8

DAILY HERALD

NOVEMBER 25, 1932.

FROM "LOW'S RUSSIAN SKETCHBOOK." Drawings by David Low. Text by Kingsley Martin. (Published to-day by Gollancz, 8s. 6d.)

New Statesman and Nation

10 Great Queen Street, Kingsway, W.C.2.

Cutting from issue dated....................193

ENJOYING RUSSIA

Low's Russian Sketchbook: 56 Drawings by Low.

Text by KINGSLEY MARTIN, Gollancz. 8s. 6d.

We all know that we have amongst us to-day a cartoonist in the grand tradition. But, as the recognition, which contributions to evening newspapers receive by word of mouth round the dinner table, cannot reach the modest cartoonist, one welcomes a book like this as an opportunity to tell Low how much we think of him and how much we love him. He has the rare combination of gifts which is necessary for his craft—a shrewd and penetrating intelligence, wit, taste, unruffled urbanity, an indignant but open and understanding heart, a swift power of minute observation with an equally swift power of essential simplification, and, above all, a sense and talent for beauty, which extracts something delightful even out of ugliness. One may seem to be piling it on, but Low really has these things, and it is a great addition to our lives to meet the tongue and eye of a civilised man and true artist when we open the *Evening Standard*.

Last summer Low and Kingsley Martin made a trip to Bolshie-land, and this agreeable book is the outcome. Low's pencil and charcoal sketches are reproduced by some process which, whatever it may really be, looks like lithograph and thereby reinforces the comparison between Low and the lithographers of the old *Charivari* of Paris—Gavarni and Daumier and their colleagues. They are *illustrations* in the literal sense of the word—pictures of the inside and of the outside of things at the same time.

Both contributors are at their blandest and most urbane, good guests whose first duty is to be courteous to their hosts. Mr. Kingsley Martin does not pretend to pronounce judgments, but he has given us with admirable lightness and discretion the running commentary of a highly intelligent tourist, who contrives to raise in a number of dialogues some of the main issues with which the Russian experiment confronts the observer. A little too full perhaps of good will. When a doubt rises, it is swallowed down if possible. Mr. Martin is ready to agree "on the whole" that it is a grand ideal to turn peasants into machine-minders. He reflects that "these people at least have a fuller diet than Chinese coolies, and I don't think they are as poor as peasants are in India." If it is pointed out to him that the only people "who really suffer from restrictions on free speech are a few educated intellectuals," he wonders doubtfully if he will find a convincing answer in Rousseau or Bentham or John Stuart Mill. When he is told that "as to fat, they rely on sunflower oil," he remembers that the whole civilisation of Greece was built up on olive oil. This is the right spirit in which to visit Russia, if one wants to enjoy oneself.

J. M. KEYNES.

The Times

Printing House Square, E.C.4.

12 JAI/32

LOW'S RUSSIAN SKETCHBOOK. Drawings by
Low. Text by KINGSLEY MARTIN. 9¼ x 7½, 14¢
pp. Gollancz. 8s. 6d. n.

Low's sketches are admirable. Nor is it only for their artistic qualities that they are to be admired. They have, as ever, the draughtsmanship and the humour that make his cartoons notable. They have also—and it is for this that anyone turning to them from the dreary procession of pretentiously unintelligent books about Soviet Russia will be grateful—the stamp of a free mind. He went to Russia on a conducted tour, and (this by way of description rather than criticism) there are many things he has not seen, or, if seen, not recorded: for a fair comparison the book by his American fellow-cartoonist, "Ding," might be taken. He is unable also to resist a fling at the virulent anti-Bolshevist—one picture shows "our special correspondent on the job" recording the absurd things some special correspondents regrettably have recorded; or at the inane pro-Bolshevist—another picture shows a Red soldier "protecting tractors from Chamberlain and Poincaré."

But on most things he has seen his judgment, implied rather than expressed, is sane and just cynical enough to be just. His sketches of "the proletarian at play" are inspired with the kind of affection the Russian people inspire in any sincere visitor, Bolshievist, anti-Bolshevist or indifferent. His fantasy of the comrade who took as his slogan "the Five-year Plan in Six months" is a not-so-fantastic comment on grandiose Russian ambitions. And the dialogue he puts into the mouths of a director and a foreman at a Soviet motor factory sums up, without any of the too-conscious superiority which is almost as offensive in visitors to Russia as too-ingenuous crudeness, the view that expert economists have reached after prolonged study. "How's production to-day, Vovarish?" asks the director. "Forty trucks," replies the foreman—"all except the engines and the wheels, Vovarish. Got a cigarette?" For the rest many of his drawings show a human reaction, intuitive rather than intellectual, to the human things. As much cannot unfortunately be said of Mr. Kingsley Martin's accompanying schoolmaster-on-holiday account of the tour they made together. Its unnecessarily combative tone once discounted, his reasoning about issues great and small is reasonable enough. But why, many readers will wonder, endure the admitted discomforts of a journey to Moscow for the sake of reasons that could have been found equally well at home?

12

Travel Pictures :

LIFE'S CHIAROSCURO
IN SOVIET RUSSIA

Low's Russian Sketch Book. Drawings by
Low. Text by Kingsley Martin. Gol-
lancz. 8s. 6d. net.

PUBLISHED TO-DAY

Russia has always been the most diffi-
cult country in the world to explore with-
out expert guidance. The visitor who
merely wishes to satisfy that disease of the
mind called *Tourismus* will find the minis-
trations of "Intourist" sufficient for all
his needs. Twenty thousand tourists have
had a cheap semi-official holiday there this
year at inclusive charges, and this traffic
is being fostered in every possible way by
the Soviet authorities, not only as a profit-
making plan, but also as propaganda.
"Intourist" have charabancs, a fleet of
Lincoln cars, and guides, most of whom
can speak English fairly well, to meet each
party at every stage of its tour; they have
their own hotels, and are building new
ones on a palatial scale in all the big
towns. Tourists who wish to make pur-
chases outside the inclusive fees do so at
the *Torgsins*, general shops where many
commodities can be bought at reasonable
prices for foreign currency only. These
shops also offer inducements to Russians
all over the country to part with their gold,
silver, jewellery, and hoards of foreign
money.

ONLY TOURISTS

Low and his travelling-companion do not pretend to have been anything more than tourists. But there is much reliable information in Mr. Kingsley Martin's letterpress which is written from the point of view of a keen but distinterested observer. The contrast between the new and the old is always emphatically presented.

Thus we are told of the efforts to secure
cleanliness and tidiness, but are also taken
to see the Sukharevsky Market in Moscow,
where the smells are as fierce as the prices.
"The Caledonian Market is Buckingham
Palace to Sukharevsky." The overcrowding
(not at all exaggerated in the enter-
taining novel, "Three Pairs of Silk Stock-
ings") and the badness of the food could
never be tolerated by the poorest of British
workers or even by the dwellers in a

Dublin slum. A Russian friend called Bolonsky (to Americans the name will suggest "boloney") is mildly sarcastic at the tourists' belief that every agreeable sight had been specially prepared beforehand. Thus he insists that a place containing fine farm buildings was a Potemkin village run up just to impress them. When they saw a wonderful sunset on the Volga, he was asked if that also had been arranged, and replied: "No, I regret that the Soviet Government is not at present on sufficiently good terms with God for that." In the chapter entitled "The Faithful and the Godless" the theistical propaganda of

the Bolsheviks is discussed, and it is
shown that they are trampling on religion
with a religiosity of their own. Lenin is
a deity in the making.

But Low's sketches are the most capti-
vating feature of this book. There is a
Leech-like power in some of his small
drawings, such as that of a wretched old
man at the Sukharevsky Market trying to
sell a single old boot. With his charac-
teristic humour, at times a little grimmer
than usual, he presents the daily life of the
poverty-stricken people, and so enables us
to see Soviet Russia without contributing
to the revenues of "Intourist." But, as
another artist said after visiting Russia,
you can't draw a smell!

Morning Post

15 Tudor Street, E.C.4.

n issue dated

25 NOV.1932

From Low's "Russian Sketch Book."

DECEMBER 4, 1935.

Low's Russian Sketchbook (Gollancz: 5s. 3d.). Among the 20,000 tourists to visit Russia in the past year went David Low and Kingsley Martin, pencil- and pen-wielder respectively, and the outcome is a book which does credit to the ability and the good sense of both of them. It is all the better because they make a happily odd team—Low seeing his Russia and drawing it in his incomparable spirit of fun-poking, and Martin taking a friendly view of the place and writing of it in a decently generous spirit. Together they make a nice antidote to the reports of Solemnity—fulsome variety and narrow-minded variety alike. As a team, they work like this:—

Martin's Account: In the foundry I stood watching a young girl with her face lit with a fierce glow as the huge steam hammer came down on the red metal. Our engineer guide turned to me beaming with enthusiasm. "That girl," he said, "was just a peasant a few weeks ago."

Low's Account (beneath drawing): Fac-
tory Girl, dreaming of peasant days,
absent-mindedly trying to milk a steam-
hammer.

Moscow and Mr. Bennett
MOSCOW is really worried about the futur
of Anglo-Soviet trade relations. I regre
duce here a cartoon from a Moscow peo
illustrating Mr. R. B. Bennett's firm attiti
on the Russian issue at Ottawa.

The cartoonist depicts Mr. Bennett as a
crusader. His lance bears on its pennant a
message: "We demand the rupture of Anglo-
Soviet trade relations."

At the table sits a bewildered-looking Mr.
Baldwin.

When I examine the features of Mr. Baldwin
in this cartoon I begin to think that the artist

has borrowed his caricature straight from Low
who, by the way, is now touring Russia.

Low's wit and draughtsmanship are a
subject of much envious praise in the
Bolshevist Press, which has given great
prominence to his visit.

He is honoured with such adjectives as
"great" and "famous" in the local Bolshem
Press; but though the Moscow critics like his
cartoons, they dislike his "bourgeois" mind.

"Low," writes one of them, "draws cari-
caratures about Englishmen in India. But
ever British rule in India were in danger of
this pearl for England."

***

By ANTHONY PRAGA.

Bullition (sketch) at release 3/

["14", "MOSCOW DAILY NEWS 28/1/63", "Book\nReview", "By CHARLES ASHLEIGH", "Low's Russian Sketch Book. Drawings by\nLow; Text by Kingsley Martin, London.\nVictor Gollancz, Ltd. 8s. 6d.", "LOW is the most famous of British\nnewspaper cartoonists, and the most\nbeloved. Incidentally, he is reputed\nto be the most highly paid, and I do not\ndoubt it.", "He works for the London \"Standard\",\nan evening paper, but his drawings are\nalso syndicated, appearing in the \"Man-\nchester Guardian\" among other journals.", "Now, the \"Standard\" belongs to Lord Beaverbrook, millionair newspaper owner, to whom the \"Daily Express\" and \"Sunday Express\" also belong. Beaverbrook is a Conservative, an imperialist. Yet Low says what he likes in his drawings—poking fun at many of the things which the Beaverbrook papers hold sacrosanct. This is probably because Low knows that if he ever left—or had to leave—the Beaverbrook papers, every other paper in Britain which could afford to hire him would jump for him.", "On Fleet Street it is rumored that when\nLow left the evening \"Star\" for the\n\"Standard,\" he made a condition that he\nbe allowed free choice of subjects for his\ncartoons. Whether this be true or not, he\ncertainly appears to draw jus: what he\nwants to draw.", "Drawings Are Sympathetic", "And, incidentally, when he returned to\nLondon, he wrote a piece about his tour\nhere, in the \"Standard.\" It was sympathe-\ntic; it countered a number of the common\nmisrepresentations one reads about the\nSoviet Union. Well, whether it was ac-", "FAMOUS BRITISH CARTOONIST DRAWS\nSKETCHES OF SOVIET LIFE", "cident or whether it was done to preserve\nthe \"Standard's\" political equilibrium one\ncannot affirm, but the next day there ap-\npeared in the \"Standard\" a scorching in-\ndictment of the Bolsheviks by \"A. A. B.\"\na die-hard Conservative writer who is so\nreactionary he almost thinks the Conserv-\natives are radical.", "There is a great deal of humor in the\nsketches in this book—it would not be\nLow if there were not. The two we re-\nproduce will evidence that. But besides\ntheir humor, they are true. There is an\nauthoritative fidelity in his drawing of a\nPeoples Court. It reveals that intimacy\nand sincerity which is so contrary to the\nbaneful and ceremonial amosphere of\ncourts elsewhere.", "His drawings are sympathetic. One\nfeels that he liked most of the people he\nmet here. His bunch of Red Army lads,\nswinging along, singing lustily, almost\nmarches off the page—it moves so well.", "And the smiles! Those big friendly\ntoothy grins of the husky lads and lasses\nin the Parks of Culture and Rest, driving\ntracors, attending a production meeting\n—Low's book should once and for all si-\nlence those who affirm that: (oh, how of-\nten have we read it!) upon the Moscow\nstreets one never sees a smile.", "Not that Low ignores shortcomings. He\npictures the ever-present crowd, waiting,\nwaiting, at the railroad station. He shows\nus a queue—two queues, in fact: one for\nfood and one for drink! The latter—a\nthirsty crowd lined up for beer at a boule-\nvard kiosk—is extremely animated.", "And Low's drawing of Lenin's tomb is\ngenuinely reverent.", "Text Also Friendly", "The text is by Kingsley Martin, editor of\nthe \"New Statesman and Nation,\" a week-\nly review with Labor Party sympathies.\nMartin is definitely sympathetic, and takes\nthe trouble to find things out. He gives\nthe lie to many anti-Soviet propaganda\nstories.", "He states that tourists do see what they\nlike, that children and factories are not\nall dressed up specially when they know\nthe foreigners are coming. He discusses\nintelligenctly the prison system—with en-\nthusiastic praise of the G.P.U. Commune\nat Bolshevo—the courts, marriage and\ndivorce and various other aspects of Sov-\nice: life. In fact, he would be altogether", "with us, except—he does not like the way\nthe Revolution arrived. A quotation will\nillustrate. He is discussing things with\na Russian Communist friend, and says:", "\"If you have a good political reason\nfor doing a thing, you do it whatever\nits economic or social cost. . . That is\nwhere Bolsheviks differ from other So-\ncialists, like myself.\"", "His Russian friend replies that Martin\nis not a Socialist, but a liberal. Martin\nreplies:", "\"If being a liberal means that I think\nthat less coercion of other people the\nbetter, and that I am not prepared to\nenforce my ideas irrespective of the\ncost, and that I want as large a mess-\nure of consent as possible for what I\ndo, I am a Liberal.\"", "Excellent Piece of Journalism", "Unfortunately, the conversation ended insympathy.", "here. Otherwise his Russian friend would\nundoubtedly have reminded him that, af-\nter all, a majority of the people did sup-\nport the Bolshevik program, in November\n1917. And also that no change in society\ncan be made without coercion—coercion\nof the class which has been dethroned,\nand its supporters. Otherwise, how will\nMr. Martin have his revolution? In the\nbook, he does not tell us. In fact, one re-\nceives the impression that, like many oth-\ner good people, he wants the results of the\nrevolution without the revolution.", "However, the text is on the whole, an\nable and friendly exposition of what the\nwriter saw in the Soviet Union. He makes\nno claim of profoundly, but in the pref-\nace states that his writing is merely an\n\"irresponsible diary.\" It is more than\nthat. It is an excellent piece of journal-", "OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT ON THE JOB", "\"LOUD EXPLOSIONS WERE HEARD NEAR\nMOSCOW THIS MORNING. A FEARED\nTHAT ANOTHER 1000 EXECUTIONS\nHAVE TAKEN PLACE.\"", "THE CLOTHING SITUATION IS DESPERATE.\nMANY PEOPLE LINE THE RIVER SIDE\nSTARK NAKED.\"", "\"RUINED MACHINERY LITTERS\nTHE STREETS. IT IS OBVIOUS\nTHAT THE 5 YEAR PLAN IS\nA TOTAL WASHOUT.\"", "con", "Интернациональная (30) тел. «Москва», из Им Кирова, Степанова, д. 3.", "SIA", "11.", "London", "8s. 6s.", "8s.", "6s.", "6s.", "6s.", {"bbox": [12

Manchester Guardian

3 Cross Street, Manchester.

1 DEC. 1939

from Icena dated

LOW IN RUSSIA

LOW'S RUSSIAN SKETCHBOOK. London:
Victor Gollancz. Pp. 141. 8s. 6d.
net.

This is a wonderful contrast to
the attempts of the camera to show
us what the Russians look like just
now. The camera may have a certain
verisimilitude, but this is truth itself,
a comedy of men and women seen
against the background of their en-
vironment of things and ideas. Low's
brilliance seems to be at its height in
this: in showing us how we in our
happiest, most god-like moods should
see men and things; a ridiculous and
charming assembly. The Russian
traveller will rediscover in this sketch-
book a score of the elusive trivialities
that are important to his idea of
Russia. There is the "factory girl,
dreaming of peasant days, absent-

mindedly trying to milk a steam-
hammer"; there is "birth of class-
consciousness in birds after ten years
of megaphone propaganda in Russian
parks"; there is the "miserable per-
son (in the open market) trying to sell
a boot (singular)." There is also a
brilliant delineation of the dismay
which possesses the traveller when he
finds that it is cabbage soup again.
We only miss the multitudes of spit-
toons.

Mr. Kingsley Martin has collaborated
in this book by providing a text which
often takes the shape of a dialogue
between the writer and Low, or one
other of their companions. Chief
among these is a conversation with
Comrade Bolonsky on one of the Volga
boats. This seems too good as a
survey of Russia at present to be any-
thing less than a skilful synthesis con-
trived by Mr. Kingsley Martin out of
the replies which pointed questions
have earned. "It is most interesting
conversation, for it sets out in remark-
ably small space Bolshevik views on
general questions of equality, private
profit, the standard of living, the
administration of the State, and
war.

D. F. B.

THE COMIC SIDE OF
COMMUNISM.

LOW IN RUSSIA WITH A
SKETCH BOOK.

THERE is not much room for
laughter in the fanatical fervour
of the million and a half Communists
who are the new masters of the old
machine, and who rule the rest of the
150 million souls with the same iron
hand, even if they do profess a
different motive, taken from Karl Marx.
Nor would there seem to be much
material for laughter in the daily dis-
comforts and poverty of the people of
Russia, who endure these discomforts
and this poverty in order to illustrate
the theory of the class-less State,
although, in actual fact, a governing
class of bourgeois bureaucrats is
rapidly in the making.

But if there is the seed of laughter
in all things, the eminent cartoonist
Low has found it in this album of
56 drawings on his recent Russian tour
under Soviet auspices. His comic
penetration plays upon the absurd
incongruity of the Soviet experiment to
Americanise and industrialise the soul
of the simple Russian peasant while he
is being taught to be and do "some-
thing else." Only the Russian peasant
would remain dumb and docile under
such a system of economic regimenta-
tion. Our bureaucrats could do the
thing more efficiently, but our workers
would simply not allow it to be done.

How Russia looks under this process
was Low's opportunity, and these
sketches, with the comic contrasts
between the Communist "Plan" and
the human entanglements of it, will
enable most students to see and under-
stand more of Russia than if they took
the trip themselves.

To those who, like myself, have taken
such a trip they are the perfect
summing up.

Mr. Kingsley Martin writes round the
subject while Low looks right into it.

The religion of Jesus, Who was more
of a simple proletarian than the chiefs
of Communist Russia, has been
humiliated and restricted, in anger
against the priests who overlaid the
Christian Gospel by "the fatal
opulence of Bishops." But the cult of
Lenin, embalmed in a glass case as an
object of daily pilgrimage, is only a
substitute superstition. Low has two
companion pictures here, one entitled
"The New Religion," showing a
Soviet synod in session under a great
portrait of Lenin, and the other show-
ing some uncouth peasants amid the
relics of the Orthodox Church—"The
Old Religion."

With lighter humour, but no less
satire, Low depicts a typical workman
"just promoted," taking home a big
plaster cast of Stalin as "the
customary present for the wife." Low
depicts both the weakness and the
endurance of the crowded trams, the
railway waiting-room like doss houses,
and the peasants packed like cattle on
the Volga boats. The pathetic attempts
at private trading, allowed to single
traders in the markets, like the old
man selling bootlaces who might be a
dispossessed millionaire, or a
bewhiskered old mounjik offering an
odd boot for auction—all these have an
observation that is as human as it is
humorous. Perhaps Low is drollest
among the peasants under the propa-
ganda for technicalisation. He has
one drawing of a factory girl "dream-
ing of peasant days, absent-mindedly
trying to milk a steam hammer."
And there is another of a rough
country yokel expostulating with "a
counter-revolutionary cow refusing to
increase production," and so on
through most of the problems of
making this Eastern peasant folk
serve the ends of an industrialism for
which the bulk of them are misfits.

—J. B. H.

"Low's Russian Sketch Book," Text by Kingsley Martin. (Gollancz. 8s. 6d.)

Yorkshire Observer
Drake Street, Bradford.

From issue dated..........
27. DEC. 1939

15