The Seeds of Enehantiasnt. By Gilbert Frankau. (Hutchinson.
8s. 6d. net)—Mr. Gilbert Frankau, although he tells us that his story is meant for pure adventure, has not been able to
resist the temptation of making it a social satire as well, and these two ideas do not -mix well together. The scene of the story is an undiscovered land in Indo-China, and the personages of the drama are three adventurers—two Englishmen and a Frenchman. One of the Englishmen is a typical member of the Capitalist class, while the other, Dr. Cyprian Beamish, is a Fabian Socialist. These two, comrades in the war, are under taking-a post-war holiday journey in the Far East. The French- man, whom they meet in Singapore City, becomes the leader of the adventure, and produces from a little enamel box carried by his mysterious mistress (who dies suddenly in the first-chapter) the purple Seeds of Enchantment " which are the final object of the quest. The party journey through a land of super- bureaucrats to the strange country of the " Flower Folk " into which the descendants of the aristocrats of the French Revolu- tion have vanished. The adventures on the journey and the description of the military system of Harinesia are excellent reading. The flips and jeers at the bureaucrats, however, are rather tiresome, and the allegory hidden in the mystery of the purple see& will worry those readers who are in a mood for nothing but hairbreadth escapes and deeds of valour. The story is Elizabethan in its frank descriptions of all sorts of matters which are not usually spoken of in public or described in novels.
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