2 JANUARY 1932, Page 34

If we want to read about the conquest of Mexico

by Cortes, we shall probably go to Prescott or, better still, to the account of it by honest Bernal Diaz del Castillo, who was himself one of the conquistadores and wrotc of what he saw. But should our fancy elect for the story in the form of a novel, our desire may be satisfied by a translation from the German of Herr Richard Friedenthal's The White Gods (Heinemann, 10s. 6d.). The book is characteristically German in its thoroughness of detail and on the whole sticks fairly close to historic fact, though the addition of the good Las Casas as chaplain to the expedition seems an unwarrantable intrusion.

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