‘Fmtion
Daylight •on -Saturday. Ry.j. B., Priestley. (Heinemann. .9s. 6d.) The Serpent. By Neil M. Gunn. (Faber and Faber. 8s. 6d.) OWestern Wind. ByiHonor Croome. (Christophers. Ss. ed.) THERE is . practically no daylight in :Daylight On .Saturday, for the whole action takes :place inside an aircraft factory, and the contacts of its personnel with the normal world outside its gigantic, arti- ficiaily lighted sheds are conveyed to us only by :reminiscence and
hearsay as we move with the characters from assembly room to con- ference table, and from canteen to clinic. There is the memory of daylight on Saturday, caught in the personal 'longings of all the
workers, and the hope Olso of daylight ahead—but meantime we-are ,enclosed -.within the special atmosphere and anxiety of total war.
The device is technically orderly and its topical symbolism is clear, and not over-stressed. Mr. Priestley has indeed written a -tale
for the times, keeping the :trnediate major problem—defeat of .Fascism—as closely allied as possible to the private foibles, worries and desires of the hardworking, everyday people on whom that defeat depends, and for whom it • must be turned into the fruitful, palpable victory of good over evil. .That last clause is, as we all know, the increasingly anxious and warmhearted pre-occupation of Mr. Priestley. He is passionately concerned'for what we are going to make this war a victory for those industrious, generous, in- coherent millions of citizens who will have .waged and won it. He has turned all his talents over to-their service—and in this novel he seeks to gather -an enormous national epic -and problem into a story- microcosm that may clarify it.
The story is plain, warm, lively, and has plenty of action and feeling ; its cross-section plots and emotions are neatly woven to- gether, and it gives what is probably a very realistic picture of 'modern .factory life. I shall not outline its main theme, as that might make -the book sound defeatist, which certainly is 'not its intention ; but this danger lurks always in too great a tenderness with .self-pity, and 'some readers, while protesting, as they have a right to, that they -stare at the immediate future with profound anxiety—knowing that human nature .has never yet.made any sus- rained, social attempt to live up to what we all know it understands, its own moral law—will insist, no matter what names they may be called, that the answer to -ail the questions of our immeasurably evil day does not lie in bad temper, in self-justification or in self-pity. 'Where the answer does lie—well, "God save us!," as Mr. Priestley's violent hero-victim would say. But then we do know where, for our part of the globe, the answer lies—and it is very like the Confucian answer, and the Aristotelian, when all's said ; in the Ten Commandments and in the Sermon on the Mount. And when we consider that humanity has always at all times, fallen short of its plain instructions—well, of course, we can go on having our preferences -among sinners, but we do not clarify the general social sin by setting up one kind of self-indulgence over another. If we are talking as social reformers, any form of egomania .is a dangerous offence. But if we are: just talking as readers of novels, here is one that will appeal, with its humaneness, its fun, its plain humour and its skill to an enormous number of people who are at present leading lives very like the enclosed war-engrossed, war- engendered lives of the people in the 'Elmdown Aircraft Company.
Mr. Neil ,Gunn gives us in The Serpent a .slow and agreeably reflective study. of an old Highlander, reviewing his whole life on the day on which 'he is to die. This author has the great merit of knowing passionately and imaginatively the beautiful, remote region that he writes of, and many will find a legitimate _and helpful escape from our present weary, ugly time in his evocation of natural beauty, and -in the matured, 'gentle thoughts of :a -detached and sensitive old man, remembering the passions and mistakes of a long life.
0 Western Ward:puts:a brave, -pre-war _gloss on our war world Of separations, griefs and doubts. It is about four young women who take their families to America, and the humours and adven- tures of their life out there, and their relationships to their distant husbands. It is a good-natured, -sentimental book, shallow, off-the-
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