The New York herald., 1922-01-01

from the cradle of races, they first
pushed their proas into these mys-
terious seas. Racial differences are
clearly defined, points of contact and
similarity clearly expressed, the gay.
happy Hawaiian, the gentle F'ijian,
touching and admirable in his dignity
-"sublimated" Greenbie calls them
and strikes out their life in a single
phrase I'm Fiji. every one moves
adagio," the sentimental Samoan
again his own adjective-the New
Zealander, the Australian, the Orien-
tai, and ourselves. 1t is a fascinating
voyage. There is a passage. too long
for quotation. which is a fine short
story. the description of a nocturnal
visit to the red. heaving pit of Kilauea
Constantly l was struck by imagina-
tive, verbal flames, 1.-TWO big ships,
brilliantly lighted, fiinging their names
Of smoke to the winds :" Little
towns digging their heels into the
fanks of the mountains" to keep from
sliding into the valley below.
And the honesty of the man! He
goes to Vailima,. revsrently a pilgrim
to the grave of Stevenson, whom he
has worshiped. The day is over
poweringly hot and at his journeys
end his one emotion is a longing to
lie down in the shade and go to sleep!
How easily, in writing of it, he might
have pretended exultation!
In the social section (Book Two) we
revisit the lands of which we have
seen the externals, where we have
fiirted, to know more closely the vary
| ing peoples, their ways of thinking
their racial origins, ideals and am
bitions. To one who has Travelled the
first leg of the triangle this revisita-
ton brings a vivid sense of return
home. 1t is a splendid literary method.
One says with gladness. Hello! here
we are back in Samoa!" and we men
tally hurry ashore to look up old
friends and learn how the world fares
with them. Here, too, we feel a big
quality in Greenbie's book, its serious
ness and purpose, for In this second
analysis of the situation there is a
wider grouping of individuals and a
more special and definite considera-
ton of their racial problems.
This attitude, of sympathy without
sentimentalism. humanitarianism with
out vague idealism, is carried logically
into the final discussion of the po-
litical future of the races involved, in
which, among other things, the re-
lations Of Western civilization and
Japan are discussed with a prescience
and sureness remarkably borne out by
the conference to which reference has
been already made.
7 have been guilty at times of polk
ing fun at the insincerity and mawk-
ishness of some of our South Sea lit
erature. THE Pacific Triangle" tran
scends this field no less in its geo.
graphic limits than In its animating
spirit of conscientious, vivid and in
spring workmanship. It is a book to
buy. to read, to keep and to reread.
Through its pages breathes per-
sonality which seems to say that the
American traveller has at last de-
veloped beyond the tourist type, that
he has at last attained to something
of the stature and solidity of the man
of world affairs whom we have hither-
to associated more particularly with
the Travelled Englishman. a highly de-
sirable and necessary type for America
to produce in these days of moral eX-
pansion when IL behooves us to learn
our world lessons from our own com
patriots rather than from the lips of
others. So it is that Sydney Greenbie
speaks to us. man to HIS fellow men.