Chapter 4

For many reasons I could wish that England were China. It would be nice, for instance, to address the HOME SECRETARY as "Redoubtable Hunter of Criminals" and to call the Board of Exterior Affairs (if we had one) "Wai-wo-poo." I should like my house also to be named "The Palace of the Hundred Flowers." I think there are about a hundred, though I have not counted them. But in China it is above all things necessary to be an ancestor, and this may lead to complications if Mr. G. S. DE MORANT, who appears to be much more at home with the French and the Oriental idiom than the English, is to be trusted. _In the Claws of the Dragon_ (ALLEN AND UNWIN) describes the experiences of a young lady named _Monique_, who married the Secretary to the Chinese Embassy in Paris and was obliged, after visiting her relations-in-law, to reconcile herself to the introduction of a second wife into the family, in order that their notions of propriety might be respected and an heir born to the line. When she had consented she returned to Paris and wrote the following cablegram from her own mother's house: "You have acted as a good son and a faithful husband. Bring back with you the mother of our (_sic_) child." And so, the author evidently feels, it all ended happily. His book is an interesting and amusing presentment of an older civilisation, but if it won't strain the _Entente_ I am bound to say that I disagree with his conclusions.

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I fear it may sound an unkindly criticism, but my abiding trouble with _Broken Colour_ (LANE) was an inability to get any of the characters, with perhaps one exception, to come alive or behave otherwise than as parts of a thoroughly nice-mannered and unsensational story. Perhaps it was my own fault. Mr. HAROLD OHLSON (whose previous book I liked) has obviously, perhaps a little too obviously, done his best for these people. It is a tale of two rivalries: that for the heroine, between the penniless artist-hero and a pound-full other; and that in the breast of the p.a.h., between the flesh-pots of commerce and the world-well-lost-for-Chelsea. It is typical of Mr. OHLSON'S care that, though one would in such a situation nine times out of ten be safe in backing Art for the double event, he makes so even a match of it between _Hubert_ and _Ralph_ that he leaves the heroine ringing the door-bell of the one immediately after kissing the other. You observe that I was perhaps really more interested in the contest than my opening words would suggest, but it was always in a detached story-book way; except in the case of a mildly unsympathetic secretary, represented as having spent too much time in the contemplation of other persons' affluence, also as owning an expensive-looking stick that made him long to be as rich as it caused him to appear. I hate to think that there can have been anything here to touch a chord in the reviewing breast, but the fact remains that _Mr. Burnham_ stands out for me as the only genuinely human figure in the book.

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Blessed, no doubt, is the nation or the man without a history, but blessed too is the biographer who has something definite to write about. Mr. C. CARLISLE TAYLOR, in putting together his _Life of Admiral Mahan_ (MURRAY), the American naval philosopher and prophet, must have felt this keenly, for rarely can a man whose work was so important that he simply had to have a biography have done so few things of the kind that help to fill up a book. The Admiral not only foresaw the great War before 1914; he even suggested definite details of it--for instance, the loyalty of Italy to Western civilisation and the final surrender of the German fleet; yet in himself, though the writer draws an attractive picture of his home and religious life, he was only a kindly Christian gentleman who lectured to a few naval students. This is not the stuff to turn into a thrilling life-story, yet his studies on _Sea-Power_ in relation to national greatness must certainly be reckoned among the prime causes of world-war. They set the Germans trying to outbuild the British fleet; more fortunately they were an inspiration to naval enthusiasts in this country also. Mr. TAYLOR has a pleasant chapter describing the immediate recognition and welcome his hero received in England, while it has taken quite a number of chapters to do justice to all the written tributes to his genius that the energetic author has collected. Personally, if ever I had been in doubt about it, I should have been quite willing to take that genius for granted some time before the end, and could indeed recommend the volume much more happily if it were reduced by about half. It will be valuable mainly as a necessary work of reference.

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Our Well-Informed Press.

"At Kensington Palace the ground frost registered 9 deg. Fahr., which represents 23 degrees below zero."--_Evening Paper._

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"WELLS HITS BACK AT CHURCHILL."--_Sunday Paper._

Not the Bombardier, as you might think, but BERT WELLS.

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Transcriber's notes:

Page 481: Tristan d'Acunha--this spelling also appears in the previous issue of 'Punch'.

Page 488: Single quote corrected to double quote.

Page 493: Replaced missing double quote.

Page 494: Replaced missing opening quote.

Page 498: Removed extraneous closing quote.