Evening Star Newspaper, March 13, 1932, Page 85

THE ARMS ABOVE THE DOOR. By Carlton Bailey Hurst, Consul General of the United States, Retired. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. O have passed out of the pure pro- fessionalism of one’s calling into the rich domain of its best effects, this is the stage at which the profes- sional becomes ready to serve people as a whole. Carlton Bailey Hurst offers a case in point. For years engaged in the foreign service of the United States, at a dozen or more points of residence abroad, Mr. Hurst, now retired, is ready to deliver the true essence of this experience to readers in gcnerg.!‘ This he has done by way of the volume in hand. Here, none of the official business of representing this country abroad. All of that is stowed away in reports, for possible future use. Instead, here are memories, recallings, musings, from which emerge places, people, incidents, estimates. The places, invariably those of which one desires to know, and to know more, particularly under such treatment as they are given here. People, those who are calculated to rouse interest, curiosity. Incidents, those that give body and life to both people and places. Estimates, such as breadth of ex- perience and a keenly appreciative sense of values are bound to produce. Purely personal in outlook, mildly amusing in tone as a rule, easy in its way with worgs, these reminiscences become, in effect, a new sort of travel book for one to whom the human aspect of travel constitutes its chief charm. The Mediterranean countries, other points in Europe, South America, open here in many an intimate and delightful picture by way of Mr. Hurst’s genial accounting of consular service at these points. A vivid writer, one reading goes along. Goes, reluctantly maybe, as to that bullfight in Spain. Yet hardly could one find a more graphic piece of reproduction than that event turns out to be here. And so it is with this full body of reminiscence. It is all imme- diate, personal, picturesque, amusing, delight- ful. Rather an enviable person, this consul general, retired, since he is, both for himself and for the rest of us, the repository of & mine of pleasure that is as engaging as it is useful. A book to take up again and again, much in the mood of that unfailing welcome which meets the highly intelligent and entertaining friend. MEMOIRS OF A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE. General Rafael de Nogales. New York: Harrison Smith, Inc. VENEZUELA WANTS BACK SWORD GIVEN PERSHING Sacred to All South America, Says Gen. Nogales of Gift of President Gomez. By the Associated Press. NEW YORK, February 25.—The sword President Gomez of Venezuela sent Gen. Pershing in 1925, Gen. Rafael de Nogales said yesterday, “was a priceless treasure belonging to the country and sacred to all South America.” He said he had ap- pealed to the State Department to return it to Venezuela. The sword was taken from the National Museum in Caracas, said Gen. de Nogales, who won his title in the Turkish Army in the World War and has engaged from time to time in revolutionary activity in Venezuela. “It is just as i/ President Hoover took George Washingion’s sword from a mu- sewm dnd gave it to somebody,” he added. 11COLDIER OF FORTUNE!” What does it mean and who is he? Why, it means, I take it, something individual and different to every man and woman in whose blood the leap of adventure runs. So, in a sort of preparatory minute, I sit down to make my own “Soldier of Fortune.” Old history lessons contribute “heroes of great wars.” Chivalry offers a shining knight, bent to the succor of beauty in distress. Religion sdvances the crusader upon his errand of holi- mess. Patriotism, the liberator, engrossed in human freedom. Old sea rovers assemble pirate and buccaneer and marauder. All these I gather up in my hand, to blend and knead and mould into a man of the day who might, just possibly, qualify for the role pictured in my mind for him. I discard as untimely the clear solicitation of shining armor and a “capari- soned steed” and a waving banner. I turn deaf ear to the music of clanking saber and silver saddle chains. These, quite out of date. Yet, all told, I’ve in mind and eye a quite pleas- ing soldier of fortune. Only then do I open this book, to meet at the door of it the very straight glance of a quiet-seeming gentleman who, save for sqme slight concession to a military mode of dress, might have been, well, just anybody, caught by the ubiquitous camera of the moment. If this be the true “Soldier of Fortune” I certainly have gone a romancing clear over the moon. I have my doubts—of him, to be sure. One never doubts himself. And so I sit down with Gen. de Nogales by way of his memoirs. And that unassuming picture turned out to be the man himself. In the face, too, of a good right to be at least a bit expansive in the recital of his own adventures in life. For _Rafael de Nogales has been pretty much all ovlr the world. Not in a mere uneasy rov- ing, either. JPor, as both hoy and man, he has been driven, here and there, by that most pestiferous of human possessions, an ideal. Always, wherever men and groups of men were struggling to get out from under, the feet of young Nogales quite automatically carried the whole man up to that point of resistance to- tyranny. Maybe the tyranny was not slways THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 13, 1932 — e ——aaw—a Experience in the Consular Service, but None of the Of fictal Business—Exciting Days With a Soldier of Fortunc—Iiarly Spring Novels. quite real. No matter. If it looked like it, that was enough. Away he went. “I had to pursue life, lest life pursue me,” or in some such words does this man open his philosophy in pawial accounting of the deeds imposed upon him by it. Born on the Andean slopes, the young Rafael early left his Venezuelan birthright—with the ready consent of the government—to go world- faring. Up along the Rio Grande, cattle rust- ling, on to Alaska, gold hunting, back again to fight in Mexico. Adventures in China and Africa. The World War, leading forces in Armenia, directing sieges there—but this is no Homeric “naming of the ships,” so why pile up names to indicate the number and variety of this man’s encounters with life! An ad- venturer? He says “No"—but in the big and thrilling sense of that term, adventurer is exactly what Rafael de Nogales is—just as every one of us would like to be—if only! There is positive joy in listening to this man as he tells about it all. That is the im- pression of the memoirs. Not reading at all, Listening, instead. Sitting at the table, we two, and the voice, quiet, pleasing, tolls off the lists of adventure and achievement as if he were telling the tale of another. Humor, quiet too, plays along with the accounting in observations on life and men—today’s life and today’s men—in an indescribable effect of ripe wisdom and sane thinking. As much as he is high adventurer in many a field of strenuous and daring life, so much is Rafeal de Nogales a great writer. A scholar of discriminating taste. An amazing book. If you want danger, deep and varied—here it is. If you love the hazards of escape, here they are. If you find added joy in writing that measures up to the adven- ture itself, here is your chance to gather it. I'm not being extravagant. Quite the op- posite, I'm being conservative, actually. > AGAINST THE SKY. By Konrad Bercovici, author of “That Royal Lover.” New York: Covici-Friede, Publishers. HE passion of this Rumanian Bercovici for the gypsies, their ways of life and lore, is common property. Readers already know how these landless and houseless tribes have served him, have been served by him, in many a characteristic scene, incident, moving picture. But here is this writer's first full novel on the broad Romany motif. Summer-long wanderings about the Empire State, Winter quarterings in an East Side cel- lar of New York. This, for background, across which moves the love of Loli, daughter of Chief Petru, for the gorgio, young Albert Van Roehm, musician. An outlaw Jove, the deepest curse of Romany tradition and law. A story of doom. Readers generally know, in joy, the vivid and vigorous deliveries of Bercovici upon s theme whereln his keenest dramatic sympe- thies lie. This novel serves to emphasize anew that gift of his in turning words to things silly titles, would go No more than this half-page lesson would up the true economy of the man, his outstand ing sense of drama. Bercovicl spends like a miser. He picks them like an fingering precious gems. He orders precise bodies of advance, to definite fulfillment. Here, none of the long and rambling So busy, indeed, that the whole to-do seems not worth any more of effort. I call Konrad Bercovici a good scholar upon whose attendance many a new writer, many an old one, for that matter, might gain a definite wherewithal of vigorous and vivid creation to serve his own specific purpose and direction of inventive writing. However, after this long walk-away, T come back to say that “Against the Sky,” matic invention alone, suggests the shadow of a rock in a weary land.” THIRTEEN WOMEN. By Tiffany Thayer, author of “Thirteen Men,” etc. Illustrated by David Berger. New York: Claude Ken- dall, Publisher. N purpose, “Thirteen Women” is twin to “Thirteen Men.” That purpose, to follow the startlingly distinct and different reactions of individuals to a single situation. You recall “Thirteen Men.” The 12 sitting by as jury st the trial of an accused man. And from the common impact of rence, the vivid mental excursion of off into lines and scenes having ever to do with the business A of hearing and weighing evidence. You remember the stir made by the Not so much that Tiffany Thayer had up a pretty wonderful theme which had been kicking around for any onc's taking. Not any more that, than the frank, even savage, at- tack made by this young fellow upon man's sacrosanct possession, his own secret mind. And here Tiffany Thayer has gone and done it again. One Swami Yogadachi, astrologer, from Camden, N. J, sent out a circular and with it a letter, to be forwarded to some one else. You know the kind “Strange things to happen,” any failure to send on the letter “unfortunate, to say the least” Ew at one time or another, has had that sort of “round robin.” Everybody has had that touch of apprehension as he tcre the letter up, if he did, and threw it away. Superstition, no more than a grain left, carries that and many another fantastic matter forward. 80, around went the Swami's communica- tion. Immediately, each woman receiving it dug down into her own mess of a mind for the “strange happening,” hidden away there, waiting only for a chance to get into the open. Under the exclusive nurture that such incident is likely to provide, thoughts of sui- cide may grow, or murder, or thievery, or the sin of lust, or any other deposit left deep within one by grandsires of sturdier, more marauding days. This is ths ground upon which Tiffany Thayer works. A seed of sug- gestion sown in widely vagarious fields of blood and other lines of descent. And here, with the women, he is as bare-handed as he was with his men in the earlier tale. A sav- age fellow, a ruffian of the mind, kicking aside layers of decent pretense to reach the real stuff of us buried so deep. A mental study. Clever, adroit, deep-diving. Shocking? Cer- tainly. Nobody likes to see himself, naked to himself and the rest of the world. Moral? Certainly. Be careful to pick your sugges- tions. And flee the Swami of that particular brand. Brilliant as rcadable invention? In- dubitably. LOADS OF LOVE By Anne Parrish, author of “The Perennial Bachzlor,” etc. New York: Harper & Bros. NNE PARRIS.I has the gift of popularity. No largess of heaven, this, of her own good senss instead. lematic attitudes and actions bewilder them. Bo, wise to her day and generation, Anne Parrish steps aside from this field of exclu- slons, to pick up, all roundabout, innumerable aspects of daily life and to hand these to us who wrote Edward had not only one love, but a couple of these, for his complete bewilderment, for his thorough reduction to the nether depths of absurdity, plus misery. Comedy, made of wit and humor. Hardly a drop of bitters in the whole brew. There- fore, the story escapes the puckering tang of rue, so essential to satire as such. Instead, here i an hour of smiling entertainment at the hands of Anne Parrish, waywise to the story, waywise to the human in his lghter errancies from the norm of perfection to which no one arrives, nor desires to arrive. Deservedly a citeq “best seller,” offered to readers of good intelligence in letters, good taste in the way: of the world, clear in their seizure of the comic essence of individual ex- istence. Books Received BEHIND THE BATTLEMENTS. Text by Ger- trude Linnell. Pictures by Helene OCarter. New York: The Macmillan Co. LIFE IN COLLEGE. By Christian Gauss, dean of the college, Princeton University. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. HOW TO CHOOSE VOCATIONS PROM THE HANDS. By William C. Benham. Illus- trated. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. RUSSIA AND THE BRIGAND: A Character Study. By Joseph Deretchin. Boston: The Christopher Publishing House. THE FOUR HORSEMEN'S ONE OVER ONE: Method of Contract Bidding. By David Burnstine. New York: Walter J. Black, Inc. POLITICAL HANDBOOK OF THE WORLD: Parliaments, Parties and Press as of Jan- uary, 1932, Edited by Walter H. Mallory. Published by Harper & Bros. for Coun- cil of Foreign Relations, Inc. THE BACKGROUND OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: Our World Horizons; Ng- tional and International. By Charles Hodges, associate professor of politics, New York University. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. DOES TRADE NEED ANTI-TRUST LAWS? By Alexander Levene of the New York Bar. In collaboration with George Feldman of the Massachusetts Bar. New York: Ray Long and Harrison Smith Ine. EVERYDAY THINGS IN ARCHAIC GREECE. Written and Illustrated by Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell. New York: G. P. Pute nam's Sons. THE DREAM OF FAIR WOMEN. By Henry Williamson, author of “The Pathway,” ete. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. GOD, SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. By Charles David Wyche, M. D. Boston: The Stratford Co. THE MOTHER OF WASHINGTON; And Her Times. Mrs. Roger A. Pryor. THE FAMILY LIFE OF GEOROE WASH- INGTON. Charles Moore. THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON. Paul Leicester Ford. MOUNT VERNON. Paul Wilstach. are you making the most of your life? —Read STANWOOD COBB'S, DISCOVERING the GENIUS “The Good Earth” begins in April Cosmopolitan a novel of war-torn Ching Pearl S. Buck’s new novel of life in China, “Sons,” tells of the slave girl, Pear Blos- som. Itis also the story of Wang the Tiger, in whose career you see the development of a Chinese war lord. Thus the story reveals the spirit of China today as reflected in the war headlines. Begin it in April THE CLASS MAGAZINE WITH MORE (Osinopolitan -