phons axe Arwonmis?"~By Fra Brgy Coal Painers Be eas, In the modern political world 34 woefully' devoid of virile personal ities it is refreshing to find any, olitieian who finds life such a joys ous adventure as Mr, Frank Gray. Whether he is storming a political Gibraltar, or winning a more than usually foolish wager by walking from Banbury to Oxford, or dash" ing across Africa in record time, it is always the game and not tha prize that tempts him, the dust find not the palm, Ie ie the samd with this book of epigrams. "One cannot help feeling how much he must have enjoyed writing it—with what zest he gave birth to "Liberals fare, pre-occupied convincing. Liber ebs"—or "if every man in England had a freehold cottage and a gare den they would all be Conservatives, What a blow for rich' Conservas tives," or "Capital can always buy brains. This is the true problem off Labour."
But the enjoyment of Mr. Frank Gray's book is by no means confine ed to Mr, Frank Gray. He has not, it is true, the glitter of Mr. Guedalla, or the rare and succulent wit of "Mr. Lytton-Strachey, even the cheery "'snappiness" of Lord Dewar, "But there is quality about' these aphorisms that make them, if not epigrams, in. spired common sense. Like all things Mr. Frank Gray does they 48 good as they can be without brilliant, For that reason his book, even though "copyright" iq clearly marked, will be found on all the shelves of after-dinner speakers and those whose Tot it 18 "to saya few words" on any and every topic. Which fact Mr. Franlg Gray will, no doubt, delightedly seize pon to make another gay commonty Lady Dorothy Mills, the first Engs lish woman to reach timbuctoo, has written "Through Liberia," an' ace count, of her last year's' travel ay She is at present holiday-shaking on the Continent, but is already making arrangements for this year's instalment of what she calls her "winters of adventure."
Mr. Somerset Maugham can hard= ly be popular among British settlers in distant corners of the earth. visits these outposts of progress, then writes stories that tell of the tragedies and the degradations those who work in contact coloured people under tropic "ski Thus, in "The Casuarina Tree" he ives us hal -dozen striking stories lof Europeans in Malaya, They are intensely dramatic, all of them. The life out there has been sympathetically observed, and pes campatnnty obered Kipling at his very best—"Befor tion of a woman's murder of her tion," with ith terrible study of the fatal jealously between two white of vanity and cowardice.
'The trouble is thal while thes stories are the fruit @f what im have been sympathetic observation, Mr. Maugham does not allow a di of sympathy in his writing of them, Brilliant indubitably, they have the sardncas of brillianee—"John London's Weekly."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.