Evening star., 1935-09-15
Bv Mary.Carfer Roberts.

But not, happily for the re-
- viewers sanity. a novel of an
American family or of the soil. The
monotony is broken. for the moment.
by a novel of family of English
industrialists. It is relief in a way,
although actually it means no more
than taking ones grievances across the
Atlantic Ocean.
For the presses of the country have
been turning out these opuses on
families at such rate that one fears,
after time, that there will not be
families enough to go around. And
as for the soil, the novelists have been
overworking it in manner to put the
rashest agriculturalists to shame. No
wonder that their product has been
growing somewhat thin. And no
wonder that the soil is so often spoken
of as patient" either.
However, white Ladies" has no
sturdy pioneers hewing homes out of
the wilderness nor herds of cattle
coming lowing through the bars at
sunset. But it does have a family
fortune that rose to triumphant heights
in the 80s and dwindled slowly there
after. In that respect at least it
runs true to the prevailing family
novel" formula.
1t is the story of the rise Of the
Tinsleys. from poor English peasants
to barons of coal and iron. 1t is told
through the lives of three women of
the tribe. The first was the one who
worked in the mills herself all day
and kept the accounts in the evenings.
The second, her daughter, serves as
link between the prosperous days and
the decline; she was the romantic one
who married the artist. The third
was the one who came into the fortune
at its peak and whose passion for the
estate, White Ladies, finally diSsipated
the family wealth.
And White Ladies was the old Tudor
mansion, the beauty of which could
not be resisted. 1t became a cult with
the last of the Tinsley daughters. She
made a loveleSS marriage in order to
possess it. She spent her fortune in
preserving it. She went mad when
her son was killed in the World War
and she lost her grouse for holding it.
That is the story. 1t seems some
what meaningless unless one supplies
1t with a symbolism, unless one takes
the Tudor estate to be an emblem of
a vanished manner of living, manner
which has thrown its spell over society
even in its vanishment, which dis
appeared finally only when the war
drove out all illusions. Even thus
rationalized, the book is somewhat
chimerical.
It Is well written, serious and sub
stantial. Its publisher has put out
one novel of downright genius in
recent weeks. 1t is too much to look
for another one so soon.
SECRETS OF THE WHITE LADY.
BY Capt. Henry Landau. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons.
THE author of this book is British
- army officer. During the World
War he was engaged in secret service
"OIhs ollC AL al AAoo
already been published from the rec
ord of his experiences. 1t dealt with
the activities of the British Secret
Service behind the German lines.
The present work tells further of spies
and spy organizations in enemy terri
tory and of the German Counter
Espionage Service, the duty of which
was to prevent military information
from reaching the allies. 1t is, in
some respects, remarkable volume.
For one thing, it comes to us with
impressive testimony as to its authen-
ITCHY. Books purporting to be secret
service revelations have come out
from time to time ever since the war;
too many of them nave been demon
strated to be sensationalism. The
story, or stories, about the supposedly
glamorous Mata Hari, for example,
show how difficult 1t is to deal with
the subject of spying without falling
into a welter of romance. HOLLYWOOD
to the contrary, Mata Hari was well
toward so when she was executed,
stout and faded Dutch woman. SINH
larly, dozens of other fictions have
been dissipated when they attracted
the notice of the people who are in
q position to know The truth.
The present volume carries the pub
lisher's claim that 1t is authentic, but
more impressive evidence than this is
the style in which it is written.
Capt Landau's prose is innocent Of
any faint flush of sensationalism. He
proceeds with his narrative in the
best military manner, his sentences
bristling with sectors" divisions"
"codes," "Zones," "couriers" and so
on, and producing nothing in the way
Of heroic adventureSseS who die for
the love of the officer whom they have
been sent to betray-absolutely Moth
ing. 1t Is hard to believe that the
plain and simple annals of this mill
tary gentleman are not strictly true.
AS such, the tale is one deserving
o wide public. Every one must have
wondered at times just what modern
spy really does. Capt. Landau tells
It. Chiefly, it would seem, his organ
iZation watched German troop move
ments. Then, by methods of amaz-
ing intricacy, its members conveyed
reports to allied headquarters. BY
this information, the allied staff was
able to predict. with fair accuracy,
the sectors chosen by the Germans for
attack.
The activity was by no means
prosaic. Stories of escapes, arrests,
executions, trials and triumphs of
quick -wittedness make up large part
of Capt. Landau's narrative. There
were many women spies. There were
also many nuns and priests. One
particularly impressive chapter Is
composed of last letters written by
condemned secret agents to their
friends and families. Facsimilies of
some of these documents are included
in the volume. 1t Is romantic after
all, of course, but romantic in the
gritty sense that life is so.
The title, perhaps, is the only OBJ
viously glamorous thing in the book.