Evening star., 1937-01-02

John T. Whitaker, author OF
"And Fear Came" Macmillan.
evidently been brought there after
death. He was afterward identified
as Max KaSsel. a man associated with
the underworld on the continent"
Do they not suggest the work Of
another Englishman. Edgar Wallace?
And is the style not "felicitous"?
Then take the list of the years A.
lustrious dead, If your mind enjoys
curious Speculation-Gen. Allenby and
Nikita Balieff. founder of lie Chauve
Souris: Louis Bleriot, first man to fly
the English Channel. and Don Carlos.
pretender to the Spanish throne: the
last Of Lord Beaconsfield's male rela-
tives"; Maxim Gorky and Rudyard
Kipling, the latter described as poet.
novelist and lover Of empire, aged TO-"
and, together. by the accident of the
alphabet. Edith, Dowager Countess of
Lytton. great lady of the old school,"
and Sir Henry Alfred Lytton. the last
of the old Savoyards; Irving Thalberg
and Eleutherios Venizelos; the Prin-
cess Victoria, sister of King George ",
and Gregori Zinoyieff, "the BOlshevist
orator, aged 53." What food for ele-
giac musings!
There has been revolution in Spain
and conquest by Italy of Ethiopia,
Whitaker's advises us. A sister ship
to the Queen Mary is to be built and
on october 27 an unknown steamer
foundered of the Isle of Null, five
bodies being washed ashore. Out of
8,924.523 houses inspected in England
and Wales, 341, ,554 were overcrowded.
Through the genius and driving force
Of the first Earl of Birkenhead"
manorial incidents have been extin-
guished. a manorial incident being
the custom which obliged the heirs of
a tenant in certain cases to give their
landlord the best beast" which they
inherited. The universe is expanding,
roughly" at about 800 KIN. per sec.
per megaparsec distance" at which
rate the receding bodies will double
their distance from us every l,4OO
million years. The budget for 1867
balances. with surplus of some
100000. Queen Mary suffered from
a slight cold and Cancelled her engage
ments.
And so on-plot and counter plot.
The length Of this brilliant work is
! ,064 pages, a few more than Gone
With the Wind" but the type is
smaller. 1t should commend itself to
readers Of taste and intelligence. The
reviewer enjoyed it enormously.
p EBEL IN BOMBAZINE. Memoirs
Of Malwida Won Meysenbug.
Edited by Mildred Adams from
the translation from Elsa Won
Meysenbug Lyons. New York: w.
w. Norton Co.
The dusty years Of the middle nine
teenth century, as it was lived out in
Europe, come to life here in all their
tragic futility. The book is the auto
biography of a German lady tde-
scended from French Huguenot an
cestors) who lived through the po-
litical storms Of the period, met its
great figures in literature and art
and burned with generous sympathy
for liberty as she watched liberal
causes rise and fall and constitu-
tional governments come and 90.
There Is a living present quality to
what she records that brings it out
OF history. But ?more remarkable is
the manner In which the phenomena
OF her memoirs might be- translated
into present-day happenings. by
mere change OF dates and costumes.
As the foreword of the volume says,
THE Germany which submits to Hit
Ter Is the Germany which she shows
confused. fun OF beautiful thoughts,
bowing to convention as to q god, I'M
potent in individual political action
land now driven to incredible ex-
tremes in an attempt to deny that
impotence). wistful. hungry for GER
tainty OF any kind.
THE Italy that Mussolini drives Is
the collection Of divided states for
whose independence her friend Carl.
baldi fought. for whose unity her
brother, Mazzini, slaved with mystic
fervor. England on the dole is the
England whose unemployed she saw
parading one long Winter through,
chanting as they tramped along. No
work! No work. France Is uneasily
rebellious against the business mans
regime on which she comments.
Most illuminating Of all are
her comments on the United States
and Russia. She groups them
together AS perhaps chosen to realize
those .socialistic tendencies which
hovered before all our eyes as the ideal
OF the future, for whose fulfiilment
We had fought and whose downfall We
were all mourning"
Vividly, indeed, she makes live the
particular set OF illusions which gave
mankind hope in that time. But her
memories are not limited to political
doctrines. Socialistic though her be-
liefs may have been, she lived little
among the people and much among
the leaders. Among these wert MAJ
zini. Kossuth. Schopenhauer and
Wagner And she confesses finally that
artists and thinkers held more prom
Use. TO her mind, than did revolution
aries who attempted 10 make humanity
over by upsetting established orders.
1t is the book Of an intelligent
woman and an Illuminating comment
on history. 1t Is well worth reading
from either point Of view.
THE SOUND OF RUNNING FEET.
BY Josephine Lawrence. New
York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
Miss Josephine Lawrence has
bloomed into prominence as a novelist
overnight as 1t were, but. with her
present book. it begins to look as II
she had exhausted her bag of tricks.
She has never wrtttR badly or we'll