From the Congo to Samarkand

Travels in the. Congo. By Andre Gide. (Knopf. 15s.) Red Star in Samarkand. By Anna Louise Strong. (Williams and lsiorgate. 158.) M. Armai GIDE was asked, we believe, by a certain news- paper, to investigate native conditions in the French Congo. His book, however, is in no way a social survey of the central proVince of Africa, but an unprejudiced account, written

in the form of a diary, of everything that the author saw and all the adventures he experienced. He gives us the observations of a first-class journalist and of a man of wide vision :

" What we want is, precisely, to leave the beaten track, to see what one does not see ordinarily, to enter profoundly, intimately, into the heart of the country. My reason sometimes tells me that I am rather too old to plunge into the bush, and into a life of adventure—but I do not believe my reason."

And how wise M. Gide was I It is very largely the experience and knowledge which he had attained in his sixty odd years which enabled him to observe so much. His range of interest is enormous : he has the eye of a scientist, artist, and lover of the _country for butterflies, insects, birds, animals, flowers and trees, and the pen of- an artist to describe them. His style is not literary, it is simple, as one would expect in a diary. Each incident he describes is fresh and vivid in his mind. " We are slowly ascending the river (he writes as he is entering the waters of the Congo). There are a few lights in the distance on the left bank, a bush fire on the horizon ; at our feet the terrifying thickness of the waters." Or again, " Sometimes there passes by a flock of big cranes, whistling in their flight like a night express—we can hear the noise of their wings."

M. Gide was very impressed by the friendliness of the natives with whom he came into contact, particularly with the obligingness of his servants. He was always conscious of the responsibility which the French should feel towards them, and appalled at the treatment which they received from certain French officials, quoting letters which he wrote to the Governor of the French Congo on this matter. He gives us some interesting but not very profound sidelights on the psychology of these primitive people natives never seem to him to understand the word " Why ? " They would answer that question elusively, as though they had been asked " How ? In what manner ? " We cannot help feeling this lack of understanding on the part of the natives may have been due to M. Gide's slight knowledge of the language. Another surprising characteristic which he noticed was that these primitive people were extremely bad at adapting

themselves to any new situation or activity.

Perhaps the most charming character to whom we are introduced is Dindiki, a tame sloth, which M. Gide took with him on his travels. Dindiki must have been a delightful creature, confiding, affectionate, and intelligent :

" I have not put Dindiki back in his cage. He has spent the whole day (yesterday, too) in my tipoye, either clinging to one of the bamboo poles that support the mats of the shimbeck, or else cuddled up against me. It is impossible to imagine a more con- fiding creature. He takes without hesitation any food he is offered and eats indifferently bread, manioc, custard, jam, or fruit. There is only one thing he cannot endure—being hurried or being made to leave his perch. This puts him in the most terrible rage ; and he screams and bites as hard as he can. Impossible to make him let go ; he would rather have his joints dislocated. Then as soon as you get him in your arms, he calms down and begins licking you. He is more caressing than any dog or any cat. When I _walk in the village, he comes with me, clinging to my_ belt, pay shirt collar, my ear, my neck:" -

Trarels in the Congo is a big, broadminded book, packed

with a variety of interesting inforthation: The photographs

which illustrate it are excellent, and the translation is generally admirable.

Miss Anna Louise Strong describes in Red Star in Samarkand an equally interesting and perhaps even stranger adventure. • An American woman living in Moscow, she 'succeeded in ' obtaining, an invitation to a conference of Central Asian women in order to visit Uzbekistan, one- of the most eastern States of the Soviet Union. - Miss Strong did not take the ' Golden. Road to Samarkand : -she travelled by.. the Iron Road from Moscow. On arriving at Tashkent, the centre of economic rule, she found the October celebrations of the ' Revolution in progress. The city was thronged with people : Russians and Orientals paraded the streets, carrying Soviet banners ; she watched a football match between Moscow and

Tashkent ; she witnessed a terrible play describing the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti ; she visited museums, clubs, political meetings ; she drank tea in Chai-Khannas on the banks of - the Syr Daryia. From Tashkent she went to Samarkand, where modern concrete buildings grow up by the side of Tamerlane's tomb ; from there, to the heart of " Islam,"

the high, holy, divinely-descended city of Bokhara, -down whose narrow cobbled streets water-carriers glided, bearing large goat-skins filled with water. This city, once the religious centre of central Asia, seems now to be under the domination of the Institute of Tropical Medicine. Here she found in the market place, waving over the Holy Pool, a banner, " Welcome to the Regional Congress of Trade Unions."

Miss Strong describes the organization of the cotton industry ' in these irrigated lands at the foot of the Asian mountains. It is the dream of Moscow to produce here all the cotton needed for the Soviet Union. In order to promote this industry, great irrigation schemes have been set on foot. The Revat Hodja dam, which will stabilize irrigation over a district of a million acres, is in the process of construction.

" Leaving the barracks I caught the last truck back to Samarkand. Passing along the line of the new canal, I saw on a tiny railroad a Fordson tractor, remodelled to act as locomotive, pulling twenty tons of fielling Can along the rails. Thus was cement delivered to line the new waterway. Not far beyond, among the trees by the road, a train of fifty camels had made camp for the night. The Kirghiz owners, nomads of the desert, were earning an honest rouble working for Revat Hodja. They, too, were delivering cement to the new canal. The old and the new transport were working side by side to reclaim the deserts of the East." - - •

A system of peasant credits and tax reductions, combined with a protective Method of price fixing, keeps production steadily but slowly rising.

There have been, of course, and no doubt still are, many difficulties in the way _ of the realization of this dream, and we are not surprised at the stories Miss Strong tells of them.

``Making Bolsheviks of Central Asians" is not too easy a task, far the- BolsheVik policy inevitably attacks many

ancient customs, as, for instance, the veiling of women. But the marriage of the West and the East in this remote part of Asia, where a service of camels connects with the air service from Kabul, is an amazing story, and Miss Strong tells it very well.