Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1933-04-16
% SARAH Q. BOWEKMHN
Amother Story of a London Sheet-CAina s
Foreign Relations and q Volume on Alex-
ander the G,pat-Nezvest Fiction.

q Jacobin, sold more than half the estate and
sent the money to France, and the remainder
was later mortgaged to the hilt. so by the
Winter of 1911 there were no more than nine
bit places left the Kinradde estate" To this
period belongs the story of Chris Guthrie
which is the lyric song embedded in the epic
song of changing Scotland. Chris was the
daughter of John and Jean Guthrie and was
destined for college and teaching. with no
heed paid to her mothers words: "Oh, Chris
my lass, there are better things than your books
or studies or living or bedding; there's the
countryside your own, you it's in the days when
you're neither BARN nor woman"
But the countryside claimed Chris after ALL
for with her mothers death she was needed
there, and then the dour red Highlander Evan
Tavendale came to the threshing at Peesie's
Knapp, and her brief idyll Of love began. But
the World War interrupted it, and Evan, like
SCOTS Conachar in The Fair Maid of PERTH"
proved a coward in warfare. His first and
last leave at home should have done much to
kill the love Of Chris Though the first Chris
belonged to him. there was a second Chris
who was to be far happier one, we are sure
as the book closes, with a song Of the morn
ing star. The language of Sunset Song"
which is a mixture of colloquail English and
Scotch as spoken by the peasants but not un-
ineligible dialect, gives pleasure entirely apart
from the narrative. In note Mr.. Gibbon
speaks of himself as ''sagaman arrived in the
mouse OF the cnSuSu WIFI salvage VI AiAo
own ruined house of words; and the tongue
Of his hosts, so it seems to him, may be yet
enriched with this salvage Of words that are
only half-alien" Lewis Grassic Gbbon is the
pseudonym Of young Scotsman who has writ
ten several other novels Of entirely different
type under his own name. This novel by its
literary quality stands far apart from the fic-
tional mediocrities, and worse, which are always
SO numerous.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT. BY Arthur
WeigaIl. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
4 Ar. WEIGAIL. Psychologist and former in
wi spector general of antiquities for Upper
Egypt does not find the people Of ancient
Egypt, Greece and Rome merely Elysian shades
or mummies. They are to him intensely alive.
with all the political, social and economic
problems. even the veterans problem. which
we have today. That is why his earlier books,
"The Life and Times of Cleopatra" The
Glory of the Pharaohs," THE Life and Times
of Marc Antony Nero, Emperor of Rome"
and "Sappho of Lesbos" have found so many
readers among those who usually avoid studies
in ancient history and character. Mr.. Weigall
combines scholarship with a modern point of
view and the story telling gift. Alexander the
Great has most interesting character to
start with and does not falr~below the other
books in treatment. Conqueror Of the then
civilized world longing for more worlds to
conquer, and dead at 32-such is the epitaph
of Alexander the Great His conviction of his
own divine origin, from Zeus, which would
today be called a delusion of grandeur, MIR.
Weigall traces to heredity, from his conquering
warrior father, Philip of Macedon, and to the
influence of his mothers mystic beliefs in
regard to him." Many writer's have discussed
the sanity of Alexander, but Mr.. Weigall thinks
he was not actually mad, though lin battle
he was temporarily demented; when he was
excited he was foolhardy to an astonishing
degree; in his anger he was unSpeakably
terrible; in his outbursts of generosity he was
prodigal; when warmed by wine or by fattery
he was wild braggart; when he knew
that he had done wrong his reimbursement
was abject." The -Shakespearean drama
fist, John Lyly, has shown Alexander in a
lofty mood of self-sacrifice and nobility in his
play, "Campaspe," in which Alexander yields
a mistress to the painter. Appelles. The pre-
Jude to Alexander's life took four centuries,
the 9th to the 18th B c., during which the
royal house of Macedonia rose to power. The
whole story of Macedonia, with the interlock-
ing stories of Athens, Sparta. Persia, Egypt,
Cilicia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Media,
and India is told, with awareness of dramatic
detail and the dominance of human person.
aities. especially the one great personality of
Alexander
CHINAS FOREIGN RELATIONS: 19l7-l93l.
BY Robert T. Pollard, Phi. D. New York:
The Macmillan Company.
hANY books have been published on Man
wi churia since it became, one writer has
called it. 1.-The cockpit of Asia" and, as an
others imagination has seen it, 1.-The tin
der-box of Asia Other books have ap-
peared of less immediate nature, deal
ing with the history, and especially the foreign
policy of China Japan and Russia, with con-
tinual reference to the present critical situa-
ton in Manchuria An Interestingly written
and scholarly book of the latter type is that
Of DR.. Pollard. who is assistant professor of
Oriental stuoies at the University of Washing
ton. China's demand for q revision Of her