat ing, repelling, denouncing, always demanding revolt against this or that. A revolutionary who loved revolution for its own sake, not for its ends,

"The social question," he onco wrote, "Lakes the form primarily of the overtirow of Society." That is the essential Bakunin. He was not inter- ested in any new order, but in the overthrow, the destruction (they aro his favourite words) of the old.

There was not, there could not be, any consistency in such a man. He was everything by turns and nothing long. Ho nuded democracy and denounced it. Ho called fiercely for the King- dom of God-and as fiercely denied Clod's existence.

He cursed Toardom-and begged the Tear to make himself revolutionary dictator of Europe. He counted Ger many hla spiritual home and preached a pan-Slav crusade against all thinga German

As a thinker ho was negligible. As an emotional force he was in his day formidable and feared. Twenty stone of tumultuous, eloquent humanity, roaring for revolt. Twenty stone of unscrupulous adventurer, living fro..... hand to mouth an eternal borrowing from over-endy admirers. Ironic Accident

At the very last the volcano burnt itself out. He turned, weary and ill, to, thoughts of his childhood home, of. philosophy, of music. Almost his last recorded utterance was, The world will perish, but the Ninth Symphony will remain,"

By ironic accident, when, the end came, the Berne authorities recorded the death of "Michol de Bakounine, Rentier."

"If you saw it in a picture...." It novellat had drawn this character, It would be demonstrably grotesque, exoggerated, autrageously impossible. But it was 50.

And Professor Carr has succeeded in making the incredible truth convino- ing, the Incredible man not only human but as nearly comprehensible an a volcanic mass of self-contradic tion can ever be to normal folk.

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From "Flue Thousand Years Young," a collection of modern Chinese drawings and woodcuts.pub- lished by Lawrence and Wishart, 23. Profits are for Chinese Medical Aid,

NEW NOVELS

CELIA

By E. 11. Young (Cape, s. 6d.j

TN the headlong · bustle of so much modern writing-stories slammed together, incidents tumbling over one another, char- acters like marionettes with lega insufficiently glued on, ideas miss- ing and grammar erratic--what a pleasure it is to come on the work of a patient, conscientious craftsman.

Miss Young's novel is so solid and well-made that I felt comfortabla reading it. I could bear to wait whiio she gradually bulit up a character, be- cause I knew she wain't going to cheat and offer me, in the end, something highly polished and quite dend....

Celia is alive. You see her faults and weaknesses as well as her virtues. You find yourself criticizing her as you wouki notice the shortcomings of a friend without ceasing to be friendly. She is a vague, kindly, uncertain, self- contained woman, polita but pointed In her talk, amiable but too reserved for either passion or deep tenderness,

ahe does not really enter into the life of her two children. Sha despises her husband in secret. Her mother- in-law is someone to be endured and ovaded; her feeling for the man she might have married is one tong romantis dream. Her friendships are carefully, removed from intimacy: her mind is as much in a muddle as the. bureau she is supposed to be tidying when wo Arst meet her.

In other words, she lives, moves and has her being.

The story-of-how-this-pleasant; placid fobber-off of renlitică nearly drifted to disaster and had to hear à fow home-truths before she wake up to We contains

explosive 50210 material. But Miss Young is firmly in charge all the time.

ESTHER VANNER

By Chris Massio (Sampson Low, Marston, 73, 68.)

7 HIB novel opens with the death of Queen Victoria and closes with the outbreak of the Great War. And from the many vital developments of those thirteen years Mr. Massie has ohosen the Women's Bufrago Movement as his central theme,

He is careful to admit, in a foreword, that he has manipulated history to sult his tale. But I think he in round in pointing out that one of the strangest things about the fight for the vote was that it remained, with so many women, simply a fight for the vote.

No clear idea of what to do with the voto øver emerged. Women wanted their rights. They, quite naturally, smarted under a sense of injustice, and they were even prepared in die if that injustice could be removed. But was there any guiding social principle, any political philosophy, behind tho struvalo?

FOR THE NURSING MOTHER Both before and after the birth of her children, a mother needs plenly of simple, easily digested nourish- ment to meet the extra demanda made upon her system.

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FOR YOUR LIBRARY LIST

NOVELS

** Candle in the Han, by Edith Roberts

(Harrap, Os. Od.).

✶✶ Behold the Judge, by John Brophy

(Collina, By, CA.).

** Katrina, bý dally Balminen (Thorn-

ton Butterworth, Ya Gd.).

DETECTION

** Proceed With Caution, by John

Rhode (Collins, Ta. 69.).

** The Tilah Sheelf, by Henry Wade

(Constable, 74, 08.).

Danger Point

Knowledge of Nazi Germany needs as complement and counterpart know- ledgn of hor neighbors: most of all, perhaps, of Czechoslovakia.

and

Watch Ozechoslovakia, by Richard Freund (Nelson, 2a. Gd.), is a short contribution-Utils over a hundred pages. But it is an admirably lucid "unpropaganda" account of a State whose domestic problems are of European importance. An excellent Introduction for anybody who cares to know something of a country, more talked about than known, W. N. E

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY::26, 1938.

PAGE

The SNAPSHOT CUILD

DECORATIVE SILHOUETTES

Since the puppy le likely to move, a photographic flash bulb, which gives an instantaneous flash of light, was used in making thle silhouette,

PHOTOGRAPHIC allhouettes are: Three sixty-watt laside-fronted elec- a source of decorative picturos tria bulbs will provido enough light -and CAMOTA fon-which overy to give good results with Avo-ascond snapshooter should try, The arrange time exposuros, using a box camera, ments are simple-a white shest with its lona at widest opening, or stretched over a doorway, or divi- other cameras at lens stop 1.11. To sion between two rooms, with a stop moyoment when yola or small strong light behind it and the cam- | children are appearing in silhouette, era sot up in front.

uan a fish bulb behind the sheet. Or, with two or three large size flood bulbs anapahota can be taken.

By arranging his subjecta in front of this brightly luminated sheet, the clover photographer can con- When using the flash bulb, nomer struct any number of imaginailvo ono can flash ft at the correct mio. or story-telling pictures, Costume ment at an "okay" signal from the snaps are particularly interesting in person operating the camera. Thero allhouette, and there are poastbilt-shoald be sumelant light, from un- ties for many humorous pictures of abaded rogular household bulbs, be thu "it-can't-bo" variely.

hind the shoot for the "cameraman”

For instance, a juggler can be pic to see the sllbouotted images and tured keeping a dozen or two bails or to know when to give his "okay" bottles in the air at one time, or a { signal,

camper can be plctured with two When the allhouolte is snapped, akillets, Alpping doren apfacks) of course, all lights must de turned at one shot. In both these pictares, off in the room which contains the the objects to appear in the air camera und subject. Unless this is would be cat from black paper or done, datafl in the subject will show, cardboard and planed to the about apolfing the silhouette offset. The at proper points,

photographer should also be watch. The shoot must be stretched | ful of stray light from windows, and orealy, as wrinkles will show in the † mirrors which might catch light pictures, Lighting behind the shoot from the Maminated sheet and, should also bo na orez de possible, | throw it toward the shadow side of Five foot is a suitable distance frem | the subject. lampa to shoot.

John van Guilder.

"

.........སྶ,

ARE YOU A ONE-TENTHER?

BY "MAX EVANS

are

IF you belong to the great aver

age in this world you only one-tenth a human being- in intelligence.

musician, a great writer, a great calculates-on-arithmetical-problem specialist in anything need only be that goes into millions. of average intelligence.

"Anyone can do that 1 they train Usually it is the big business man their mind," says Kahre. who leads in brain gymnasties. He

stay During his

in Melbourne

versc.

is the man who can do several things Kohne visited the University and at once, see several points of view, held 400 students spellbound with a That, anyway, is the rather frigh and analyse them instantly.

of mental acrobatics. tening opinion of Mr. Harry Kahne, Try Mr. Kahne's elementary self- display practical psychologist and mental test of intelligence, and see if you He did mathematical problems up- phenomenon, who was recently in are below average, past average or side down and back to front while Melbourne.

have hopes of getting out of the rut, performing a series of memory feats. "It was a valuable demonstration "Yes, the average person doesn't Take the figures 1 to 0. Write them use more than one-tenth of his brain out rapidly and as you write count of how the human mind can be de- them backwards. That is, as you veloped when man sets out to trein power," said Mr. Kahne. "He leaves write one say nine, as you write two it," said one of the professors who the nine-tenths of perfectly good and efficient

grey matter to atrophy. Gay 8, and so on. Do It fast and was there. "There seemed to be no put on the brain-particularly a This neglect shortens life. Mentai don't hesitate. Then do it in re- limit to the demands which could be development lengthens it.

If you do it both ways first time Kahne made no claim to have ex- "This is fact not theory, and to proved by world-authorised statistics and without hesitation you are better hausted, the uses of mind and that the average longevity of brain than average. It is a simple case of em users is 67 years, but of routine and doing two things at once, Your Kaline pointed out to the students manual workers only 44 years,'

brain is doing double the work it that every human born was equipped Mr. Kahne contends that no one would be doing if you just counted with a perfect memory. People for-

got

things because their recollection In the world uses the full ten-tenths or just wrote the figures out.

Kahne was a dull boy at school, was at fault. Everything seen or of his brain power. If he did he

birth was would be a superman. Edison used but he went in for developing his heard from the day of probably only five-tenths ...that's brain, and now one of his stage per- photographed on the memory, but formances. is to exercise six. mental because people learned to forget processes simultaneously.

more readily than to remember these While reading a newspaper upside niemories were locked away in down and writing what he reads on darkened section of the brain, By Mr. Kahne's reasoning a genius a blackboard (also upside down) he Kahne had demonstrated, the pro- often is in the category of the one reeltes any popular poem nominated fessor said, that that section could be tenthers. A great scholar, a famous by the audience and at the same time illuminated by mind-training.

consoling to the rest of ust

WELL, WHAT 15 GENIUS?

IN LONDON

memory."

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