TEMPEST OVER MEXICO By Rosa E. Sing
Tempest Over Mexico (Methuen, 10s. 6d.) is the true story of an Englishwoman's adventures during the Mexican revolution of 1911. Mrs. King was the prosperous owner of a hotel in Cuernavaca, when one of Mexico's worst revolutions broke out, which.turned the town into a shambles. It was the Indians against the landowners, and Mrs King felt a great deal of sympathy for the cause of the natives, which seems to have survived the treatment she received at their hands. Her genuine understanding of the problems involved adds con- siderably to the value of her book, which is always dramatic and moving. For six years there was intermittent fighting in and near Cuernavaca, but her home, her livelihood and her children were there, and she stayed on. Eventually the town was besieged, and.when starvation faced the population she was forced to flee with the rest—some eight thousand— and underwent the horrors of a journey through the mountainsi. almost without food, and continually harassed by rebel guns. Starvation and bullets accounted for six thousand of the marchers, the survivors at last reaching-a place of comparative safety. Mrs. King's narrowest' escape was when a pack-mule fell on her and injured her so badly that she would have fallen into the hands of the rebels had not a Mexican officer taken her with him on his horse. Later she returned to her hotel, to find it in ruins, and the-rebels in possession. The passage; of nearly thirty years has-perhapa softened the -bitterness she must have felt. It hasolso enabled her to get the• events into perspective, and write a balanced and lucid narrative,
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