Evening Star Newspaper, January 25, 1942, Page 62

Economist Sees Modern World in Age of Fable Former Membeér of Reichstag, Now U. 8. Citizen, Defends Democratic Government By Mary-Carter Roberts. This Age of Fable By Gustav Stolper. Reynal & Hitchcock, New York. Occasionally there is a book by an economist which makes sense to an ordinary person. To this rare species belongs the present work by Dr. Stolper, noted German editor and writer, who fled his country on Hitler's accession to power and has since taken on American citizenship. Dr. Stolper is a former lberal member of the Reichstag, wes Berlin correspondent of the London Economist and, during the first World War, head of the Imperial Austrian General Commissariat for War Economy. ‘With so imposing a record behind him, he ought to be dull as ditchwater @s a writer, but the cheerful fact is that he not only should be read, but can be. ‘Without attempting to be bright or popular he still is entertaining, for the theme of his book is so unorthodox as to be refreshing. We live, he says, in an age of economic fable; we fill our thoughts and conversation with economic catchwords which have only fabulous meanings, and pass our days in awe of fabulous economic monsters which have no existence. He has set out to expose such vulgar errors. “The fables embraced by our age,” he says, “are equally shared by the so-called best people, by the leaders of science, business, finance, art and literature. Not all believe in the same fables. Not all people are tooledfll;xyl all fables all the time, but everybody is fooled by some fables at some time.” Capitalism Fights Against Imperfection. ‘He taken up then the “fable” that holds that capitalism is chaotic and that a “planned” socialistic state is inevitably orderly. Up to the present day, he says flatly, the capitalist democracy is the only kind of govern- ment which has ever worked on a plan, whereas the dictatorships (the Socialist states) are invariably marked by definite hostility toward plan- ning. They talk plan, as he duly notes, but what they mean by the word 1s to freeze all activity at a given point. The capitalistic society, however, 1s always branching out in new plans for growth, and so its people have hope. It has never eliminated imperfection, to be sure, but it constantly strives to that end and its sins can be laid to simple human fallibility, for which, of course, there is no escape this side of Paradise. Contrariwise, the totalitarian state, aiming to hold all endeavor at a fixed point, substi- tuting militarism for progress, destroys its people’s hope and initiative alike. The present genius of Germany’s war machine, Dr. Stolper ob- werves, has derived from men who grew up before the Nazi dictatorship came into power. Within another generation, he feels, the stultifying influence of National Socialism will be apparent, AnotHer “fable” which comes in for Dr. Stolper’s attack is the pop- ular notion that capitalism “produces for profit” and is therefore evil, while Socialism “produces for use” and is therefore good. Capitalism does produce for profit, says the doctor, but the evil motive does not fol- low. His thought is that profit is the only motive apart from terror which is sufficiently strong to make mankind produce at all. As he puts it, a “society built on and dependent on the voluntary co-operation of its mem- bers has to rely on a motive or a combination of motives strong enough, compelling enough and common enough to make the system work.” ¢ * * “The alternative to the profit motive is not ‘use’; the alternative is dic- tatorship and terror.” This is reminiscent of the conclusion reached by Max Eastman in his final revulsion from collectivism. He, too, noted the alternative and observed that a socialistic state was inevitably & dictator- ship, and not a land of greater freedom than has heretofore been achieved, as its advocates would have their followers believe. Ascendancy of Nationalism Causes Wars. ‘The “fable” of the “have and have-not” nations is another popular one which Dr. Stolper summarily disposes of. The basis of this notion, he says, is that strong nations seize markets and raw materials, leaving weaker powers with no such advantages, and that, as a result, most wars come from economic rivalries. “History,” he says, “proves exactly the op- posite of what this fable tells us: Not a single major war in the last 150 years—the capitalist age—had its origin in economic causes or was waged for economic interests.” And then, after reviewing the wars which were waged in that period, he states: “* * * All European wars, without any exception, had one cause and origin, only one: The ascendancy of na- tionalism as the determinant force of history.” Another “fable” which annoys this authority is that of British “de- generacy”. He holds that, in the period between the two World Wars Britain quietly made enormous progress in modernization and internal consolidation. “Criticism abroad ran in exactly the same ruts as if noth- ing at all had happened,” he remarks, “and Hitler's informants seemed to find comfort and reassurance in the lore.” But the facts are all to the contrary, at least in his interpretation. Likewise, he attacks the “fable” of British imperialism, that of the gold standard, of inflation, of the al- leged inefficiency of democracies and the awesome opposite of the dic- tatorships. These ideas are all unable to meet the test of facts, in his opinion. Thy derive from propaganda, fears, hopes, jealousies and ha- treds, and thrive by repetition. His arguments are well brought off, and his book has an astringent commonsense quality Which refreshes the cliche-weary soul. Nayar By Miguel Angel Menendez. Translated from the Spanish by Angel Flores. Farrar & Rinehart, New York. This is the second novel to be published of those submitted in the Latin American Prize Novel Contest held last year under auspices of the Division of Intellectual Co-operation of the Pan American<Union. The winner of the contest, issued a few weeks ago, was “Broad and Alien Is the World,” by Ciro Alegria, a Cilean. It was a study of the Indians of Peru. The present work received honorable mention. Its author is a Mexican, and its subject is the life and customs of extremely backward Indians of the jungleS of Nayarit. - 1t is easy to believe that the book was a beautiful piece of writing in its original Spanish. But its plot is frail and disconnected, its characters undeveloped. It seems to have rested on beauty of language alone to make its case, and beauty of language is, of course, the first dye to wash out in the translation process. What remains of this work is pathetically weak. und unsatisfactory. 4 The very slight story is organized about the flight of two friends from their home-village, where one of them, Ramon, has been forced to commit & crime. Ramon is a half-breed, and the friend who flees with him, and who tells the story, is a white man. The pair plunge into the jungle and wander about among the Indian tribes, trying different occupations in order to keep alive, as salt-making, hunting and begging. Finally, they are accepted by a small Indian community whose chief they have aided in a fight with white soldiers. They witness Indian ceremonies and learn the routine of the tribal life. Hard times come on the group when civil war breaks out between the anti-clerical government forces and the Christian population; -the Indians, being pagan, are indifferent and only want to keep out of trouble. ‘They hide in caves, and, in the meantime, the floods wash out their crops. When the war dies down, the tribe emerges, ruined, and turns on an innocent member as a scapegoat. They are in process of murdering this unfortunate when Ramon interferes and is killed for his pains. ‘The book ends in misery and despair, with the chieftain in jail and the tribe broken and starving. Yet, with all this tale of suffering, the author never creates reality. No character in the tale is more than a colorless shadow, and no event has more substance than the flickering of & shadow play. Guatama the Enlightened By John Masefield. The Macmillan Co., New York. ‘This is a book of four fairly long poems. The first, which gives the volume its title, is a soliloquy in which Guatama explains his renunclation of the world. The second is a highly personal poem in which Mr. Masefield puts down the delights of shopping in Oxford and tells us what he likes to buy and in what stores. The third is a ballad on the theme of the rescue of an Indian princess from would-be murderers by her lover. And the fourth is another soliloquy, this time by a little London artist's model, who describes her life after her working day is done—its pleasures and its hopes. None of the four are eventful verse. All follow simple forms and ex- press simple thoughts. But there is a benignity about them which is alto- gether pleasant. Arms and the Aftermath By Perrin Stryker. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston. This book was written before America actively entered the war, and #0 some of its statements are now out of date. But it is a recommended work, just the same, for those who want a picture of the production part of the defense effort. It goes into the problems which have risen through the sudden speeding up of the arms industry—the problems of plant expansion, tooling up, design freezing, subcontracting and the like’ These are matters which, to most people, are mysterious. The tax- payers who foot the bills are, in general, quite ignorant of the things for ‘which they are paying and incapable of knowing with certainty whether the needed processes are being carried out efficiently or wastefully. Mr. Stryker does not attempt to answer this latter question. He limits himself to describing the scope of the industrial problem and to advising his readers as to what points are most likely to give difficulty. The failure of the Government to acquire stocks of certain strategic materials, the inability of engineers to agree on designs, the technical objections SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. GUSTAV STOLPER, “This Age of Fable.” GILBERT FRANKAU, “Air Ministry—Room 28" (Compiled from information obtained in Washington by The Star and in New York, Boston, Chicago and San Francisco by the North American Newspaper Alliance.) FICTION. The Keys of the Kingdom, by A. J. Cronin (Little, Brown), The Sun Is My Undoing, by Marguerite Steen (Viking). Wild Is the River, by Louis Bromfield (Harper). Saratoga Trunk, by Ferber (Doubleday, Doran). NON-FICTION. Secret History of the Amer- ican Revolution, by Carl Van E. Davies (Simon & Schuster). Inside Latin America, by John Gunther (Harper). Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech (Harper). Tapiola’s Brave Regiment By Robert Nathan. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Tapiola, the little Yorkshire ter- rler who lives in Mrs. Peppet’s apartment in New York and who engaged Mr. Nathan's sttention in an earlier book, had a bad dream. He thought the world was overrun by aurochs. His friends told him next morning that he had simply eaten too much supper. He knew, however, that his dream was & portent. Bad times, he felt, were coming; the freedom of the land was endangered. So Tapiola, who “was no larger than a small spring chicken” and wore a ribbon in his curls, set about to do his duty in freedom’s defense. He raised & regiment and went forth to meet the foe and give it battle to the death. This regiment consisted of his friend Richard, the canary, who lived in the apartment under Tapiola’s; Henry the pigeon, who lived on north buttress of St. Pat- rick’s Cathedral; Jeremiah, an aged rat, and Micah, who was Jeremiah's grandson. It eventually acquired, too, a camp follower by the name of Amy, who was a mouse. The brave band went forth into Central Park and took up its stand behind the museum to await the foe. When the lions roared and the seals barked over in the zoo the defenders knew that the enemy was near and were terrified of sounds so large and ferocious. But they did not flee. They were re- solved to die for freedom. Then one day an advance patrol, consisting of Henry and Micah, en- countered a Money bear who had gotten out of his cage. At once they recognized freedom’s enemy aand rushed to the attack. And by the time reinforcements, con- sisting of Jeremiah and Tapiola, had come up, the battle was over. The honey bear had wandered off; Micah had a mortal wound. They buried him with military honors and Tapiola stated sorrowfully, “We have lost the flower of our youth,” to which Richard replied, “with an exasperated expression, ‘What else did you expect?’” After that Tapiola’s brave regi- ment disbanded and went home, for the war was over. But none of the survivors could see that any- thing had been changed in any way. It is as nice a little satire on the folly of wars—and all human pre- tence—as anybody would want to find. And when Mr. Nathan writes a book which does not make this hardened reviewer cry, it will be something that /has never hap- pened yet. .-C. R. Howard Pro In November, 1866, the Missionary Society of the First Congregational Church of Washington decided to establish a school for the thousands of freedmen pouring into the Capital from the South after the Civil War. But on May 1, 1867, Howard Univer- sity opened classes in its normal school with four white girls—as an experiment in cosmopolitan educa- tion. It is the birth and growth of this to turning out airplanes on the assembly line system, the pitfalls in the way of the manufacturer who gets a Government contract, the dis- abilities which bar many small businessmen from receiving such con- tracts—these are the points which he studies. He feels that, in many ways, the mistakes of World War I are likely to be repeated. He warns that great privations are involved for the cammon people of the country— this before we actually entered the war. As to the eventual effect on our American system of life, he contents himself with quoting A. R. Glancy, chief of the O. P. M's Ordnance Production Division: “There is talk that a certain group is fighting two battles, the war and for further so-called social gains and concentration of “political power—that labor is fighting two battles, the war and for further union gains. Probably so, and I say more power to them. But industry— capitalism—the American way—or whatever you may call your manner ©of life—should also be fighting two battles, the war and for the preserva- tion of free enterprise for free men.” Mr. Stryker then comments: “In this description of a three-cornered struggle between the New Deal, labor and business, Mr, Glancy summed up the defense program as thousands of see it.” [ .9 president tution which he helped to found, that are chronicled by Prof. Dyson in the more than 500 pages of his history. In tremendous detail, he pictures the development of the uni- versity. as the “capstone of Negro His book is intended congressional approval of the stitution’s charter next March 2. He is the university's professor of his- note on the failure t in cosmopolitan C., JANUARY ROBERT ST. JOHN, ¢ “From the Land of the Silent People.” By Jean K. White, Readers’ Adviser, Public Library. No phase of the history of this country has afforded more mdterial for the writer, or has had greater influence on the development of our literature, than the American fron- tier and the life which it produced. This was true from the beginning of settlement, but it was not until the early 19th century that the creation of a national literature which could be called wholly American was be- gun. James Fenimore Cooper recog- nized the adventurous excitement inherent in the settling of a great new land and used it in the first at- tempt at an American epic, the Leatherstocking Tales, the best of which, “The Last of the Mohicans,” is laid in Northern New York and Canada, and centess around an In- dian’s thirst for revenge on the British. ‘Washington Irving’s “Astoria” and “The Adventures of Capt. Bonne- ville” are episodes in the Western fur trade which present excellent pictures of the empire builder and his aides, the trapper and the trader. In the “Oregon Trail,” Francis Parkman, the most distinguished of the story of the overland trek with its accompaniment of Indian fights, encounters with wild animals, buf- falo hunts and other incidents. A different type. of pioneering, a contact with spiritual frontiers, is evidenced in the writings of the Transcendentalists and given physi- cal manifestation by Henry David | Thoreau in his withdrawal to Wal- den Pond, to lead the simple life which he describes in “Walden.” ‘With the discovery of gold in Cali- | fornia. a new phase of frontier history |appeared and was later celebrated American literary historians, tells | Books on Frontier Life Are Listed by Library by Bret Harte in his stories of the mining camps, the best known of which, “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” gives the title to a volume including “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” “Ten- nessee’s Partner” and other tales. ‘Then the mining frontier retreated to Nevada with the silver rush of the 60s, and the many-sided life of the plains—the pony express, out- law gangs, gamblers and fortune seekers—has been re-created by Mark Twain in his “Roughing It.” ‘Walt Whitman “Leaves of Grass,” although first published before the Civil War, was reissued in a much enlarged edition in 1871, and well typifies the spirit of a united and expanding country. Its vigorous verse, with its abounding faith in the future of America, has been de- scribed as “a vast carol of our own land,” and is a spiritual embodiment of the individualism and the self- confidence of the pioneer. In our own day, the frontier still offers material for literature of vari- ous types. Hamlin Garland, in his “Son of the Middle Border,” tells of a boyhood in the West, of constant | moves, of hardships and failures caused by the lack of free land. Carl Sandburg’s “Abraham Lincoln: the Prairie Years,” is a beautifully writ- ten account of the early life of the great President, whose life and character reveal strongly the influ- ence of his simple, hardy back- ground. Edna Ferber has used Oklahoma during the land rush as the setting for her novel “Cimarron,” and Willa Cather in “O, Pioneers” and “My Antonia,” pictures the results of the disappearance of free land, the pio- neer spirit still e through untold hardships to make the best of what is at hand. All these books may be found at the Public Library, Eighth and K streets N.-W., and in its branches. By Land and Sea Va. Intimate Virginia: A Century of Maury Travels Edited by Anne Fontaine Maury. The Dietz Press, Richmond, ‘The Maury family is a large and distinguished one in Virginia. This * is an informal, entertaining collection of letters and diaries of some of its members covering, approximately, the century from 1790 to 1890. ‘The size of the family would make it impossible for all its branches to be represented, so the book centers largely around James Maury, who was born in 1746 and was United States‘consul at Liverpool for 40 years. He attended a school conducted by his father in Albemarle County, and fellow pupils were Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and James Monroe. His friendships with these and other noted Virginians of his day con- | tinued throughout his life James Maury had four sons and, what is more important to future historians, a daughter, Ann, who carefully preserved all the family papers. Her descriptions of the Grand Tour in Europe and her visits to this country are notably good commentaries on the manners and society of the pre-Civil War era. She was the great-great aunt of the editor of this book, Anne Fontaine Maury, who lives near Charlottesville. Ann’s four brothers traveled as brokers and salesmen, covering the entire Atlantic Seaboard from New York southward. Their letters give a superficial picture of young gentlemen of fashion in the middle of the Victorian century, but they do not have the perception and punch of their spinster sister’s. Mrs. Maury has appended a casual family tree which is impressive but bewildering to her unknowing readers, due to the great similarity in names in different branches of the clan. There is quite a collection, for instance, of gentlemen named Matthew Fontaine Maury. The Path- finder of the Seas, according to this outsider's interpretation of the family tree, was a nephew of the Liverpool consul's and thus a first cousin of Ann and her traveling brothers. EDWIN TRIBBLE. From Relief to Social Security By Grace Abbott. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Grace Abbott was chief of the Children’s Bureau when the depression began in 1929—the only trained social worker then heading an important Federal agency. Her job gave her an opportunity to see the worst effects of unemployment, and, in frequent appearances before congressional com- mittees, to recommend methods of easing the problem. This collection of her papers, edited by her sister, Edith Abbott, dean of the school of social service administration of the University of Chicago, outlines the development of the broad field of social security in the de- pression years. C.B.F. Howard University—The Capstone of Negro Education By Walter Dyson. Howard University Graduate School, Wash- ington. only one-half of 1 per cent of its student body and but 9 per cent of the faculty white. Prof. Dyson has tackled his task a compilation. Much of his book is & reproduction of source mate- ridl—some of it from the files of The Star—and it is copiously indexed. He supplies the connecting links. As an example of his thoroughness, he has included the names of every dean, every president, every trustee, and even’every faculty member the university from its founding he is bound to have an opinion. In dealing with controversial subjects, :%nnwmwmflwmtm les. large number of scholars who, though trained far above the Negro masses, do not appreciate suffi- as a research problem and produced | tion. The facing the university is the welding of these scholars into an efficieny tunities for Negro youth nearer their homes. Three of the finest inclusions, in the opinion of the reviewer, are the 25, 1942. JOHN MASEFIELD, “Gautaoma the Enlightened.” FANNIE HURST, “Lonely Parade.” MYSTERIES. Murder, Chop Chop, by James Norman (Morrow)—Murder of an American cowboy against a back- ground of the Sino-Japanese war, with incidental Mexican bandits and wandering high-caste British ladies. Sounds crazy, but it's a very good story just the same. The Voodoo Goat, by Audrey Gaines (Cromwell)—Murder in rural Virginia complicated by witchcraft and voodoo horrors. Not so thrilling as it sounds. Air Ministry—Room 28, by Gilbert Frankau (Dutton)—Murder in war- stricken London, taking off high officials. The solution is made by & handsome flight squadron leader. Not very satisfactory. WAR BOOKS. Conversation in London, between Stephen Laird and Walter Graebner (Morrow)—A dialogue between the London and the Berlin correspond- ents of Time Magazine, designed to contrast the conditions in Germany and England. Very interesting. It describes a German people without hatred of the English, very short of food, with their industrial pro- duction®not at all affected by Brit- ish bombings, short on cigarettes | and soap and often compelled to work seven days a week —but still not doubting. The picture is fa- vorable to England, but discounts some of the optimism which some writers have expressed. * Seven for Cordelia, by Catherine Macdonald MacLean (Macmillan)— Story of seven children evacuated from the siums of Edinburgh to a Scottish estate. Charming. Your Career in Defense, by Shelby Cullom Davis (Harper)—A survey of the job possibilities in the defense program and how to go about get- ting a defense position. Informative. Lonely Parade By Fanny Hurst. Bros., New York. In this novel Miss Hurst under- takes to present a study of Amer- ican women in the eariy years of the century, when womankind was emerging from Victorian “femin- inity” into a somewhat more normal humanity. It was the period when the phrase “bachelor girl” was new and endowed with interesting am- biguity. Miss Hurst takes for her demonstration three women—a theatrical producer, an interior dec- orator and a social worker—who set up a home together in New York and, through the charm of their establishment and the strength of their personalities, become a fa- mous Manhattan institution. What she tells us of the inside of their lives, however, is that, though ma- terially successful, these three women consider themselves failures because they live without love. To the best of the reviewer’s un- derstanding, the novel resolves itself into two disconnected parts. There is a great plethora of physical scene- setting of 'a violent and grotesque sort, and there is a minimum of weepy story. The three heroines are shown alternately as charming, fas- cinating and congquering the world’s most hard-boiled city by their intelligence, great-heartedness and glamor, and then as taking down their hair in their boudoirs and lamenting the absence of ro- mance from their lives. In the read- er's mind, the question naturally comes up as to why, if they felt that way, they did not do something about it, but to this Miss Hurst offers only the reply that no man ever cared for them. They were too bril- lant, in her interoretation. Men, she estimates, care only for the stupid. M.-C. R. Harper & fessor Writes of- University’s Development Johnson is the incumbent president, the first Negro to hold that post. of Howard University BOOKS. Dakar Is Subject of Fine Study by Emil Lengyel Encyclopedic Volume Contains Invaluable Information on . Strategic African Port Dakar—Outpost of Two Hemispheres By Emil Lengyel. Random House, New York. Dakar, the French naral base on the exireme west coast of Africa, has received so much attention, both as a potential jumping off place for a German attack on the Americas and as a possible landing place for an American expeditionary force to Africa, that just such a compre- hensive—in fact, encyclopedic—work as this is quite timely. Mr. Lengvel, noted correspondent and author, sums up the strategic importance of this metropolis of black Africa in the following words: “Dakar is the spearhead of the Old World info the Atlantic Ocean. She is a bridge made by nature for a modern conqueror with designs on the Western Hemaisphere. She is vital to us as a bulwark of our own national defense, as well as the defense of the entire Western Hemisphere.” Behind this epitome of Dakar’s place in a world at war lies much more than appears on its face. First of all, there is the geographical strategic element. Dakar is only 1,620 sea miles from South America— five hours by bomber, Mr. Lengyel points out, and closer to the Western Hemisphere than either Iceland, which the United States has occupied, or Hawall, which is a fortified possession of this country. Harbor Can Accommodate Largest Batfleship, Its position at the western tip of the African bulge is strategic, too, inasmuch as it gives its possessor command of the Atlantic sea lanes— lanes which Britain must use for maritime contact with South America, from which she is drawing supplies, and with the Orient, from Suez to Singapore, which she is striving to defend against Axis assault. Even for the United States, these lanes are important. Over them go our lease-lend supplies to the Near East, our traffic with the east coast of South America; and, in the event the Panama Canal is ever closed by enemy attack, our fleet will have to use this route, around the Horn, for passage between the Atlantic and Pacific. This is the significance of Dakar, whose harbor can accommodate the largest battleships afloat, and from which enemy planes, submarines and surface ships can operate into the bottleneck between Africa and South America. Dakar is a pawn in the game the Vichy French are playing with the Germans; it is a prize which the regime of Marshal Petain is holding out to the Nazis as the reward for favorable treatment. French history there is long, going back to 1677, when the nearby island of Goree was occupied. Dakar changed hands several times between the British, who were snapping up choice points of vantage for their new empire, and the Dutch, who, with the French, were in competition with them. Dakar did not begin to take on the aspect of an important African port until 1880s, 30 years after Louis-Leon-Caesar Faldherbe, the creator of French West Africa, became governor of Senegal. It assumed importance in World War I as the port of debarkation for thousands of Senegalese troops whom the French shipped to Europe to battle the Germans. After the fall of France in 1940, it came to the fore again when the British and Free French shelled it. The cue for Dakar to assume its fullest role in this war has not yet been given. The American Government continues to maneuver at Vichy to keep the Petain regime from full collaboration with the Nazis. That effort appears to be approaching futility. When it is clear that we can do no more good at Vichy, and an open break occurs between the United States and the Petain administration, prompt Allied action to remove the menace of Dakar may be expected. Until that time, Dakar remains in the hands of Vichy, which is a thin veil for actual German occupation. Equally to be looked for as the signal for Dakar to become a theater of war action is the completion of the Trans-Saharan Railway. A chapter on this project is one of the present volume’s chief contributions to public understanding of Dakar’s strategic importance. Nazis Will Have Direct Route to Spearhead. ‘The idea of a trans-Saharan railway, even in peacetime, is a fertile subject for speculation; but, at this point in the war, it assumes posi- tively gigantic proportions. The true significance of the Trans-Saharan, in spite of Vichy’s window-dressing, is that it will by-pass Gibraltar and permit the transportation of troops and war equipment direct from Germany to Dakar by way of France, the Mediterranean, French North Africa and the Sahara Desert. The Germans, if they retain their hold on the French, will not have to run the perils of Gibraltar to get to Dakar. They will have a direct route to this spearhead into the Atlantic. | The circumstances of the railway’s construction arouse the gravest suspicions of Axis inspiration. For years, ever since the inception of the plan in 1879, the project was thwarted, first by what appear to be valid objections to such an undertaking, later by general opposition to the French steel trust, which was believed to be behind the scheme. It was not until France was under the Nazi heel, in March, 1941, to be exact—that Marshal Petain authorized 5,000,000,000 francs for the work. When the line will be completed is uncertain. It is supposed to take | three years, which would be sometime in 1944, but a temporary railway— the Decauville—may-be ready in a few months. Says Mr. Lengyel: “Prance really did not need it. * * * The Trans-Saharan would have been merely a luxury for her. But for the Germans it is a necessity. ‘That is why the Trans-Saharan is such an important factor in the world today.” Mr. Lengyel’s work is the first comprehensive book devoted entirely to Dakar to be published. The general reader will find much of interest in the background of the history, economic and social structure of the port and the hinterland which it serves. As a reference volume when Dakar comes fully into the news, it will be invaluable. CRESTON B. MULLINS. From the Land of the Silent People By Robert St. John. Doubleday, Doran, New York. Mr. St. John's vividly written story of what he saw and heard as the Nazi divisions swept down over Yugoslavia and Greece is not always pleasant reading. The brief Balkan campaign was not a pleasant war. St. John, now an N. B. C. commentator from London, was the Asso- ciated Press correspondent in Belgrade when the war came. He saw what happened to the Yugoslav capital that bloody Sunday the Nazi bombers struck without warning. His experiences in the next four weeks, as he and three companions—Leigh White of C. B. S, Russell Hill of the New York Herald-Tribune and Terence Atherton of the London Daily Mail— tried to reach a point from which they could send a story, is one of the epics of journalism. What he saw on that trip by auto through Yugoslavia, and then by boat and train through Greece, left with him a series of unforgettable pictures of what modern war is. He recalls the man he saw lylng on a sidewalk in Greece, with a hole through his skull and both hands blown off, screaming because he couldn't reach into his pocket to get a drachma to buy aspirin tablets to stop the funny feeling inside his head . . . And the sickening smell that permeated all Corinth the day the Stukas dive-bombed a hospital train and cremated wounded soldiers in 20 or 30 cars . . . And the sound those other Greek soldiers' made when the Messer- schmitt came alongside their train and pumped death from machine guns into every car, nnql their screams for an hour after the planes went away, as they hid in trees and crouched behind rocks . . . The Yugoslavs never had a chance. Their planes were destroyed on the ground, their ox cart-supplied armies cut to pieces by the German mechanized forces. The British and American help on which they had depended never came. Skoplje had fallen, cutting the road to Greece, when St. John reached Sarajevo after a hazardous auto trip just in time to see the Easter Sunday bombing of the mountain city. The government already had fled when the four newsmen, none of them sailors, set out down the Adriatic in a 20-foot sardine boat. Greece, too, was lost by the time they reached Corfu, and the Brit- ish were trying to salvage what they could of the pitiably small force of some 40,000 men—mostly Australians and New Zealanders—they had sent to stem the German advance. But the four managed to get to Patras, then Corinth, where they had to leave White, badly wounded when Ger- man planes strafed a train. St. John, also wounded, and his two companions got to Crete on the destroyer Havoc, last British ship to leave Greece. They were still ahead of the Germans, but not of the bombers. And, finally, they reached Cairo, where they could put a story on the wires—but not the whole story of how two divisions of empire troops, standing alone as their Greek allies fled, were cut to pieces for lack of air support, and then slaughtered by Nazi planes in an evacuation far more costly than Dunkerque. “From the Land of the Silent People” is a great adventure story by a man who remembers too much for his own peace of mind. But it is even more important as a picture of what happens to the little, unimportant people when war sweeps over their country and the bombers bring terror and death. And from any angle it is as fine & job of reporting as has been done in World War II. C. BELMONT FARIES. It has so.wOmn-ordsm\od\cu-‘t same price, and the single alphabetical as- rangement of all terms makes.it easiest 10 wse. DICTIONARY © 140,000 terms A convenient, easily-handled volume, 6% x 9% 2,500 illusteations inches, for home, offics, schoel, colloge, and o 1,343 pages Nbrary wse. $3.50, at il beok steres. © Always up to date Have you voer owned a REAL dictionary? Ave., New York \