WESTERN ROUNDABOUT
OF these five books about five countries, only one is written simply from the traveller's viewpoint, omitting political and
social aspects. This is Mr. Brian Lunn's, which is an admirable contribution to the Harrap Travel Book series. For some reason or other, Belgium comes in for a deal of snobbery ; the small traveller, questioned about his knowledge of Abroad, will in nine cases out of ten reply in a manner unspeakably shifty, " Oh, I've only got to Belgium." Why " only " ? Mr. Lunn has done loving justice to the ancient world of richness, peace and savagery compressed into this small country. He devotes his first section to Bruges, that show-place so completely indifferent to its visitors that its dignity has remained inviolable. Like most of the Belgian cities, it has a bloody legend ; the Grand Place, like all the open markets, has seen tremendous slaughters and tremendous torturings. Ministers of State were thrust from the belfry on a rope's end ; the men of Ghent made systematic raids with a view to capturing the relic of the Holy Blood and thereby transferring both prestige and pilgrim trade to their own city ; Maximilian imposed upon the burghers a trust in perpetuity for the maintenance of the swans, in memory of the day when they forced him, as a lesson in wiser states- craft, to witness the racking of his long-necked favourite, Lanchals. In Antwerp in Bieughel's day, anyone at a loose end could stroll along to the square outside the Vierschaar and " have a look at malef actors and Catholics or heretics being blown out with water, racked, flayed, singed, or merely scourged." Mr. Lunn writes so well about Flemish painting that I wish the book held more of his appreciation. There are some good reproductions from Breughel, Bosch and other painters, and some enticing and nostalgic photographs.
My France, the sixteenth in Jarrolds' My Country series, is a defence of France as gallant as it is unnecessary. If there are those who in all gravity postulate the theory that she is " an outworn nation content to live on her reserves," then I am certainly not of their number, and I welcome warmly M. Roland Alix's charming and sometimes rather chuck'eheaded attack upon them. M. Mix, in a section called " The Formation of France's Destiny," traces her history in an audaciously sketchy manner, praising higgledy- piggledy such diverse persons as Louis XI, Montesquieu, Joan of Arc and the prefixed Monsieur Thiers. For the latter, indeed, he is an apologist of breathtaking naiveté. On " The Present State of France," the author is more con- vincing. His book is well-documented with necessary figures and statistics and is appended by a heart-warming " Balance- Sheet of the Industrial Era in the World and in France in 1938." M. Alix writes from a curious standpoint ; if he must be labelled, it should be neither as Reactionary nor Progressive, but rather as Stationary. France he regards as the intellectual Greenwich of Europe, and he expects that the civilisation of the western world will eventually set its clock to her time. He has collected for illustration some superb photographs. One is particularly noticeable for the startling use of a shop-sign as the basis of a triangular composition. All Francophiles will be moved to affection by this book, whether they prefer M. Alix as lively rattle or as serious politico.
Only a foolishly superficial glance into Countryman's Eng- land would condemn the book as a piece of gracious hey- nonny-nonny. It is, in fact, an engaging and extremely cunning incitement to village holidays ; engaging because it is written with rare freshness, and cunning because it steers clear of the folksy guide-book tradition that has driven so many patriotic people into taking their holidays abroad. Mr. John Moore presents, not a recognisable map of England, but an England that is recognisable. He wanders cheerfully through field and village, giving no more concise indication of his whereabouts than that he is at Bloody Field, Parson's Piece or Betty's Bottom. He leaves few aspects of rural life untouched ; it is all there, the village shop where you can buy anything from a piece of Cheddar to a clinical thermometer, the village-green, where matches are fought with all the savagery of a Far East "incident," the squire who wants to marry off his labourer's betrayed daughter to the lover with whom she would be miserable for ever after, and the lady who tortures the nice and normal young men of her village into folk-dancing and performing on pan-pipes in the church hall. Of this latter, a Miss Timms, Mr. Moore has much to say, and to her he addresses himself roundly : . . . " It's no use regretting the passing of Merrie England or trying to revive it. You can't be Merrie when you're dead." By this he does not mean that rural England is less lovely today than yesterday ; he means that it is pure tomfoolery to expect her to remain bogged in the past while the proud cities rise into the future.
Neither Miss Cicely Hamilton's solid book on Sweden nor Miss Agnes Rothery's lyric book on Norway offer great entice- ment to the stranger ; most probably because a first glance in neither case reveals photographs of more than average interest. Photographs, which are the life of a travel book, should be of the kind that make the heart long to step within them. I do not know Norway or Sweden and, because I hate the cold, have always felt that I should be happy with neither ; but I found Miss Rothery's propaganda, on the whole, more suc- cessful. Miss Hamilton has dealt in an admirably thorough fashion with most aspects of political and social life in Sweden. One of her most interesting chapters deals with the tortuous laws governing the sale of drink. The people of Sweden, due to the cold and damp of the northern climate, have a bad tale of intemperance behind them, though it certainly does not seem to have impaired their health or their physical beauty. Now the controlling hand is down, and they are permitted only a statutory allowance of alcohol per day, a woman being permitted only half the amount doled out to a man.
Miss Rothery's swift and buoyant style tends to carry the reader too easily over the sections in her book that deserve fairly close study. One of these is the chapter on Norwegian literature, in which much sound criticism is concealed in a froth of words. It was a pleasure to find mention of Amalie Skram, whom Miss Rothery calls the mother of the present generation of Norwegian novelists. The work of Fru Skram seems practically unknown in England ; the only translation I have ever been able to obtain was the astounding and paralysing Doctor Hieronimus. To her survey, Miss Rothery appends two comprehensive pages of " Salient Facts and Statistics."
PAMELA HANSFORD JOHNSON.
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