Oakland Tribune from Oakland, California • Page 18

1 r- 1 mmmmmm to' Service a. 1 1 I BOOK REVIEWS AND LIBRARY JSIOTES Ediied by GEORGE WHARTON JAMES -i SUNDAY MORNING, APRIL7, 1918. SIX OF TH YE ARTS NOTABLE BOQKS 5 WRITTEN BY CALIFORNIA WOMEN take a European tour as a salve to GERTRUDE ATHERTON and ELEANOR GATES their wounded ee'ings. I should like to see "Apron-Strings" Waged, and doubtless xin- the near future this wish may be gratified, as "The White Moaning" "Apron Strings" "Treasure and Trouble Therewith" "The River" 'Nobody? Chitd" "The Firefly of France" it is whispered that Miss Gates" dra matic managers are arranging for its production. The book already; hef had several printings.

Strings," by Eleanor Gates: Xewl York, Sully Kleinteach, is rather a remarkable fact Geraldine. Bonner bohJc in this remarkable 0 -sfj that six of the notable books of the year are written by California women. First in interest. because it deals with the Gertrude Atherion's "The The fifth year's production is by Geraldine Bcnner; war. i3 jenuine Californian, at least in spitl nit, and one who has done uter sketch in The how, to make California much, as a CXE will known to ihe it is, my mind, by fai lir the best, of several books.

In plot, description and char acter drawihg it. is her fineit work. few writers have equaled her de great power and tremendous dramatic instinct by this, her latest, book. White Morning," by Gertrude Atherton: Xew York, Frederick A. Stokes Company, $1.) Gates El eanor White Morning-." This is a remarkable book and claims attention for its several unusual features.

It depicts the supposed pfVrthrow of the Hohenzoliern dynasty and the establishment of republic in its place, and the whole thins is the work of German women. This is the startling and apparently impossible feature of the book. But when questioned as to possibility of such a thing. Mra. Atherton puts up an excellent defense.

I She knows German women intimately; has visited in Munich for seven years, living there months at a time and coming in. close contact, both in their homes and in society, with representative men and women. Of the intelligence and loving devo-votion of these women she knows of whaj she speaks, and also of the seething ferment of revolt that is now at work within their hearts. Granted these premises, it is not too much to imagine the revolution she has so graphically depicted. She quotes from A.

Curtis Roth's, articles in the Saturday Evening Postand Heirkoett-gen's in the New York Chronicle, both ot which in effect state "unequivocally that it is among the possibilities that the women of Germany, driven to desperation by suffering and privation, and disillusion, would arise suddenly and overthrow the dynasty." Anyhow, the book as fiction is a splendid piece of realistic work, seizing and holding ones attention from first page to last and fairly sweeping the reader along with the intensely dramatic action of its plot Its characters are real and drawn with masterly power. Gisela, a slowly-developing, strong-minded, many-sided, daring individual, who is the dominating personality; her three sisters, father, mother and friends. We are introduced to the mental operations of the military caste of Germany and given illuminating visions of their egotism' and masculine self-sufficiency, and the climax comes when the women of Germany, secretly led and guided by Gisela, arise and take possession of the reins of government throughout the empire. The kaiser is compelled to abdicate, the soldiers axe ready enough to cease fighting when their military leaders are shown to be "shapes of clay" exploiting the people for their own selfish aggrandisement, and not only is the war brought to a close, but Germany; is a republic, not in name only, but in the flowering spirit of the democracy of its workingmen and women. Whether the course of events proves Gertrude Atherton a prophet or not, she certainly will lose of her well-earned reputation as a writer of 'J scriptions of the tule marshes, the sun-scorched plaius-pf Central California, the ree-clad foothills and the peculiar conditions of the mining camps.

Many of her scenic pictures are worthy to take place! side by side' with the finest things Brefllarte ever wrote. The story opens with a stage Jobbery, by no means a rare thing in the early days. The two bandits get away with $12,000 in gold, which they secrete in the heart of the tule marshes, where one would think it secure until doomsday. But it Is the unforeseen hat happens, tramp, a adventurer superior mental attainments, but whose education had but heightened jhia lack of principle, suffering a stfeak of UI luck, appears the day foi owing, and, as goddess would havC it, a youngster ho knew the hidden hunter I trails across the marshes, guided the adventurer far enough to put him near to the treasure, which his observant eye s.oon led him to discover, He gets away with it and Establishes hinist'f in San Francisco as a man of wvalth and leisure, i Two daughters of one of the; old pioneers, who have plenty of money, soon be-' come the object of his attentions, one of whom 1 determines to many, -while at th same time he plays with Pancha, the naive idol of the old Tivoli (disguised, however, under the name Albion Opera House). No doubt many readers-who, know the facts will see in Pancha 'some i likeness to Tetrazzini, in this story Miss Bonner dramatically connects her dancer and singer with the chief of the two original stage robbers, by making her his daughter.

The adventurer treats "Pancha with lightness and contumely and arouses' in her a desire for vengeances She discovers his intentions tiftvards the wealthy, girl who by this time Is so In his! toils that she is about to elope with plm. Of course, a warning is sent to the older sister, and just at' the critical time when the younger girl has ttaited to elope, tut has not yet left San Francisco, the comes and changes the status of af as the fqotlights require, rather than the fuller and more smoothly-flowing descriptions and rhetoric of the narrative. Sue Milo is a beautiful character, vividly pictured for us, and even though she is a mature woman of 4 5 when we meet her, she is under the thumbs of a selfish love-vampire of a mother, who demands obedience, devotion and self-abnegation Under the guise of duty. How often have I seen just this kind of thing, and how monstrous it all Is. Sue should have married young and had at, least half dozen children, tor she is a natural mother, with the great yearning heart of love reaching out to nurture and protect the needy and tin- helpless.

Instead of that, she is ministering to the 'm-ny wants, artificial 'and luxurious, of her heartless mother, and feeding her own starved nature by mothering the children of a nearby orphan asylum. Sue ha.i a brother, Wallace, who is to marry a "pampered daughter of the rich. It turns out, however, that he has "sowed his wild oats" In the pasture belongfng to his intimate friend, trie rector of the church, whose wife he had wronged. The wife had fled, and now, ten years latcV, as fate would have it, she comes as the paid solist to sing at Wallace's wedding. The rector, during, all these years, has beeii in ignorance as to the real cause of his wife's flight, but he now learns the secret.

This exposed, the wedding is blocked and the plot develops rapidly. Susan awakes to her mother's dire selfishness, breaks loose from the trammels that have so long confined her; the rector takes the rich man's daughter as his bride, and Wallace' and his mother, with the rich man's wife, Of an entirely different character, yet, strange to say, embodying the same spirit of revolt on the part of women, is Eleanor Gates' 'Apron Strings." This is not revolt' alone from man's economic domination, but from the tyranny of a false conception of duty. How many daughters are there in the world, who, with a falso conception of duty to their parents, have been "tied to their mother's apron strings" and compelled to give up all that individual lives hold dear. Such parents, influenced by self-love, trade upon the self-sacrificing virtues of their daughters and hold them in a slavery as Cruel as ever was the negro slavery of the South. And the lash is none the.

less wicked and monstrous In that It is administered to tits sensitive nerves and muscles gf loving hearts in he form of accusations that the slave "has ceased to love her rnother," is "forgetful of the love and duty she owes to the mother that bore her," etc. Since Eleanor Gates, has been so successful in her plays, "The Poor Little Rich Girl" and others, it; seems naatural and instinctive to lier to. write with the stage In view. At least I feel this in reading tApron Strings." It is more a play than a novel. The scenes are ready to be staged, the dialogues and action such fairs.

The wl ealthlest are made home- less, the villain is killed a falling house where he has gone to wreak his vengear.j:e-on Pancha before he (Continued on Page 20).