Daily News from New York, New York • 199

SUNDAY NEWS, MAY 6, 1934 IB CD CD IK Bv ALICIA PATTERSON. ft He Draws His Own Ludwig Worships Nine More Heroes. NINE ETCHED FROM LIFE, by Emil Ludwig (McBride. 383 pages. THE dean of biographers, otherwise known as Emil Ludwig, adds nine more names to his expansive list.

This time he uses the modern European stage for his operations. "Nine Etched From Life" consists of nine portraits of present-day European statesmen who "helped their countries nut of chaos for Dlunsred them further in if you prefer). ft The author's analysis of these nine men is not particularly profound he falls back on generalities, and the generalities are with few exceptions consistently flattering: Nansen was "the man of energy who gives help," MasaryK is "a ngure 01 Goethian stature," Mussolini the "man "of ardent energy," Clemenceau was "a lover of humanity," Stalin is "a protector," etc. Herr Ludwig is a great believer in fale. He traces the success of these men back to some supernatural force that conveniently removes their obstacles at the proper time.

He says to Mr. Stalin. "Is it not merely an accident that you were Tiot killed and that some one else is not in your place today?" I think Mr. Stalin must have gotten his back up at that one for he answers, "No accident, Herr Ludwig, no accident 1 do not believe in fate. That is simply a prejudice.

It is a nonsensical ideal." The book is divided into two parts the first nart. entitled "Servants of the Emil Ludwig nun huntf arouna hkb nog. Jim Saladine hears of this and seductive wife over whom one man had been slain, and decides to see her for himself, lie goes to the valley and meets lluldy, the hussy. He sees In die from a murderous pitch off a cliff, and he sees her killing; avenged by her latest lovei. A well written book with characters that live, will be hailed with Williams fans.

Walker this vcii(in: huzza hs by Ih'mui. tationtl vents am You. I WITHIN A YEAR, by Faith Bald, win (Farrar and Kinehart, 310 panes. TO those admirers of Faith Rald- win and ir number is legion this collection of four novelettes will come as manna in the desert of light fiction. Each story deals with an important national event in the year from March, to March, 1 it 1 beginning with th bank holiday and ending with repeal, and describes its effect upon a group of ordinary person.

Of the four "Bank Holiday" is the best, with "Happy New Year" a close second. The stories are written with wit and understanding, and that certain shrewd, insight into human nature for which the author in noted. And in only one novelette, "Friday to Monday" has she been compelled to resort to the aititieial means of the story teller to keep the action moving. Thomas Dickson. Meaty TaU FIVE SILVER DAUGHTERS, by Louis Golding.

(Farrar Rinehart, $2.50) 513 paces. CAM SILVER, a gentle foul, lived in an English slum. He had a job as a maker of waterproof garments, five fascinating daughters and a generous heart. Every Saturday night the junior anarchists of the neighborhood gathered in his kitchen to drink his tea, admire his daughters nriil air their views. Then Sam won a lottery prize, bought a small factory of his own and acquired a go-getter son-in-law.

War came and with it huge contracts for the makers of waterproof garments. The anarchist left Sam's kitchen and, almost against his will, he was whirled up to the high places of finance. In the end, however, we find him back where he started in the same kitchen in the same Mum and again merely a working man. This novel by the author of "Magnolia Street" is, like fine wine, full-bodied and contains the essence of laughter and tears. From beginning to end it is crammed with vivid characters and episodes and while following the destinies of Sam and his daughters we get a wide panorama of modern history Europe at war, eon.mim-ism coming 1o Russia, Hitltiisni in Germany.

If you like fiction with meat in it you can't go wronn on this book. Clarence Woodbury, A Sensitive Spirit. THE DREAMER, by Julian Green, (Harper, pages. IT is probably a thorn in the ide of the Immortals of the French Academy that one of the finest their country's younger writers ia an American. But he's American only by accident of parentage.

In every other respect he's as French as Proust, his literary godfather. This study of a weak, sick yountf man, ruled by a tyrannical aun( and a and equally tyrannical employer, is as pensitiv and moving as it is convincing, Green takes the reader into th3 world which the-young man ha built within himself to escape the tortured flesh and the scourged spirit. But it, too, is a painful und tortured world. And in the fever ish attempt to escape, the worlds of reality and imagination interchange and merge, and pain und desire are common to lioth. Eugene Lent-htm an.

husband's door "the (especially if you like good gossip attractively interspersed through your serious chapters) the ayes have it. Hiding Genius I nder A Bushel of Anonymity. MARIA PA LUNA, by Blair Nile? (Longmans-Green. 334 pages. TPHE gods be praised for the old saw that you can't judge a book by its cover or title.

And if ever a publisher ought to be taken into the woodshed, Mrs. Niles' book is a case in point. Into a "palooka-conscious" world the makers of this tome have thrust one of the finest of truly American stories under an inscrutable title. TJie fly-leaf claim is that "Maiia Paluna" does for the Quiche Indians of Guatemala what "Good Earth" does for China. With all respect for Mrs.

Pearl Buck and China Maria Paluna is in a class by itself. In a beautifully simple narrative, Mrs. Niles, author of "Devil's Island," pictures the life span of an Indian girl during the Cortez invasion. For seventy-eight years Spaniards slaughtered thousands of Indians to teach that human sacrifice is unchristian. The bewilderment of the Indians, throujrh slaughter and slavery to freedom and peace, is woven into a gorgeous tapestry of historic fact plus fiction.

How an Indian girl learns of love in the arms of a Spanish conquistador how she turns again to her people how she cherishes children of both loves can be told only by an author with a penetrating knowledge (social and ethnological) of her subject. Mrs. Niles gives us a tale as replete with legend as Herodotus as beautiful as the Ramona story and a lot closer to home than China. Jack Hoins. The Writing Marine.

SALT WINDS AND GOBI DC ST. by Capt. John W. Thomason Jr. (Scribner's, 326 pages.

CAPT. THOMASON of "Fix Bay-net" fame has the eye of a reporter, the heart of a Marine, no inconsiderable ptrt of a fiction ist's mind and the quick hand of a skilled draftsman of sketches. So, in this newest collection of his yarns we have much color in the black-and-white of type and pen. Most of the tales are about the Far East a swift character outline of a missionary's daughter, the love story of a Marine at a Legation post and a French instructress of art, the turbulent life of a passionate Mongol princess. Occasionally the Captain skips to Nicaragua, to Chateau Thierry or to the fireroom of German battleship.

Thomason's twin passions are for anecdote and personality and he is good at presenting each except, occasionally, when he gets himself all wound up in a piece His talents as artist and author are combined by Capt. John W. Thomason in his latest collection of short stories, "Salt Winds and Gobi Dust," reviewed on this page. Here is one of his illustrations for "Woman's Reason," an epi' sode in the Americana' Saint Mi-hiel drive during the World War. BEST SELLERS FICTION Journey to the End of the Night, by L.

F. Celine (Little, Brown). Seven Gothic Tales, by Isak Dinesen (Smith Haas). Tender Is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (Scribner's).

James Shore's Daughter, by Stephen Vincent Benet Double-day-Doran). Thank You, Jeeves, by P. G. Wodehouse (Little, Brown). NON-FICTION Nijinsky, by Romola Nijinsky (Simon Schuster).

Merchants of Death, by II. C. Englebrecht F. C. Hanighen (Dodd-Mead).

On Our Way, by Franklin D. Roosevelt (John Day). While Rome Burns, by Alex 8 mler Woollcott (Viking). The New Dealers, by The Unofficial Observer (Simon fc Schuster). of prose and makes it over-mel-lifuous.

His many illustrations are a keen visualization of the types and details he likes to write about. John Chapman. A ivid Folk Tale. JONAH'S GOL'RD VINE, by Zora -Neale uri ton (Lippincott, 316 pages. THE newly revived interest in American folk literature has brought us many stories of the colored people.

When written by whites, the tales have too often been marred with weird exaggerations and superficial attempts at the primitive. Some of the colored authors, on the other hand, have put their index fingers in their mouths and gone self-conscious on us. Not so Zora Neale Hurston, a young colored woman, born and reared in Florida. Her first novel is searching study of her own people. Abounding in earthy figures of speech, it is the saga of John Buddy, the youth with the muscled body of his dark mother and the bright skin and soft black hair of his white father.

Tired of living on the wrong side of the creek, he crosses the stream and enters a new world. Good clothes, shoes, school, dances follow and love. John Buddy enters upon a spectacular career as philanderer and ordained preacher, and the story comes to a tragic climax when the ancient Drum of Death, "Ogodoe," chants for him: "He wuz ah man and nobody knowed him but God." Ben Gross. Backwoods Siren. HOSTILE VALLEY, by Ben Ames Williams (Dutton).

256 pages. DEEP in Maine was Hostile Valley, from which came tales of a hussy about whose farmer- People," includes Nansen, Masaryk, Briand, Rathenau and Motta. The second' half, called "Rulers of the People," takes in Stalin, Lloyd George, Mussolini and Venizelos. The author brings a personal touch to his character sketches. He has met all the nine titans involved.

It is a good touch. It gives his book an intimacy that lifts it out of the category of straight biography. By far the best portrait is that of Rathenau, the great German statesman. Ludwig seems to have understood the mystic, fatalistic quality of that tragic figure more than the bluntness of a Mussolini or a Stalin. It is the storv of a man who was an intense patriot, but who was also a Jew in Junker Germany.

It tells how this man fought his whole life for the ideal of peace and freedom, and how he reaped a harvest of calumny and disgrace. Ten years after his death Hitler ordered the memorial sign over his grave removed. The names of his murderers have been inscribed in the Fatherland's roll of honor. But excepting the chapter on Rathenau, the level of Nine Etched From Life" is below par. It does not compare, for instance, with the author's magnificent biography of Napoleon.

We Are ill Bewildered Except Russia. THIS BEWILDERED WORLD, by Frazier.Hunt (Stokes. 363 pages. MR. HUNT has, in the argot of the streets, "cut himself quite a piece of cake." His main thesis is that there are today strange forces and new ideas at work in a restless, weary and bewildered world that these forces have their origin in Russia and are affecting in greater or less degree our entire civilization.

He attempts, therefore, an appraisal of the existing cosmic situation in four distinct parts, i. "The Bewildered Billion" (being roughly Asia, India, Turkey. Siam, "Bewildered Europe" (being Italy, Germany, France and England), "Unbewildered Russia," and lastly, "Bewildered America." The reader must not, however, become too easily discouraged at the vast expanse of territory which the author has set out to cover. Mr. Hunt is first, last and always a reporter, and his style is the easy, fluid and very readable style of the trained journalist.

You will find in these pages no obtuse discussions of political science or world economics. Nor will you find a searching analysis of the roots and basis of the communistic system. But rather the impressions of a world traveler who sees events, men and ideas through the eyes of a newspaper man and a humanist, anxious to convince himself and others that there is in process a "New Rhythm" for the entire world and a new order of things which will be based upon a new doctrine of human rights as distinguished from the old doctrine of political rights. He may not convince you, but his book is certainly entitled to the benefit of a trial. The author seems to feel that the ideas and doctrines of Russia are being disseminated throughout the Orient and are surely and inevitably having an effect.

His specifications, however, are a little vague. He leaves the impression that he is very excited about something, but he doesn't know what, or why. And also in the second section, dealing with Europe, there is little to stir the imagination. It is stale news. But in the parts dealing with Russia and America the author is on firmer ground.

He does not, as I have intimated, attempt a careful political dissection of the Soviet system. But he finds in Russia a new hope and a new life a country seething with plans, pencils and brief cases, in which, as he says, at least 75 per cent, of the people are behind the revolution. He believes the Soviets know where they are going. The discussion is fresh and compelling and you will find that this section holds interest and gives food for thought. If you believe in and like the New Deal, you will like Mr.

Hunt's treatment of the America of today. He sees us, to be sure, as bewildered and speaks of the failure of the past; but he sees the doctrine of human rights sweeping the country, giving a hope to the present and a possibility that we may be the promised land of the future. He believe that America hat learned to dream again and that a properly regimented society controlling surplus production in both industry and agriculture may put ten million unemployed back to tvork and keep them there permanently conquering the evils of the Machine Age. The scope of the book is undoubtedly pretentious, but it is written throughout on a high note of idealism and courage, and on the whole.