Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-11-29

OF the huddle OF European states budgeteo rs
"the Near East" vast area, over which
armies had marched to and fro innumerable
times, conquest the object, a new alignment
of sovereignty the goal new names to designate
changed imperial power. The great battlefield
OF Tartar and Slav, Goth and Nandal. Teuton
and HUM an ineXact and .omeWhat ndlS-
criminate citation.
Yet about Pollard itself there has ever re-
manned of ancient glory. Dim heroic
figures, pivotal pcints OF time, epical events
these pass vaguely through the far years. The
feeling, persistence of lost estate, of power
gone-but remembering and remembered
y EWILDERING days, these. The earth but
- spinning electrified atom, bringing the far
and near together in immediate touch and
communication. The past is now the present
Today is millennium away in some ancientry
Of human life. Today is a thousand years to
the fore, projected by the vision and achieve
ments of the great wizard, Science.
bewidering time discouraging, too. so
little done, so much to do" Yet one must
start somewhere. And no better point offers
maybe, than the somewhat near past Of peoples
who, like us, were making what they could Of
the experiment of being alive and human In
the dilemma of the present there are however
sources of help that do brighten the prospect
of getting in touch, little, with great facts
Science has joined hands with history, with
every branch of common life with fiction even,
in an effort to clear and amplify itself to the
common mind to the average of us desiring
A case in point here, where history and romance
have united to throw illumination over the
Poland Of 500 years ago.
JADWIGA: POLANDS GREAT QUEEN BY
Charlotte Kellog. Preface by Ignaz Jan
Paderewski Introduction by Frank M Sim
monds. New York: The Macmillan Co.
wi and otherwhere offers a great romance
to readers, projects chapter of history that is
already more than half thousand years away
from us, in an alien and vanished past.
The familiar historical novel? Not at all
Not scrap of burial garment clings to this
resurrection. No damp mustiness of the tomb
upon it. Instead here is live thing, at the
beginning buoyant with youth and hope. Later
a subdued and conforming thing that sacrifices
personal life to the life of the people and the
nation. That is the story in substance. Yet
that conveys no notion of the vitality Of this
great drama that played itself out upon stage
so far away in the background of years.
Jadwiga is a little girl when the story opens
Yet she is the center of the sumptuous wedding
ceremonial that joins her to another royal
child in what then known as "the false
marriage" bit of statecraft, common to
the age, which placed a mortgage on cradle
and nursery for the security of future blended
SoyereigntieS. A happy childhood for these
paymates offers quite idyllic hour to readers
A short hour, after all Fer another alliance
of deeper significance in the making of new
kingdoms or the Strengthening of old ones
comes the way of this royal JadWiga. And here
is remuneration of purest pattern. 1t is here
that Jadwiga ceases to be the girl, the woman
and becomes the type of patriotic devotion.
heroine. great figure, honor to her
country, saint of self-sacrilce for the coming
years to adore and just possibly, to emulate
at one small point another. But, child, girl,
women, savior and saint, Jadwiga remains
Vibrantly alive. She does not move out into
thin atmosphere nor up to some unattainable
height of aloof heroism And that is in the
main, the distinction of "JadWiga: PolandS
Great Queen" Plenty Of writer's could have
set down the facts of Polands history at the
time. But here is a recreation, that is the
result it seems to me, of intelligent, pains
taking and persistent research on the part of
the writer. That, but little more than half
of the essence of such success. But, as student
alone, Mrs. Kellog has proved herself Not
only the story demonstrates this but the
operation and support of learning and states
manship indicate the substantial place she is
holding.
All said and done, however it is the artist
who wins in work of this sort. To endow the
romance with life, with an effect of current
life with incidents such as are everlasting in
the human heart and mind. Then to shape and
fashion to roundness and symmetry, to senti-
ment harmony and balance with time-any
time all tme-thiS, take, IS the foundation,
is the logic, of this recreation out OF Poland's
past. Tribute goes to the author of new and
great historical novel
THE ALMOND TREE. By Grace Earring Stone,
author of The Bitter Tea of General Yen,"
etc. Indianapolis: The BobbS-Merrill Co.
GRACE Earring STONE of Washington
- has already been placed by Book League
ana Literary Guild awards as a novelist of
A l.ociI z.l.Sc