1941-07-05 — Page 4

Saturday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

July 5, 1941.

0

THE

NEW ORDER

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BLIND HOSPITALITY

No, Sir, the Black Out does not start for forty minutes. Captain Jenkins and five other gentlemen coming over with you from the Mess 7 very good, Sir - I'll put out drinks in the billiard room. You think they'll be staying late, Sir ? Then I'll tell cook to prepare sandwiches. And a piano? Certainly, Str. Might I suggest the cottage piano from the nursery, not the grand from the music room. No, Sir, no light showing through the blinds I have taken every precaution. And I will also make a point of leaving out six bottles of Rose's Lime Juice to avoid any possibility of what are known in civilian life as hangovers. In times like the present; Sir, we must be prepared for, any' emergency. Goodbye, Sir. I'll be back about 5 a.m. No, Sir, I won't forget the Rose's. Goodbye, Sir.

There's nothing ersate about Rose's Uime Jules, kik for Rese's and enjoy the pure julea of the Imma.

IT STARTED OFF AS SOMETHING ELBE, BUT THE CHIGEL KEEPS SLIPPING

NEW ORDER IN EUROPE

The New Order changeth, giving place to Newer.

-George Whitelaw in the "Dally Herald"

IF YOUR BOOKS

WERE BLITZED

how would you

replace

them?

An Occasional Series

WOMEN IN WARTIME

Risks

By PHYLLIS

BOTTOME

the well-known novelist

- THE right risk to take is always the one that can, if taken, save the bacon: and whether to run it or not always depends upon the value of the bacon.

Suppose that an incendiary bomb lands upon your doorstep nt the exact moment when the kitten leaps upon the table to pillage the fish for supper.

It would be well to clear the doorstep first, and leave the fish to the kitten.

It is a pity about the fish, but if you tackle the kitten first there might be no fish, no kitten. and even no person in a quan- dary as to what to do first.

Incendiary bombs already know what to do first--they burst.

There is another important point to remember about what risks to take.

It will not be decided by what On happens at the moment. the contrary, when "the burn- ing moment breaks," what you have made yourself into as a human being will decido auto- matically what risks you can or will take.

It is not what the emergency brings to us that makes a hero or a heroine--it is what we

A MAN, one of whose because, he said, they were "all in which it was impossible to bring to the emergency.

years, comes

WANTED DANCER

friends had had his flat about a bad-tempered bully who speak the truth," If Macaulay

I was much struck the other demolished by an air-raid said silly things about Swift and gave history and biography a

fiction that competes in interest day by meeting a handsome and and had lost his entire col-nearly everybody and everything tinge of fiction, however, it was

else."

with the novels of Dumas, healthy girl in a state of great lection of books in the

misery--because she was not in Milton, despised in certain

Other books that I should add danger. flames, said to me: "If that

corners of Cambridge in recent early to the collection are Mr "How can I tell," she im- happened to you, how would

next the poet Norman Ault's "Elizabethan plored me almost in tears. you set about making a new with an incomparable gift for Lyrics" and "Seventeenth Cen-whether I shall be brave or not collection? What books

phrasing that delights the car tury Lyrics," two of the most when I do have to face danger? .and comprehensive There ought to be some way of would you choose first?"

and, through the ear, the spirit, masterly

the English | practising for danger!" I do not often read him, but he anthologies in

language. I should have a con- "Perhaps there is," I told her. The question is rather

is one of the poets whom every siderable number of anthologies, but it is rather a long and dif- like the old one about the

now and then one longs to re- indeed, ranging from Sir Arthur ficult one-you would have to books one would like to have read and who in the inspired Quiller-Couch's "Oxford Book of find it of the first importance to if one were marooned on a parts of his verse always seems English Verse" down to some you not to please yourself." desert island; and the greater than before at every re. of the latest compilations. And answer will in each case be reading.

Among the novelists Dickens much the same. If you care for books at all, your first comes first because above"all-

Heroes take more than their share and put the safety of choice will be among books the others he possesses the

Montaigne's "Essays " and others well before their own: that you know you can read precious quality that may be or dip into over and over called "re-readableness." I love Lamb's, so different in temper, but it is also something not to Scott and Thackeray and always are essential books for most re-do less than our share by trying again.

readers; and near them I shouki to prevent others from being put that perfect compendium of saved so that we can corner ali wisdom about human nature, the sufely there is. Aesop's Fables."

UNCONSCIOUS

Hence I would begin with two Bibles the ordinary Bible and "The Bible Designed to be Read

By

as Literature." I like the second ROBERT LYND

because of its noble type and

because by its form and arrange-

read

after these would come the com- plete works of about 20 poets, from Chaucer to W. B. Yeats.

*

Those who want the good of other not more than their own. but as much, can be fairly counted upon to take the right risk.in-an-emergency.

or

torment

A

IL is interesting to see how Two lighter books with no

on a weak pretensions to greatness I should animals always turn include are Stevenson's "The specimen of their race; and try to

destroy it. Wrong Box," and F. C. Burn- Children, too, who are in a more ment it gives an air of freshness enjoy re-reading them, but I can and's "Happy Thoughts" be- primitive stage of existence and to familiar things. Here one can see their books on the shelves cause I have never re-read them closer to instinct than adults, will

generally bully the hundred-and-third without feeling that irresistible without enjoyment,

cowardly child,

Nor is it, as one often imagines Psalm with a new sense of its craving to dip into them again

I should also have to have T.

It supreme greatness among the that I feel at sight of a row of

A. Coward's "British Birds and to be, mere senseless cruelty that

instigates this unkind treatment. Dickens, "David Copperfield" is Their Eggs," a work which has immortal lyrics,

It is a deep, unconscious instinct probably the greatest of them, enabled me to identify more that the cowardly child would get *

but what comic scenes in litera- birds, including a Tengmalm's in the way and be a liability-rather than good comrade-in a calas- trophe. Shakespeare is another obvi- ture surpass those in which Mr Owl, than any other book. And

The coward adds ous choice. This is because he Pecksniff, Montague Tigg and beside it there would have to be John's "Flowers of the Field" or is the poet who gives us most Sairey Camp figure in "Martin a book about wild flowers-any, danger because panic blinds him w pleasure when the mind and Chuzzlewit" and Silas Wegg and Mr Miles Hadfield's "Englisnin order to avoid danger, and where

instinct. Most of the books. I have If it were not for fear we should-

most fully Mr Boffin in "Our Mutual Flowers." imagination aro awake and because he is also Friend."

the rival of the detective-atory writers in holding our attention

*

to

own

what risks to take. Now, fear is an instinct given us

there is donger it is a mont useful

not mako, the Jump that sometimes saves us from an unexpectedly close vehicle, and lands us safe upon the pavement.

It is often well to remind our-

selves when we feel nervous with- (out a direct cause, that oven noth

mentioned, it will be noticed, are books belonging to the The only other novelists that, literature of the past, but that when wo are worn out and almost asleep. There has never so far as I am concerned, ap is only natural, for these are been a dramatist like him for proach Dickens in the matter of the books that have most clearly

adays terrible things do not happen perpetuity of interest. That is re-readableness, are Sterne and proved their re-readableness

Jane Austen. Among foreign over a long period of years.

as often as the escapes from them; and that an accident of a fatal na- why everybody, except people novelists, Tolstoy and Dostoev

ture happens only pace to anybody.. like the Belfast schoolboy who aky are the giants, but, if I.

THAT TENTH PART.- Obviously, once expressed to me the opinion were forming a small collection

ono'a however,

Those who Arc accustomed shelves would look rather think of how they can best contri- that "Shakespeare's a lot of of books, I should give prefer

austere and museum-like if they bute towards the well-being of "makes Shakespeare one of ence to Chekov, the most human the first choices for an imagin. of short-story writers, who is so refused to recognise the exist others do away with nine-tenths of

much more inviting to a re-

since nine-tenths of rear is ence of the twentieth century,car;

with our reader's eye.

Apart from this, what a debt of pre-occupation Whether to make Milton or

But the tenth part of fear remains Plutarch, too-one could go pleasure one owes to books bear- Boswell's "Johnson" the next

on re-reading him at intervals ing the names of Shaw, Belloc, a common human attribute,

Since

such fear is universal it choice I am a little uncertain, for a life-time. No blographer Wells, De la Mare, Rose Macau-

need not make us feel ashamed, nor

rot,"

nry small but perfect library,

to

own

security.

I think Boswell, however, and I has ever approached him in lay, Virginia Woolf, Tomlinson, need we waste- ilmo by trying to get would include his "Tour to the understanding the greatness and Priestley and many other writers rid of it.

The truth is, one This little tremor of the nerves in Hebrides" as well as the "Life." the flaws of human nature. On still lving. These are books that, when one a lower level, but still on a high needs hundreds of books-even danger does not lossen or destroy Macaulay's "Essays" thousands of books to appeal our faculties; nor does it paralyse

us_into_panic. geta to know them, can be taken level,

On the contrary, it helps to con. down at almost any time and provide brilliant entertainment to all one's appetitos. And there used for lucky dips. Yet I once that remains fresh at every now are many moods in which one's trol and direct our intelligence and know a brilliant but perverso reading. It was onea aaid of appetite craves for something spurs us forward Into tackling the critic who could not read them Macaulay that "he wrote a style that in not only good but now. danger in the most proming man---

ner.