Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1950-11-05
Fast OF HOME


Rama Rau's home country, India,
has been striving to play the
mediator in the dispute between
East and West. In this decep-
lively sunny and feminine book.
Miss Rama Rau modestly under
takes the same role and in doing
so politely but firmly tells us that
we do not know what the Orient
is all about.
Miss Rama Rau, daughter of Sir
Bengal Rama Rau, one of midas
leading statesmen and former Am
bassador to the United States, has
always moved freely between the
two worlds, having been educated
in England and at Wellesley. What
this swing around the Far East
did for her was to re-awaken her
pride in her Asiatic heritage.
AS travelogue, East of Home"
is delightful. Miss Rama Rau's
prose ripples along, she is sensitive
to personalities and humor. Her
travelling companions were first
rate: An American named Faubion
Bowers, who was director of civil
ian censorship in Tokyo; a lively
American newspaperwoman, Clare
Harris, and for a while, courtly
young Englishman. What gives
this account of their high nearted,
haphazard journeyings its pith
and moment, though, are the COM
ments of the everyday people of
the Orient, who spoke their bitter
hearts to a young woman whose
country had been able to throw
off peaceably the yoke Of foreign
rule.
Tokyo to Bali.
It was kind of political
cultural tour which began in
Tokyo and ended many months
later in Bali. Everywhere they
went they found relics of an an
tiquity which makes Western civil
iZation seem a mere upstart by
comparison. They found the dis
ciplined and loving practice of
centuries-old arts in the dance
and drama. Everywhere, too
except Siam. which has made and
not taken terms-they found faces
dead-set against the return of
imperialism. Said one veteran of
the resistance: "Gs this reward)
simply to have your countries
returned to your former fol- eign
governors who couldn't hold them
in the first placer"
In Northwest China, where the
party hitch-hiked on Nationalist
Army trucks-and where, Incl
dentally, they got used to the sight
of conscripts bound together
marching barefoot in the snow
an intelligent Chinese woman said
petulantly to Clare, What can
communism bring to us that is
worse than what we have? Can
you talk to the Chinese peasants
about civil liberties and free en-
terprise?"
Indo-C China seemed to them like
huge internment camp. A Wet
Mimi woman told them that 10
and 12-year-old children were
jailed for singing Nationalist
songs. Even in Indonesia, which
was to Miss Rama Rau, her first
experience Of "a healthy society,""
the gentle natives were unalter-
ably opposed to the return of their
Dutch overlords.
Miss Rama Rau never raises her
voice to make these points. Still,
she makes it plain that in our at
tempts to convert them to our way
of life, we had best walk very soft
ly and not carry a stick at all.
TEN DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
BY G. B. Stern. THE Macmillan
Co.: $780,
What gives Miss Stems story
Of 10. tension filled days at an
English Christmas house party it's
particular flavor is her refusal to
be objective. She feels strongly
about all her characters, brazenly
taking sides in the concentric
quarrels which rage among the
children and their elders under
the appearance of Yuletide merry
making. The personalities of the
warning children are well-drawn,
even If they talk with remarkable
f1uency for teen-agers and, in
fact. sound just like G. B. Stern.
Miss Stern is. however, a we'll
trained observer of the anatomy
of domestic strife from the one
word that cannot be unsaid to
the full-blown scene replete with