The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 73

News and Reviews ir mm wdDnuiLm) if hbcdxdiks Edited by Rosamond Milncr DHaoDnaDU)QQn nUBgflnMgMs The significant volte face of a once rabid isolationist HSy IEaflgsiir Maass A historic novel of Spain with the color sweep and richness of Wagnerian music drama JJEARTENING evidence of national unity is apparent in the announcement of a book to be published in April by Duell, Sloan Fearee, "MacArthur On War," by Frank C. Waldrop. Since nobody in his right mind would write anything but a laudatory book about General MacArthur today, it is fair to assume that this is such a one. Apparently Mr. Waldrop speaks with approval not only of the hero of Bataan, but of the General who in the pacifist thirties begged for preparedness and for modernization of the Army.

And yet Mr. Waldrop was, until Pearl Harbor, a leading isolationist columnist for that die-hard isolationist newspaper, the Washington Times Herald, which, until Fcarl Harbor, consistently represented the war of totalitarian aggression in Europe as a kind of W.P.A. project of the President's something pretty silly out of which a lot of political capital was being made. Mr. Waldrop's volte face is highly significant.

culture center, Freedom House, in New York. "Do you think the German citizens believe German propaganda?" Mr. Willkie asked him. Instead of answering directly, Mr. Lania.

told him a story about a tailor who lived in the small Polish town of Cattowitz. This tailor had several competitors in the town and as a result his business wasn't doing very well. He finally hit upon a fine scheme. One by one he approached his competitors and said: "I understand that there is a great need for tailors in Vilna." And one by one his rivals left for Vilna. When they were all gone his wife came home one day to find him packing.

"Where are you going?" she asked. "I am going to Vilna," the little tailor replied. "I understand business is good there." JjsESUMING his role of international forecaster, Maurice Hindus has written "Russia and Japan Must Fight," for publication April 17. His analysis of the Russo-Japanese situation includes a detailed study of Russian fighting methods, particularly of the guerrillas, and how for years Russia has been preparing the population for such warfare. He points out that the Russian fighting technique which has stopped the Germans today is the one which defeated Napoleon.

LLttB. (If inating conflict is that between the imprisoned Atahualpa, last of the Incas, and his captors, the Pizarros and their henchmen. This sorry page of history is related with fine drama and suspense, implicit with the psychology of the oppressed conquering the oppressor, the strength of the weaker overcoming the weakness of the strong. The novel has much of the sweep of Wagnerian music drama, in scope of conception, richness of orchestration and wealth of color. Also like the creations of the master of Bay-reuth, it is unevenly paced, sometimes to the point of tediousness.

This is especially true of the opening chapters before young Pedro invades the New World. From that point on, however, the narrative picks up, adventure accumulates and the story of the inland invasion of the Pizarros, their treachery and moral decay would form a gripping volume of its own. Mr. Maass' grasp of the thought and philosophy of the age, its implicit parallel with some of the trends of modern history produces some exceedingly fine as well as profound writing. JKO LANIA, Austrian refugee author whose autobiography, "Today We Are Brothers," will.be published shortly, was introduced to Wendell Willkie at the opening of the new refugee i'Jia, when.

Mary Louise first met tier soldier. From the jacket of "Welcome Soldier!" by Clark McMeckin. (Appleton-Century). Cn5it5c2iraii HBcIks anna! HBy-PiraIlimcits Our soldiers take over the new Clark McMeckin novel Bjr ROSAMOND M1LNER Mark Van Doren discusses writers and actors, evaluating the work of Elizabeth Madox Roberts DON PEDHO AND THE DEVIL. By Idnr Maass.

Bobbs-Marrill Company. 3. Reviewed by Harry Bloom. "Don Pedro and The Devil" is Actionized history of the era of Spain's declining chivalry and the end of the Incas, told through the person of Don Pedro of Cordova, an impoverished young Spanish nobleman turned conquistador. Of the school of his- torical romance, to which belong guch works as "The Cloister and the Hearth," "The White Company" and some of the Waverley novels, it is impressive for the scope and richness of background, color and detail.

It is informed with vast erudition that has enabled Mr. Maass to people his narrative, without straining the Introductions, with such famed characters as the Pizarros, Cortez, Loyola, de Soto, the Grand Inquisitors and the royal family. The central theme of the work is loss of well-meaning but sometimes irresolute Don Pedro's soul through brutalizing contact with the betrayal and cruel enslavement of the Indians in the New World, the torture of his spirit and its ultimate rebirth, through which his romance comes to a happy conclusion. But the dom A noted writer pictures a story whose truth DAWN BREAKS: By F. C.

Weiskopf. Puell. Sloan Pearce. 291 pp. 92.50.

Reviewed by" Carl E. Zimmerer. President Roosevelt recently aid, "Guerrilla warfare against the Germans, say in Serbia, helps us." The notedjCzech writer, F. C. Weiskopf, amplifies that understatement in "Dawn Breaks," a poignant little book about a "diversionist unit" in the blue hills of eastern Slovakia.

The central figure, Anna, is a brave peasant whose young husband has been mutilated and then put to death by Hitler's Elite Guard. The whole story leads up to the annihilation of a German guard company, explaining in detail how guerrillas transmit messages, obtain arms and plan their uprisings. 6 CO man play "The Land Is Bright," put on here recently to packed audiences at the University Playhouse. (177 pp. $2.) On the fly leaf appear Arthur Clough's lines, quoted last April by Churchill: And not by Eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light.

In front the sun climbs, slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright. Its three acts are laid in 1918, 1922 and October, 1941. The first shows the beginning of the end of the period made glamorous by America's predatory, unscrupulous barons of industry. The particularly murderous one who is founder of the Kincaid clan of the play, is himself shot at the end of Act 1. The second act depicts the demoralized generation of the post-war time in 1922; the third shows the descendants of old Lacey Kincaid occupied with the vision that promises a brighter world.

The play is almost as exciting to read as to see, its situations and characters constantly dramatic in both senses of the word revealing their own significance and breathless in action. Reading modern plays can be a thrilling substitute for the theater. Those who find the play form interfering with such easy visualization as they bring to a Kentuctey Four Loulsvillians were given considerable space in a single issue of the British Weekly last month. The magazine began the publication in full of an address "America At War" by Herbert Agar, editor of The Courier-Jour-naL The British publishers of THK PRIVATE READER. By Mark Van Doren: Henry Holt and Company; 411 $2.73.

Reviewed by Coble. A Van Doren wrote it. That, in itself, is a book review. Ordinarily, anything written by either Mark Van Doren, or his brother, Carl, makes fine reading for those who like to dabble in things called 3rt. "The Private Reader," a collection of Mark Van Doren's articles and criticisms that have appeared in various periodicals, is no exception.

It's about poets, novelists and actors. It criticises the work of Robert Frost, of Walt Whitman, of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, of Harpo Marx, of Charlie Chaplin. It has a little of everything. Some of the criticisms are cutting. Some offer praise.

All have clarity and perception in the Van Doren manner. And, incidentally, the book offers an abstract picture of a critic's mind at work, carefully evaluating what he has read. Mr. Van Doren has much to say of Elizabeth Madox Roberts of Kentucky. Only excerpts can be quoted here: A reader of any novel by Elizabeth Madox Roberts is certain sooner or later to remark the presence of a style.

Her style, say those who do not like it, is more than present; it is obtrusive. But even those who like it very much How good is your memory of the last war? REMEMBER the canteen at th Tenth Street Station, the Dansants at the Hawaiian Gardens, the clothes you wot and the songs you sang? by CLARK 0 i ill have it uppermost in their minds as they proceed, and when they have finished It is the language, or the way of writing, which they are most likely to mention in favor of the artist they have discovered. Going on to speak of "The Time of Man" as having an "individual voice," he says: and it Is this voice which is the most interesting thing about Miss Roberts. It is truly interesting indeed only because it expresses a character in the speaker. There is probably no such thing as a voice which is "beautiful" in Itself; our perception of its beauty is a perception of something human behind it.

So with styles, which are merely tiresome when they do nol reveal a mental or mora! char acter of greater or less distlno tion. The style of Miss Robert is worth discussing because It in itself is a sort of substance It is more than a way of say ing things; it is something said, something which could nri otherwise have been said at alL something, we suspect, whicll could not be said unless it wer said in this way. The criticism of Robert lYoft explains much of that poet' popularity. Though Frost, too, is a genius, he is a "middle-roader." That is, his poems ar such that both the average man and the learned critic can appreciate them, according to Mr. Van Doren.

And for that reason, Mr. Van Doren predicts that Frost's works will be permanent. McMEEKIN I novel will discover a little practice mends this very quickly. LITTLE book called "I Who 1 Should Command All" wa3 published in 1937. Of special interest to Kentucky, it was treated fully in The Courier-Journal at that time.

A record of only 77 pages (Putnam, $1.50) the little book gave to the public papers and letters long kept private in the Audubon family. They proved, certainly to his own satisfaction and In the belief of many of his descendants, that John James Audubon was the Lost Dauphin of France. His great-granddaugh ter-in-law, Alice Jaynes Tyler, who edits the book, sets up no such claim. She gives the very fascinating evidence and lets it rest. "I Who Should Command All" went out of print very shortly after its first appearance.

If the territory covered by our review copy from Michigan to Louisiana and points between is any criterion there was a much larger demand for it than its retirement indicates. It started countless discussions. It brought close home an episode of history that has continued to live in the imagination and heart of the civilized world. There will be a great many people glad, to know they can get this book now. It convinced us.

What dull wit could happily miss the chance to believe such a gorgeous probability? Writers Alice Hegan Rice presented an appreciation of her books and herself, closing with a poem by her husband, Cale Young Rice. And the editor of the journal reviewed a new book, "Along the Highway of Prayer," by Ella Broadus Robertson. a moment any sense of shock or of implausibility. "Miss Betony" is quiet, and the horror is that of understatement, but it is well worth reading. Ilural Murder MURDER R.F.D.: Bv Herman Petersen.

316 pp. Duell, Sloan and Pearce. $2. Reviewed by Ed Edstront. A prize bull gores a man to death In a community of gentlemen farmers and escapes.

The prosecutor says it's murder but Old Doc Miller, who also doubles as the coroner, isn't sure. While he is pondering clews, another member of the community is shot through the head. The bull, being locked up at the time, has an alibi. Who did it? (Pardon dunnit.) Another murder a strangling clears the air for Doc and he deducts who the murderer is. Doc arrives just in time to prevent the bull from adding another homicide to his record, which would have made him practically a have made him practically a homicide bull squad.

A soundly plotted characters, this one is for those who like their detective tales on the sedate side. JUIE new Clark-McMeekin novel has a name to suit the times, "Welcome Soldier!" (335 pp. Appleton-Century Its heroine is Mary Louise Foster of Louisville's River Road, a foolish, clumsy but very lovable, good woman who was a foolish, clumsy but very lovable good girl in 1918. It was then, when Louisville was making much of the soldiers at Camp Knox, she met young Andrew Bennett from Albany, New York. Later, when he has gone across and is reported missing, believed to be dead, she lets her friends think they had been engaged, wears a large diamond and accepts condolences.

In 1941 he turns up again at Fort Knox, a colonel now, a widower with a young son, Lieutenant Drew Bennett. It is a pleasant, well written story, touching the war only on its social side, and will be especially interesting to Louisville for its photographic reproduction of manners, people and things as they were in 1918 and largely continue to be now in the particular aspect chosen by the authors. And in a measure Louisville is only the part that stands for a whole. Periods and societies follow one pattern throughout a country. The younger generation figures too.

An exotic note is the girl, beautiful Jett Seiboldt, daughter of a Loyalist American newspaper man killed in Spain and a Spanish cabaret dancer who walked out on her family. A newspaper friend of her father brings the ten-year-old child to America and now, grown up, she has a job at Charleston." Young Bennett and his father both find her irresistible, but she elects to fraternize with the colonel's snubbed orderly chauffeur a gesture that loses something when the orderly emerges as a millionaire Yale man. The tale has a happy, wholesome ending for Lou and her colonel. Its balancing of past and present is an excellent piece of construction and the quality of its writing makes quick and easy reading. pEOPLE who like to read plays will be glad to know that Doubleday-Doran has published the Edna Ferber, George S.

Kauf- terest rates, that it was almost out of necessity that Paddy and his friends founded the co-op. They me furious opposition, and Paddy himself was once even put in jaiL But the co-op grew lrom its 5 start to an organization doing over 100,000 of business a year, with its hosiery factory giving employment to local girls, with its own ships carrying goods from England, Scotland and Holland, in fact with the biggest business in all its small piece of countryside. Mr. Gallagher is an artless writer who says, "I enjoyed every word I wrote whether I was giggling to myself or blubbering as I wrote it. guerrilla warfare in is great propaganda Weiskopf knows his people well, and each character in his book is sharply etched.

His plot is insignificant, and deliberately so. What he sets out to do is to picture the emotional reactions to Nazi cruelty in the occupied countries by showing the reader what one isolated village does to even the score a little bit. He accomplishes this without resorting to hysteria or preaching. Anna and Karel and Ivan and Jan have a job to do and they do it. Never does the story become cluttered up with moralizing or ranting.

It is so completely objective that you forget you are reading the most powerful kind of propaganda the truth. pushing from below, all this Is In a fair way to be remedied; the country peopl are now comparatively prosperous, and, judging by Paddy, extremely upstanding. Paddy was one of the pushers from below. He was the son of the poorest sort of people. He was.

never able to get beyond the second grade and at an early age he had to nire himself out as a laborer. It was in Scotland as a miner that he first met the co-ops but, largely with the money he saved in that institution he was able to buy a farm back in Ireland. There he was so much at the mercy of the gombeens, shopkeepers who charged high prices and high in TJhurfiMleirs Th ree for assorted tastes From the jacket of "Welcome Soldier!" The soldier is a colonel now and Mary Lou meets him again. Inn CMimity BDomegall The pioneer co-operative store of Ireland becomes big business REPLY PAID: By H. F.

Heard. The Vanguard Press. 274 pp. $2. Reviewed by Molly Clowes.

If you remember the irasoihle Mr. Silchester and the exasperating Mr. Mycroft of "A Taste For Honey," you may, or may not, be delighted to know that they return to delect a transatlantic murder in "Reply raid." The two elderly gentlemen are not everybody's choice it is true, but they are building up a small but devoted following on the strength of better-than-average plots and a delightful kind of pedanticism which must be intentionally reminiscent of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. That Mr.

Heard's elderly sage has been given the name of Mr. Mycroft can hardly be accidental, although only the most enthusiastic of Holmes addicts may be expected to remember the name of Sherlock's shadowy and brilliant brother. FEAR AND MISS BETONY: By Dorothy Bowers. 273 pp. The Crime Club, $2.

Miss Bowers writes well and plots carefully. And "Fear and Miss Betony" is a superb example of her two gifts. This quiet, sensible and elderly spinster, Miss Betony, Is projected so gradually into the horror which is to surround her that there is never for ADDY THE COPE: By Patrick Gal-lafche-. Introduction by Dorothy Can-field Fisher. 28ft pp.

Devin-Adair. $2.50. Reviewed by Prhcilla Robertson. Patrick Gallagher took his nickname, Paddy the Cope, from the co-operative store which he organizes, in County Donegal on the northwest coast of Ireland. Ireland has had so many of the same problems as our own South that it might be given to us as a sort of textbook.

Irish peasants suffered from worn-out lands, single crops, absentee landlords and the vicious system of tenantry; and they had no vote and were commonly considered to be so shiftless they wouldn't know what do with it if they had. But by the combination of good iand laws and some steady Author of SHOW ME A LAND You'll find this barbed and witty novel as fascinating as a long-lost photograph album. A picture of soldiers and the Louisville social set, it tells what happened when a woman'6 double-deception during the last war backfired into this one. Flooding the memory with forgotten, almost nostalgic detail, the narrative mirrors the same gang you chased around with when we thought we were "making the world safe for democracy." $2.50 APPLETON-CENTURY t..