The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-01-08

V to come out Of the war, and one of the most dramatic, is Nevil Shute's Pied Piper" (Morrow).
 It is on it's surface a simple one of an Englishman, nearing his seventies, who goes to France just be-ore the German drive of 1940, to fish and forget about his only son, killed in action as an aviator; is caught in the collapse and who reaches Englard again with seven children-tWo English, two French, one Dutch, one Polish and one German.
 But from the day John Howard, hurrying home from eastern France as the Germans march southWard, agrees to take with him two small English children, his story becomes a gripping one.
 To the English boy and girl are added a French girl, a French boy found dazed on a road beside the bomb-torn bodies of his parents, a lost Dutch boy, a Polish boy whose whole mind is centered on the ter rible things he has seen the Ger mans do, and the German girl.
 By railroad, by bus, afoot along roads bombed an6 machine gunned by the Germans, the little army makes it's way, growing until at the coast German Gesatpo off cer connives at the escape on the condition that his niece is taken along.
 There is lot more of the tragic atmosphere of war in Pied Piper" than there is in novels which are concerned only with the war at the front, for it has the horror ana terror of a whole country through which a brutal army is sweeping. COME 400 years ago, Hernando O de Soto led his unfortunate OK petition to Florida, a crusade that was planned to bring Christianity to the Indiar :, an enterprise that was to fill the adventurers' pockets with gold. Both projects failed and De Soto died in the land he so stubbornly refused to quit.
 The story of that exploration has been recaptured in an excel lent histc ical novel, At the Moons Inn" (Bobbs MerrilD, by Andrew Lytle, story combining the re- search of the scholar with the story telling ability of a romanticiSt.
 The love affair of Dona Ysabal de Bobadilla languished when her father, Don Pedro, insisted that the youthful De Soto achieve fame and fortune before pressing his suit. The young cavalier accepted the challenge and sailed for Peru. Seventeen years later he returned, famous and wealthy to claim his bride.
 But the fire of conquest still burned within the adventurous De Soto. With a good band of soldiers and a priest, he sailed for Cuba, where he established Sonora de Soto as overseer, and pushed for ward to the strange new land to the west.
 Here hardships beset the invad- CTS the problems of food and transport through the heavy swamps, the increasing unfriend- Illness of Indians, the growing schism between De Soto and Father Francisco climaXed by De Sotos virtual renunciation Of the priests power, and the terrible decimating battle at Mauvilla, now the city of Bobile.
 Lytle spreads the imagery of fine, descriptive writing through this story and brings to its ulti- mate tragedy an explanation of it's cause. It is the fuli-bloWn story of an expedition that failed because it was peopled by human beings and not saints.
 THE wife of Will Rogers has writ Il ten very human story of one of the best loved Americans of CUT time in Will Rogers" (Bobbs- MerrilD.
 Betty Rogers has written the story of Rogers and their life to- gether in simple, unpretentious style-the sort of style which is best suited to the man who was as an integral a part of American life as baseball.
 For the most part this is a col- lection of stories about Will Rogers anecdotes, the ephemeral little things which are so quickly for gotten unless captured and put down nj print.
 It is formal biography only in technical sense. More than that it is a grab bag of Rogersania- stories which Rogers told, what he thought about the famous and great persons he met after he had become as famous but still as modest as ever as most of the persons he met.
 JULIAN DUGUID, in T am Per- J suaded" Appleton Century,, has written of his own spiritual experience in, as he puts it, his coo rch fnr tho Enrco Wa call CSOd