The St. Paul echo., 1926-06-05
BOOK REVIEWS
By
MARY WHITE OVINGTON,
Chairman, Board of Directors of
the National Association for
the Advancement of
COlOred People.
ssTJIRROTT Y

BY William Pioneer. Published by
Harcourt, Brace and Company
3S3 Madison Avenue, New York
City. Price, $500. BY mail
$2.10.
"Turbott Wolfe" is a book about
South Africa and it's native problem
1t depicts an Englishman of fine
qualities, an artist, a humanitarian
thrown with intolerably cheap colo
malls and Dutch settlers, or with peo-
pie who, if not cheap, are so odd as
to be unbalanced. These ignorant
ill-mannered white settlers talk OF
the natives as nothing but animals
while the men have their black mis-
tresses and their black families.
They bring disease with them and
they despise African culture. Tur-
bolt Wolfe finds the last word to be
said of them and of the white mans
civilization in Africa, whether it be
trader or agriculturalist or mission
airy is "Unclean."
Of the African, the picture drawn
is very different. Unlike Sarah Mill
in, who wrote of South Africa in
Goods Stepchildren," he finds much
that is beautiful and dignified in the
African though he also sees that the
best in the savage is being destroyed
by so-called civilization. He thus
| describes a native girl to whom he is
attracted: "She was fine rare saw
age, of type you will find nowhere
now; it has been killed by the mis-
sionaries, the poor whites and the
towns 4. An aboriginal, per-
fectly clean and perfectly beautiful
I have never seen such consummate
| dignity. She was an ambassadress
of all that beauty lit might be called
holiness) that intensity of the old
wonderful unknown primitive Afri-
can life-outside history, outside
time, outside science" A very diff
ferent picture from the squatting
savages in Mullins tale, or the in
credibly dirty creatures in the
French Africa of Bactuala.
The plot of the book is slight, but
it is bold enough to deal plainly with
miscegenation, and with the passion
that white woman may feel for a
colored man. But chiefly it has Civ
en- the author the opportunity to talk
about the ever interesting theme of
color.
Of South Africa, the writer says
through one Of his characters: "Na-
tive question, indeed! N.Y. good man,
there is no native question. It's an
answer. I don't know whether peo-
pie are willfully blind that they can't
see what's coming. The white mans
as dead as a door nail in this coun-
try" His three principal characters
get together and form society OF
blacks and whites that stands firmly
for miscegenation as inevitable, right
and proper. The half caste world is
coming and they believe that they
will prepare the way. The new mis-,
sionary, one of the three, counts this
| NOR emit q hIa uOrk than toachino the
natives that Esau was a hairy man
and other such Old Testament tales
Of course, disaster comes to all
three, and Turbott Wolfe, for whom
| you have growing affection, and
whom the natives learn to love and
trust, has to give up his work and
return to England. 1t is he who
tells the story as he lies slowly dying
of African fever. Here is one of the
conclusions that he gives to his
listening friend: 81 think if you &c
into the question thoroughly yor
will find that ultimately, our civiliza
ton is obscure. 1t has always seemed
to me to be the chief mistake of oul
age that we take it for granted thai
science is panacea. The chic
tendency of modern science has beer
to produce noise"
Some fish make nests of sticks