Evening star., 1937-10-09

time, AndriAS, who has multiplied
until he outnumbers men enormously,
decides against being enslaved and
rebels. BY that time he has been
given the best Of human education
there are newt scientists, newt enei-
neers, newt statesmen. They pro-
pose to secure more space for them
selves by the simple expedient Of
leveling the continents, which they
can do by undermining from the sea.
Eventually they are on the point Of
cngulfing the world, but at this stage
the author stops his narrative with
the prophecy that civil war will break
out among the hitherto harmonious
creatures and that they will destroy
themselves. Man, who has been
driven to the mountain tops, will
slowly regain his Ascendancy, conti-
nents will reappear and there will be
a new myth Of the deluge. And 70 on.
The book is impressive in the
breadth Of Its satire. From Holly
wood to Geneva it hardly misses one
of our proud follies. Yet 1t Is never
heavy-handed, but always amusing.
To read 1t is to be consistently enter
tained. The reviewer recommends 1t
without any reservations at all.
YOUNG HENRY OF NAVARRO. BY
Heinrich Mann. Translated from
the German by Eric Sutton. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf.
This is book which might have
been conceived by Dumas. In
the hands Of modern German, as 1t
is. It still contains elements In which
Dumas would have delighted. 1t is
endowed with A complicated plot,
courtly characters. romance, glamour,
intrigue and combat With so much
novelistic wealth in his hands, Dumas
certainly would have been content.
He would have told, If not a plain
straight tale, at least a fancy straight
tale. Not so Heinrich Mann. brother
of Thomas. He has taken these rich
elements Of the novel as his point
OF departure and not as his be-all and
end-all. He begins at just about the
point where Dumas would have left
off. The result Is a novel vastly
above the Dumas plane a great tower
ing, dragging, mystical, engulf1ng thing
which bodies forth with incredible
life the spirit of a past day and
which brings us men and women in
the brutal round OF that day and
not in silhouettes which bear a COM
forting likeness to our smooth selves
in all but costuming.
The work tells the story Of the lie
OF Henry of Navarro from boyhood I'D
until he was we'll on his way to the
kingship. The scenes are set success
sively in the savage Pyrenean castle
where young Henry spent much of his
youth, in the court Of the Medlci
Catherine and her sons, and in the
field OF war. The underlying theme
seems to be delineation of the mo-
tives which made Henry the extra
ordinary fellow that he was-a man
who hated intrigue, cruelty and perse-
cution. who loved the pagan pleasures
of action and amours, yet who could
play the parts OF a plotter capable Of
matching wits with the subtlest of the
Medici, ruthless soldier and a re-
ligious partisan. These motives, rs
Herr Mann outlines them, were the
influence Of his Huguenot mother,
Jeanne d'Albret, whom Henry believed
poisoned by Catherine. his dimly dis
cerned conviction that he could
serve the true happiness of the people
if he could once get the power, and.
overwhelmingly, the whole drift and
circumstance Of that blindly bloody
time. Caught in this drift, confronted
moment by moment by realities which
demanded instant action or dear life,
Henry strove OBVIOUSLY but faithfully
toward his purpose. He was incor-
ruptible, with the safety of perfect
health in world that lay diseased and
dying. Or thus Herr Mann shows him
to us in novel which deserves the
attention of all believers in the novel
as an instrument for the creation Of
brave, strange and wonderful worlds.
To be sure, some readers may find
the method of narration troubling It
is an alienation Of furious action with
passages of sententious reflection as,
when describing the Massacre OF ST.
Bartholomew day, the author halts
the terrific course OF events to muse
over the state of mind of Admiral
Coligny, waiting his certain fate
These static passages are often pitched
in a vein of mysticism. strange and
seemingly apart. Yet, in the entirety
of the composition, Herr Mann makes
them bear their part in his story OF
Henry's development; they are FORE
shadowings and interpretations. The
reviewer found their Interpolation i'm
mensely effective in the course of the
tremendous story which the book has
to bear along.
The novel can be safely commended
to true novel lovers. To them it will be
a delight. To the rest Of the public the
romantic" aspects Of the work may be
enthralling enough to arouse forgive
ness for its real excellencies. The re-
viewer cannot predict She will watch
reports Of the works progress. however,
with more than ordinary interest.
SIR RICHARD GRENv1LLE OF THE
REVENGE. BY A. L. Rowse. Bos-
ton: Houghton Mifflin Co.
WHEN the reviewer was schoolgirl,
w every child knew OF Sir Richard
Grenville. Not less than Sir Walter
Raleigh was he A sign among her
young contemporaries for might and
wonder. This may have been so be-
cause Charles Kingsley's Westward
Ho!" and Robert Louis Stevenson's
English Admirals" were on school
reading lists in those days, or it may
have been because most of us were
descended from people out Of the
British Isles whose stock ran back to
exploration times and had parents who
deemed it their duties to acquaint their
offspring with the tradition from
which we had come. Be that as it
may, If you had mentioned, Sir Richard
Grenvillc of the Revenge to any
class of which the reviewer was a
member in her elementary school