Evening Star Newspaper, November 1, 1931, Page 95

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 1, 1931 WHAT ARE WE TO DO WITH OUR LIVES? By H. G. Wells. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. N innocent question to look at, of- fered by the smiling and genial gentleman who, at the moment, is taking a dip into the United States for such findings of moment as he may be able to bring to the surface of affairs. Affairs that count for tomorrow, and the next day, for this particular stretch of country and for that on the other side of the world. Mr. Wells, nor any other wise man, needs to tell us that we are in a New World. We know it. But, do we? Do we know it more deeply, more influentially, than a mere repetition of the formula indicates? “This is & new and amazing world.” Does the astound- ing fact change an item of our thinking, of our attitudes, our actions, our outlook with its sequence of new purpose and a new plan? In a friendly way, Mr. Wells would like to go over the ground with us in a search for such changss as have been made, intelligently and forthrightly, by virtue of having a new world to-face, to meet. We agree with him that, in effect, science has turmed the trick of transforming the world into a neighborhood. Indeed, into a huddle. A change that imposes new accommodations, new understandings, new unions toward a common intent and common action. But, he thinks, and we agree, that before outlining the future it would be no more than good housekezping of national and international scope to sec what our stock in hand looks like, to what an extent it is calcu- lated to meet the new order, to what extent it must be scrapped to make way for com- pletely new instruments of existence. What is education, the basic industry, doing? Really doing? To what measure are its plans and “projects” fifted to the new and compli- cated technic of daily life, in the home, in the office, in the workshop, everywhere? What practical attention is it giving to the new outrush of girls and women into industry? He thinks that education is a laggard. Not from & desire to bs that. For other reasons. He talks, in like tolerant mood, of professional life, outside the teaching profession. Talks of the law, of the church, of the press, of relief programs and so on’and so on through the run of staple occupations in civilization. He talks of war. Calls it not a mere an- achronism, but a sheer impossibility in the new day so swiftly drawing near. Long distances, wide separations, complicated technic of train- ing, enormous expense of support in peace and greater expense in conflict itself—these all be- long to the other day. That day before science made warfare in the future a matter of holo- caust, wide as sea and land together, an ex- tinction of the citizenry as well as of the soldiery, No, war in the future is an im- possible conception. Therefore the “huddle” must learn the lessons of understanding and accommodation. Must, in a word, learn to live somewhere near to the claim of humanity that it is, in fact and in deed, human. Yes, Mr. Wells is an idealist. And that means whatever is put into the word, by a like spirit on the one hand and by a resistant one on the other. With either group he should be welcome. For here is a sincere and wise man. A scholarly man whose intimate knowl- edge of the past qualifies him to look sanely and intelligently upon the present and off into the future. A most engaging man who is very much in earnest, smilingly in earnest, over a future which, certainly, is not his concern alone. He is not epeaking for himself. It seems to me to be both good common sense, and a bit of deeply intelligent choosing to take up, seriously, “What Are We To Do With Our Lives?” in a search for something definite and supporting that we, each of us, can do about this business of being alive in the most demanding world that has, so far, been created. JAKE LINGLE: Or, Chicago on the Spot. By John Boettiger. Illustrated. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. PON two counts, a most unusual detective story. One, it is a true story. Quite repor- torially true. Again, the crime upon which it is developed was investigated by a newspaper. The prosecutions that followed were pushed to issue by the same agency. Moreover, the bulk of awards offered for apprehension of the crim- Inal derived from no other source than this. New, in common practice and acceptance, the function of the press is to collect and to give out news. This, to be sure, under some recognizable and dependable policy, expressed as a rule by editorial attitude and comment. In its general influence the press stands for public order and decency, social welfare, for wide security, for a thousand measures bent upon the common weal. Not ever does & news- paper step Into the open as individual prosecu- tor of crime. Hardly ever does it do this. Yet, that is exactly what came to pass in the case brought out by this story. In June, 1930, Jake Lingle, a news reporter, was murdered in a Chieago subway. pecple were moving along this passage, Lingle among them. A man stepped in be- hind him, shot him and then dashed for the exit and the stairway. Right away a man was seen running hard and fast along the open Streets. There he was lost. Such the beginning of the matter. As mem- ber of its staff, Jake Lingle became at once he special business of the Chicago Tribune. PBelecting a small group, expert and smealous, he Tribune sent this body to digging out the il of one particular murderer. So fine a e of spade-work was made by the group hat, in effect, it served to bring to the surface Chicago life an uynderground: city of gang- TS such as. perhaps, no other modern city 15 cu e — NV A Nezw Book From H.G. Wells—The Case of Jack Lingle, Chicago Reporter—Short Stories of the Younger Generation, and Edna Ferber’s New Novel. fessional rivalries are ever active. Not of neces- sity vicious, but active, very. Yet, the Tribune went on its way, hunting for one man, the man who shot Jake Lingle. A point in the pursuit becomes most inter- esting and significant. You may be sure that the trial gathered evidence against J:g Lingle himself. He, too, “was a crook.” He, t&b, pulled in “barrels of dough” through betrayal job. “Served him right.” You know of counter accusation. Well, it And this is the point at which Tribune held to the logic of its telligence to the purpose of its original It was following,one man, a criminal, accord ing to the evidence of many eye-witnesses. That was the man the Tribune wanted and was going to have. All the rest, for a moment side issues, to be noted nows and brought to book later. That, it seems to me, is the triumph of this That, and the clear in rounding a vivid drama out of the number- less incidents and aspects of criminal life in a great city. A single thread, knotted, tangled, inter-linked with a thousand other threads, yet here is a straight, clear story of abeorbing in- terest, a vivid chapter in the annals of crime ' in any place, at any time. AMERICAN BEAUTY. By Edna Ferber, au- ther of “Show Boat,” etc. Woodcut Decora- tions by Rudolph Ruzicka. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Co. ONNECTICUT. gives background to Edna Ferber’s new novel. Its theme is the in- vasion of this New England commonwealth by Polack immigrants, born lovers and cultivators of the soil. .These, in a passion of zeal and thrift, take over little by little, neglected acres of the natives. New England boys leave the farms for less arduous demands. And every- where neglected land areas promise El Dorado itself to the peasantry of the Old World. The business of this whole matter, then, the true theme of the novel, becomes the gradual cross- breeding between Polack and American. A sort of cross-fertilization, so to speak, which may account, or may not account, for the title, chosen by Miss Ferber as means by which a rose has gained supremacy in the entire garden of American flowers. However, here are marooned New England girls, self-urged toward love and marriage. Here are lusty male foreigners at hand, imme- diate outlet for such instinctive impulses. Nothing needed but time to secure a com- plete blend of blood, temperament, outlook tradition, habit and all the rest of individual, and collective racial trait. And Miss Ferber concedes time to the process, several genera- tions of time. The story as such, growing by pictures, episodes, little panoramas of scene and char- acteristic local customs, really gets on its way by the return of old True Baldwin and his quite modern daughter to the birthplace of Baldwin. A rich man, with not much to do any more, he wants to see the old place, to find out how the great family of the county had come on in the long years since he, a no-account, went away to seek a fortune, and found it. Old Jude Oakes, who lived in a mansion and owned thousands of acres. Well, Candace and her father found what was left of the Oakes tribe. Not much. From this point on the concern of the author is to bring, in good order and interesting incident, the gradual blend of alien and native for the making of another new stripe of American citizen. ‘Romance, not overfervid but very consistent with its setting, crops out now and then. Indeed, one is obviously on the way between the most modern girl and a quite personable and stanch Polack-American that has arrived out of the picturesque “show-boat- ings” of Edna Ferber in the tobacco fields of Connecticut’s experiment in mixing human strains for a new product. DELLA-WU: Chinese Courtezan; and Other Oriental Love Tales. By Frank Owen, author of “The Wind that Tramps the World,” etc. New York: The Lantern Press. DOZEN of them, each in the spirit of Frank Owen off in the Far East. Let us sit down with the first one for a minute. Nen-Tsang, philesopher. very wise in deep and silent speculations. A voung and beautiful wife, beautiful. Lying beside her a new baby upon whose tiny face Nen-Tsang looked and across whose little fuz of hair he drew a soothing And then he turned away. And old Nen-Tsang set about vengeance for the deadly wrong that had Leen done to his high mightiness and long lineage through the wanton amour of one whom he had so highly honored. And so, Nen-Tsang, looking about for some- thing subtly sure in its ways of destruction, trained the little girl, Della-Wu, from baby- hood to the professional life of the courtesan. Interesting, this. Th: possibility of training a child, any child, to the ways of sin while the child remains impregnable to evil. In- teresting, too, that by virtue of an innocence which every child, in essence, possesses, Della~ Wu remains spotless. Enjoying to the full, the arts that were taught her, the beautiful things that were showered upon her, the ways of charm into which she was guided, Della-Wu became a ravishment of beauty, and a citadel of innocence that left suitors helpless and futile. Tragedy, true. For in the end, one more brutal than all sought by force to break through the barriérs of Della-Wu. Frightened, unknowing, revolted, the child became the vie- tim of a thwarted male who, enraged, hurled her to death in the great river flowing by the palace grounds of oild Nen-Tsang. READINGS IN BIOGRAPHY. Selected and Edited by Clara L. Myers, professor of English, Western Reserve University. A BOOK of selections designed to give in handy and comprehensive form extracts from “Lives” of famous men. The book is calculated, besides, to throw light on the question, now so much to the fore, as to the nature of biography, its relation to history on one hand, to the novel cn another, Here one comes upon widely diverse charac- ters, upon widely separated periods of time. Plutarch is here with his immortal portrayals. Cellini and Pepys are here in their self- revelatory roles. Boswell brings his Johnson and Lockhart his Scott. Jane Addams and Hamlin Garland come into the present. Vir- ginia Woolf is here in one of her most vitaliz- ing “selves.” At the last is James Truslow Adams, bringing bicgraphy to its finest Ameri- can flowering. The book is as intelligently projected as it is carried out in a spirit of helpful scholar- ship. Admirable for students. And quite as worthwhile for recders of serious bent toward an increase of information upon important matters. BEFORE THEY WERE MEN. By Charles Wertenbaker. New York: Horace Liveright. OWED down with books and books., There- fore, rather duller than usual, in my mind. 8o, drawing “Before They Were Men” from the monstrous pile, I thought, and said, “Oh, I'm sick of prehistoric things, crawling and slithering about on their way toward being ‘Then I opened the book. Then I woke up. For, Jet me tell you here is a fine story of boys, school boys. And if you think that matter has been overdone, that Owen Johnson gathe ered all the acorns from that particular tree and ran away with them—why, then, here is a chance to revise your opinions and & time to give credit to Charles Wertenbaker for a boy story that stays, strictly, within the lines of a truly royal domain. Boydom. Two youngsters bear the brunt of the doings, “Sleepy” and “Shadow.” One was a wizard at foot ball. The other could speak pieces in a way to turn Daniel Webster and Charles Sumner plain grumpy with envy. Four years of the good, live stuff are given here for boys to read, in envy, and for the elders to look back upon through the glamour of “I used to do that.” A Kentucky lad, to start with, Charles Wer- tenbaker. Then to Virginia for university training. Newspaper work next. Then a fling into the life of adventure over in Ireland. Newspaper again, a reporter on The Washing- ton Star. Here he did story writing, moving in this line over to The Saturday Evening Post. Now, “Before They Were Men,” .a book that brought “me enough money to buy a Ford and go to Spain.” “My next book will, I hope, enable me to buy another Ford and go back to Spain.” Books Received AMERICAN WEIGHS HER GOLD. By James Harvey Rogers, professor political economy, Yale University. Assisted by his pupils, Henry H. Edminston and Florence Helm. New Haven: Yale University Press. millan Co. HISTORY OF BUILDING AND LOAN IN THE UNITED STATES. By H. Morton editor-in-chief, U. S. Building -and Loan - SN League. Chicago: U. S. Builidng and Loan League. THE UNITED STATES SHIPPING BOARD: Its history, activitics and organization. By Darrell Hevenor Sinith and Paul V. Betlers, ‘Washington: The Erookings Institution. THE CO-OPERATIVE MARKETING OF LIVH STOCK. By Edward Nourse and Joseph C, Knapp. Washington, D. C.: The Brookings Institution. METHOD IN DEALING IN STOCKS: A practical guide and handbook for recording and interpreting the daily action of the stock market. By Joseph H. Kerr, jr. Bose ten. The Christopher Publishing House. HOW TO FORECAST A BULL MARKET. By Carroll Ti'lman. Boston: Economic Publis cations, Inc. CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF SOUTH CARO= LINA RAILRCAD. By Samuel Melanchthon Derrick, professor of economics, University of South Cerolina. Columbia, 8. C. The State Co. BOSTON UNIVERSITY CATALOGUE ISSUE, Boston. LIFE IS SUCH A RUSH. By Christine Jope« Slade. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co, HIDDEN SPRINGS OF THE RUSSIAN REVO« LUTION. Personal memoirs of Katerina Breshkovskaia. Edited by Lincoln Hutchine son. Stanford University Press. UNDERWORLD AND SOVIET. By Viadimir Orloff. New York: The Dial Press. GOLDEN DAYS OF SOVIET RUSSIA. By Adolf Carl Noe. Illustrations by Edmund Giesbert. Chicago: Thomas Rockwell Co. THE SOVIETS CONQUER WHEAT: Drama of collective farming. By Anna Louise Strong, Ph.D,, zuthor of “China’s Millions,” etc. New York: Henry Hoit & Co. THE COMMURIST SHAKES HIS FIST. He would fight the battles of Moscow on the streets of New York. By Bruce Heynolds, . author of “Paris With the Lid Lifted,” ete, New York: George Sully & Co. HELL'S PUTPOST: The true story of Devil's Island. By W. E. Allicon-Booth. Illustrated by John Gincano. New York: Minfon, Balch & Co. SIR HENRY MORGAN BUCCANEER. By Merritt Parmelee-Allen, author of “Tied in the Ninth,” etc. Illustrated by Manning De V. Lee. New York: The Century Co. STRANGE ADVENTURES AT SEA. By J. G. Lockhart. New York: Willlam Farquhar Payson: Deep Sea Library. . THE GAY BANDIT OF THE BORDER. By Tom Gill. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation. GALLOPING DOWN. By Brainard Beckwith, New York: The Century Co. TEN DAYS WONDER. By Muriel Hine, aue thor of “The Ladder of Folly,” etc. New York: D. Appleton & Co. TAINTED POWER; A Race Williams Detece tive Story. By Carrol John Daly, aue= thor of “The Tag Murders,” etc. New York: Edward J. Ciode, Inc. DAYS OF GOLD. By Ann Spence Warner, author of “Sidesaddle Ranch.” Indian- apolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co. THE GOLDEN STREAM. By Frances Stere rett, author of “Sophie.” Philadelphia: The Penn Publishing Co. MARIVOSA. By Baroness Orczy, author of ‘““The Honorable Jim,” etc. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co. ENCUMBRANCES. By Alwyn Martin. New York: Alfred H. King. THE LIGHT THAT NEVER WAS. By Kathe erine Fullerton Gerould. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 31 FAMILIES UNDER HEAVEN. By George Fink. Translated by Lillie C. Hummel. New York: Horace Liveright. MOUSE TRAP. By M. N. A. Messer. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons THE MYSTERY OF 52. By Walter S. Master- man, author of “The Wrong Letter,” ete. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. TICKER RHYMES. By Florence A. Oums~ mings. Bosion: The Four Seas Co. THE BOY'S LIFE OF HERBERT HOOVER. By Mitchell V. Charnley, author of “The Boy's Life of the Wright Brothers.” Illuse trated with photographs, New Yorkd{ Harper & Bros. THAT CRUCIAL AFFAIR; A Play in Four Acts. By Edna Drake Scudder. Boston# The Christopher Publishing Co. ABOUT THE MURDER OF THE CLERGY- MAN'S MISTRESS. By Anthony Abbott, author of “About the Murder of Geraldine Foster.” New York: Covici-Friede. JIM AND MR. EDDY: A Dixie Motorlogue. By Algernon Brashear Jackson, author of “The Man Next Door,” etc. Washingtons The Associated Publishers, Inc. NELSON: Man and Admiral. By Priedrich M, Kircheisen. Translated from the German by Frederick Collins, B.A. INustrated. New York: Duffield and Green. EARTH-CHILD. By Jane Groome Love. Dale las: The Kaleidoscope Publishers, Forest Service Aid * To Arkansas Idle i il’l ¥ nlhe