Evening Star Newspaper, January 17, 1932, Page 81

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THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHIN(;TON,___P: €., JANUARY 171932, MR. JUSTICE HOLMES. Edited by Felix Frankfurter. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc. UTSTANDING as event, last week, was the resignation on Tuesday of Mr. Justice Holmes from the Supreme Court body. Since then official and profes- sional life has been engaged, most fittingly, in paying tribute to the high qualities of one more great American. The public itself, too, is by way of the general prgss acknowledging its debt to the eminent jurist whose primary objective has been to secure and maintain flexibility in the great body of laws under which the public lives. Whose pur- pose has been, clearly, to keep bodies of legal enactment alive and responsive to the demands of complex and changing conditions. This, no doubt, is the crown of Mr. Justice Holmes’ high career, that of incorporating life and law as a unit of progressive and reciprocal action and reaction. Certain professions tend to formal- ism, to a large reliance upon tradition and cus- tom. The law is such a profession. It crystal- lizes itself out of current efficiency by way of such devotion to the letter, rather than to the spirit. It has been the lifelong work of this eminent jurist to hold the laws to a vital func- tioning in an increasingly complex aspect of human affairs. Inheritance, intellectual and spiritual, has gone into this life mission. Scholarship, too, and training, experience in its ripéning power and autherity in its own in- creasing measure—all these became body and soul of the life work of Mr. Justice Holmes. About a year ago another birthday came around to Mr. Holmes, as birthdays have a way of doing.“In celebration thereof Mr. Felix Prankfurter thought it would be a good plan to gather from the many writings on the sub- ject of Mr. Holmes material for a book, for a permanent unified outlook upon good work and high living. This, to be offered as information, first, to a general public too busy to go gleaning for scattered records and accounts. Next, it was to stand as inspiration to young profes- sionals, to youth as a whole, and to stand also as safeguard against life’s drift toward fossils and bony formations within the spirit. “Mr. Justice Holmes” tufns out to be a com- pany, rather than a book. So, the natural im- pulse is to enter and sit down, quietly, while the talk about Mr. Holmes goes on. There is John Dewey, over there, philosopher of modern make, educator, free-thinking man. He will have something to say in this meeting. He does. He talks of the “liberal mind.” He would. And the one that he points upon to make his talk concrete and near is Mr. Holmes to be sure. The constitution, ubiquitous and often troublesome institution, comes into the party/ to be met by Felix Frankfurter, and to be examined by him as well, in evidence of the great service to the country that the liberal interpretations of the great charter by Mr. Justice Holmes have brought into effect. And so these men talk, all upon the high and worthy theme of one man who has served his land and his people. Who has,*incidentally, served all lands and all peoples. Here are Harold Laski and Walter Lippmann and Ben- jamin Cardozo and others of the competent clan of lawyers and jurists and trained Com- mentators, doing homage to Justice Holmes. The book is an admirable point from which to set out on the adventure of a man, just a man set down in the midst of things. The adventure of a man who, finally, serves the world by way of his career, set high and fol- Jowed in gallant devotion to the common life. And now another birthday is on its way to cross the threshold of Mr. Justice Holmes’ life. Why should there be the note of sadness that seems, somehow, to get into these tributes to a great man? Triumph calls for joy. And here is triumph, high-sourced in well doing, More- over here is a pioneer, a pioneer in the new doctrine of the scientists that man’s life may be greatly prolonged, when once the way of it is found. Here is a start upon the great rennaisance of long life, typified by Methuselah himself, and_promised again as a surety. So, why not gladness for this newly victorious man? Gladness for him, personally, gladness in us because of him for what he is and has been and stfll will be. By Oliver Bos- BFARKS FLY UPWARD. A Novel La Farge, author of “Laughing Boy.” ton: Houghton Mifflin Co. FAMILY of specialized interests and at- tainments, the La Farges. John La Farge, painter, Grant, his son, architect. Oliver, grandson, and our La Farge, anthropologist and novelist. One of the very places for this breed of scientist, these days, is Mexico, New Mexico, Central America, and roundabout. So to these quarters Oliver La Farge betook him- self to dig up his own ancient self out of the buried centuries of that region. This he did to good effect, so the scholars say. But, the adventure of the enterprise and the romance lying deep within it caught the imaginative gift and power of La Parge. And, thereupon he wrote a novel and called it “Laughing Boy.” “Laughing Boy” pleased novel readers and they themselves elected it to a wide, and profitable, popularity. And now Oliver La Farge has done it again. “Sparks Fly Upward” stands, so the timekeepers say, within the first 16 on that glorified roll of “best sellers.” It is & good book. deserving all that it gets in the way of much reading and many sales. A good novel because it represents good work, & substantial and interesting theme, because it offers tense drama, embodying vital current facts and issues. Down to Central America where anthropol- ogy is in ‘its heyday went young La Farge, en- grossed in the racial and cultural outcrop- pings of the deep soil of that locality. While busy digging and scraping and uncovering and making notes, it is safe to say that romance also took hold of this author of “Laughing Boy.” Why these racial dominations and sub- erdinations? Why these persistent rebellions of a seemingly inferior race against the tyran- nies of the supreme white man? Why the The Adventure of Mr. Justice Holmes —A New Novel by Oliver La Farge and Other Recent Books. sharp line between master and serf?> And so the outiine of a romance grew. And, finished, this is, in effect, the basic inviolability of race, the sacrosanct quality of the blood. The in- evitable and unescapable backspring to native levels, no matter how much of lure may lie in temporary departures from the deep and basic life line. Just the story of an Indian, young, intelli- " gent, personable, winning. As a child this boy came under the patronage of a Spanish senor, living as & member of his household, oversee- ing many of the activities of the owner’s great domain. Somewhat late in life the great senor took to himself a young wife. Two atiractive young people in the same house and one old man. What would you? Well, that was the way of it. The business of the story is to show that fascination is not love, whatever either of these emotions may mean. Clearly, they are not identical. Its business to show also that despite the glamour of going out, soldierlike, to quell the various and frequent native upris- ings, the boy was, after all, himself a native, unseducible, in effect, by the preferments and grandeurs of the ruling class around him. In substance the story defines a road, a downhill road, many will say, a descent to original deg- radation and lower living levels. Whether the right way or the wrong one, it is an account of the persistence of racial bonds. High adventure here, picturesque, ceaselessly active, robust, man stuff. Pine work, besides, true to the facts of place and history, to deri- vations older than history. Fine, structurally, with a single driving motive, with a climbing line of action, with incidents innumerable yet all contributing to the main issue, with a climax as logical as it is dramatic. “A man story?” Oh, I don’t know. A woman, now and then, likes such sound and robust artistry as “Sparks Fly Upward” offers her. BARNECAT WAYS. By A. P. Richardson. 1I- Justrations by Kenneth W. Thompson. New York: The Century Co. ALL up aad down the Appalachians, all up and down the Atlantic Coast, are priceless leftovers of settlement days of Colonial days, which, as yet, have given hardly a sign that the United States has reached the honorable national age of 300 years. “Priceless leftovers” because these are bits of original manuscript, so to speak, camera products as it were, pic- turing many a point of departure to ~which important aspects of the present owe a straight lineage. Modes of speech, conservative with- holdings, independence in outlook and thought thrift, and, in sum, an originality that is fast smoothing out to a level of complete sameness under the speedy and inclusive contacts of the present. Hardly too much of recognition and encouragement can be given these con- servators of our American past. The old shore ways of New England and the secluded life of the Southern mountains, these are among the clear treasures of American literature. Along the New Jersey shore Barnegat has made home fer fishermen and their families since the settlers came this way. American stock of the straightest. Pioneer character as it was at the outset. Ways of life but little changed. Rough folks, hard some say. Nar- row, maybe, but deeply human, without flour- ishes to speech or behavior. A good discovery, Barnegat, for those of us who, somehow, re- spond instantly to that early America hidden here and there in undisturbed sameness. Mr. Richardson in this book of “Ways” shows plain- ly the whole-hearted quality of his own response to these fishermen and the hamlets of Barnegat. There is no pretense here. No reach for a new coat of “local color.” Instead, “Uncle Charlie Broad,” himself, steps out to have a word or two with the reader about the doing up Barne- gat way, about the fishing and the sea, the hunting along the low shore, about talks at the grocery of nights—oh, about the whole sum of life on Barnegat. *“Green Goose” is a de- licious yarn of the outlander who came a-hunt- ing that way. “The Singer of the Sedges” is a bit of hand-wovern poetry, its warp and woof the sedges and the intense and interesting life that these invite and support. The whole is a joy, a freshening joy, with wind and salt afr, and thundering sea ever at hand, ever in the heart of him, reading. RABBI BURNS. By Aben Kandel, author of “Vaudeville,” etc. New York: Covici-Friede, publishers. HE Jew in modern life has not been over- fortunate in his chréniclers—historian, poet, novelist. These divide, broadly, into two classes. One, engaged in epic lamentations over the lost glory of a great race through Gentile perse- cution and injustice. The other, of humorous and satirical bent, making use of the more un- fortunate part of Jewish life for purposes of caricature and comedy. Both points of view, both modes of consideration, give incomplete, inadequate pictures of the Jew as an element in modern life. Nor does Aben Kandel in “Rabbi Burns” wholly escape the disadvantage of such bias. The book is a satire, a mild one, however. Better than most, does it present, by way of the good rabbi, a Jewish community greatly excited over the project of erecting a vast temple within their town. Well. build- ing churches has been a thriving industry in every form of religion. So, here it takes on the familiar zeal, the sometimes questionable meas- ures and methods that are so likely to mark the height of every civic enterprise. The point, however, is that this activity runs true to form, to the Israelitish form of promotion and achievement. Cleverly projected, this racial brand of getting things done. Amusing, since it is not designedly bitter in its iromy. The rabbi is a paragon of zeal, ingenuity and success in raising money for the “million-dol- lar temple.” The wet blanket of all this fren- zied ardor is another Jew, Adam Krasoff, ready to point disparities between the high spiritual- ity of the project and the stark materialism of method employed to bring it to fruition. The theme itself is a commonplace of social endeavor. Its treatment holds with any set of people under the drive of collective purpose. Its high point rises out of the racial traits that inevitably come out in this spiritual revival of the Jewish community. Clearly perceptive is the writer, adroit in character shadiogs, amusing i stresses here and there, but, hap- pily, not carried away with the desire to make grotesque that which is merely racially differ- ent, as the Gentile himself is also racially pe- culiar, from where the Jew stands. PEACOCK'S FEATHER. By George S. Hell- man. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Com- pany. VERY old matter, thi e, as you see from the names. King Croesns, Aesop the fable maker, and a beautiful lady. ¥Yet, here is the prime story substance of every age. The same adventure walks the open today and will be on parade also tomorrow. A king. His beautiful paramour. A wise and ugly adviser to the king. Croesus, the lovely Delarai, Aescp. The vanity of the woman, the possessiveness of the king, the sagacity of Aesop, open in warning, invulnerable, seem- ingly, to the witchery ef Delarai. The basic material ¢ounted here is so per- sistent as the foundaticn of human nature that the author’s chief concern is to hold the old incident to the proprieties of its time and setting and, at the same time, to make clear the perennial quality cf notive and action as these dominate man in this age, in every age. And this I think Mr. Hellman has done in an exceptional manner. Certainly, one reading, partakes of the rcyal externals of the court of old Croesus. Certainly he realizes that Delarai and Aesop are silently engaged in a warfare of their own. Reading, one accepts the earlier day in its historic trappings, con- ceding to the author a competent and artistic seizure of the setting that he has chosen, of the characters that he has engaged. But, at the same time, he is keenly conscious that this is the drama cf embodied human attributes. Male possessiveness, vanity in woman. The power of wisdom and sagacity in deep con- cerns, no matter how ugly or unimpressive the holder of such wisdom may be. To keep thes ancient flavors and yet to project the living, and current, quality of the basic element of this new Aescp fable was the business of Mr. Hellman. A business that he has turned out with intelligence and intuition, with a certain grip on the true value of history as foundation for current drama itself. THE MAN FROM SING SING. By E. Phillips ‘Oppenheim. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. HE mere way of the story is no longer mat- ter of concern to Mr. Oppenheim. He, without doubt, cou'd unwind during sound sleep another of the facile inventions by which he is so well known. The business of this writer is to strike a new line of misdoing, & new order of malefactor. But crime is so very old that its varieties are seemingly exhausted. Criminals are of such Icng standing as to have become wearyingly unoriginal. But a popular writer cannot give up. The public must have its horrors for their hours of gentle diversion under the lamplight. And so Mr. Oppenheim takes a new twist to his mind and turns upon that fine old topic of betraying a friend. A durable theme that has beén doing business since Bible days and be- fore. To make sure of himself Mr. Oppenheim then lifts the matter to the level of high finanee where immunities from the law are many and various. And so, on the witness stand, Reuben Argels suddenly turns traitor and swears his partner Moran Chambers into Sing Sing for a quite sizable term. A conclusive security for Argels, or so it looks. And so it would have been in reality, even in the lcose actualities of legal procedures as these are made manifest. But, | a novelist is at work here. So the mere laws of man do not count. Chambers escapes. There the story begins. The story of pursuit, of clever devices to circumvent the unfaithful friend in many a financial escapade where the two had so often operated together for the fleecing innumerable innocents. Untiring, clever, suave, Chambers gains that inestimable advantage of getting on the other man's nerves, of creating a first-class Nemesis, one of the sleepless, tire- less sort, Adroit, active, shifting to the reader’s need of revenge after his own Dpatiern. the story ties itself up and up into knots of such intricacy as to make even the facile Mr. Oppen- heim use a& touch of force, artificial in its effect, for the sake of giving climax and finish to a tale of modern crime with finance, friend- ship and lcgal laxity as its foundation. THE WISDOM OF WU MING FU. Edited by Stanwood Cobb, author of “The New Leav- en,” etc. New York: Henry Holt & Co. FEW years ago Stanwood Cobb wrote & stirring book, “The New Leaven.” Edue cation the theme, to which this yeasty, lifting compound was applied as a kind of first aid to sagging areas of cullook and action in the great national scheme of growing human be= ings to definite degrees of efficiency to corre- sponding measures of conteatment and happi- ness. Mr. Cobb is himself a teacher. A school of his own. One that winters in Washington and surmers on the New England Coast. A teacher who, obvicusly, loves his job. You should hear him talk, a minute here and an- other one there, about little children as the most convincing of all actors. And this they, indubitably, are But, as I was saying, “The New Leaven” tock wide hold of progressive school districts, took hold naturally, out of its own youth and viger, out of its own com- municable spirit of sanity and direct help= fulness. An unusual experience for a school teacher came the way of Stanwood Cobb. For several years he taught in Roberts College, Constanti- nople. It must have been there that he came upon the bundle, or budget, of philosophy that the deeply sapient Oriental, Wu Ming Fu, had patterned his own life upon, the same as an= cestors before him had done for jany ages. A man of the West, too, Wu Ming Fu, a student of our ways of thought and action whom Stan= wood Cobb met first in the Library of Cone gress, where started the friendship whose issue is this book, for your use and mine. These are poems, these bits of world wisdom, upon every. topic under the sun, every common and daily topic that faces one so often. “The Eternal Now” is a fine thrust of the spirit, “Rivalry”—well, read it. I needed it. You do, too. But, why spend time in citation here when the book in its beauty and wisdom is at hand. And, by the way, just this kind of reminder is now becoming recognized as most useful. I came upon a volume like this, yet not like it, by Christopher Morely the other day and anoer from London. Il tell you about them later. Right here is the one to have, for it runs the gamut of human ex- perience in its common and familiar appear- ance, and it is within easy reach. Lovely and strong and in step with the moments of every day. Books Recerved COLETTE; THE OTHER ONE. By Colette. Translated from the French by Viola Gerard Farvin. New York: Cosmopolitan Book Cor- poration. WITCHERY ISLE By Ella M. Rea. Meador Publishing Co. THE INSECT MENACE. By L. O. Howard. Illustrated. New York: The Century Co. SKYSCRAPER. By Faith Baldwin, author of “Three Women,” etc. New York: Cosmo- politan Book Corporation. LADY BLANCJE FARM. A romance of the commonplace. By Frances Parkinson Keyes, author of “Queen Anne's Lace,” etc. New York: Horace Liveright. CAT AND FEATHER: A Murder Mystery. By Don Basil. New York: Henry Holt & O#&" SHARON. By Helen Topping Miller. Philae delphia: The Penn Publishing Co. CARDS AND KINGS. By Johannes Tralow. Translated by Whitaker Chambers. New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, Inc, VILLAGE AND OPEN COUNTRY NEIGH=- BORHOODS. By Walter A. Terpenning; Ph. D, professor of sociology, Western State Teachers’ College, Kalamazoo, Mich. Introe duction by Right Hon. Sir Horace Plunketi, K.C, V.C, F. R. S. New York: The Cen« tury Company. THE OLD-TIME SALOON. Not wet—not &Y. Just history. By George Ade. New York, Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, Inc. THE GIRLS WHO DARED. The girlhood stories of five courageous girls as told by themselves. Collected by Helen Ferris. Il» lustrated by Allen McNab. New York: The Macmillan Co. THE THREE OWLS. Contemporary criticismy of children’s books. Written and edited by Anne Carroll Moore. Third book. Boston? EARLY AMERICAN TEXTILES. By Fn.neu‘ Little. Illustrated. New York: The Cen= . By Erdman Harris. New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, Inc, THE HULA HULA. By Amos Tyree. Wash« ington: National Capital Press. VENETIAN LOVER. The romance of Giorgi= one. By A. de Nora. Translated by Whit= aker Chambers. New York: Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, Inc. GOALS. The life of Knute Rockne. Huber William Hurt, Ph. P. mtroducug” by Lowell Thomas. New York: Murray Book Corporation. EDGE OF THE WORLD. By George Brydges Rodney. New York: Duffield & Green. BUY OR RENT NEW BOOKS at WOMRATH’S 1519 F St. N.W. Jane Bartlett, 1347 Conn. Ave. N.W. USED BOOKS at SPECIAL PRICES 29¢ (4§ for $1) R 60¢ (2 for $I1) 3107 14th St. N.W, ‘

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