Some Books of the Week
TIM chill sub-Polar world where his work lies must have seemed a far cry when Sir Wilfrid Grenfell wrote Labrador. Looks at the Orient (Jarrolds, 15s.). Round the world the book takes us, but it has most to say of the East which begins at Egypt and ends with Japan. The opinions of the writer are, as might be expected from the stalwart and earnest character of his work on the Labrador coast, at once robust and enthusiastic. In nationalism he believes, but not much in the frothy kind which makes Egyptian schoolboys, "led by half-baked teachers," march through Cairo streets yelling "we don't want any foreigners." As a doctor he shudders at the religious faith of the Hindu which impels him to drink the waters of sacred Mother Ganges close to the mouth of a drain, and as a confirmed optimist, "who believes that there are jobs that need doing," he has small sympathy with the passivism of the East. But again as an optimist and, moreover, as one who loves his fellow-men, he tells us that "Love is still the greatest thing in the world, and alone can solve the 'mystery of Asia' and dispel its night." What he has to say about present conditions in China is reassuring ; he would have us note that the rebirth of a nation cannot come about without many birth-pangs." Merely as a book of travel Labrador Looks at the Orient is eminently worth reading and still more so as the record of the first-hand impressions of Sir Wilfrid. We must call his attention to a small error : the great Jesuit missionary, whom the Iroquois tortured and then tomahawked to death, was Jogues or Jougues and not (as on p. 286) Jonges. He was a man after the author's own heart, brave, enduring, and full of the purest spirit of Christian love.
* * *
Previous page
