Book Notes
&Act( are publishing the first full-length biography of Albert Schweitzer by George Seaver, who has already written a monograph on this subject. The first part of the work gives an account of Schweitzer's early years, with their achievement in philosophy, theology and music, his renunciation of Europe and his healing and teaching of natives m Equatorial Africa, where in his seventy-third year he still works in his hospital at Lambarene, sparing what time he can for the completion of his Philosophy of Civilisation. The second part of the book is an appreciation of the thought of Schweitzer as a theologian, as an interpreter of J. S, Bach and as a philosopher. The biography has been read in manuscript by Schweitzer, who has supplied the author with much hitherto unpublished information.
* * * * Attempting, in 1931, to follow the overland route between Aden and the Valley of the Hadhramaut, Mr. Van der Meulen, a Dutch explorer, was turned back by warring Arab tribes. He tried again in 1939 and succeeded. Aden to the Hadhramaut, the original manuscript of which was sent to Batavia just before the Germans entered Holland and there fell into the hands of the Japanese, is the account of the journey. The book has parallel themes. It des- cribes a journey in a land where there can still be traced stretches of the incense trade routes of a period when the Queen of Sheba ruled in the south And King Solomon ruled in the north. And it records a foreigner's opinion of the new experiment' of British Colonial administration in South Arabia. The author, comparing the changes over a period of about nine years and describing the effects of Ingram's Peace, comments ,upon the methods of pacifying the country which have been so strongly criticised. Murray publish next month.
Planting and preservation of forests and woodlands were until comparatively recently largely left to the individual landowner. But before the last war the State was beginning to realise that reliance on foreign timber was a wasteful and dangerous policy, and a plan for considerably expanding State-controlled forestry was adopted. Since the war this programme has been enormously intensified, and State forestry as a result offers for many a career possessing obvious attractions. For them, as well as for the layman and forester, comes a comprehensive volume, dealing with virtually every aspect of the subject, Forestry and Woodland Life, by H. L. Edlin, author of British Woodland Trees. The book is a typical Batsford production with over 170 photographs.
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E. M. Glover is the editor of a group of Malayan newspapers, and on December 7th, 1941, his Sunday Tribune carried a report of Japanese transports sighted nor Aar from Malaya. Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, C.-in-C. Far East, personally informed Glover that the situation was not half so serious as the Tribune made out. Sixteen hours later bombs were falling on a perfectly illuminated Singapore. It was, in Glover's opinion, this kind of failure to face facts that was largely responsible for the utterly unexpected loss of Malaya. An account of the campaign that ended with the fall of Singapore in February, 1942, is told in In 7o Days, by E. M. Glover, published by Frederick Muller.
Sir Harold Spencer Jones, the Astronomer Royal, tells in john Couch Adams and the Discovery- of Neptune the story of the young . English astronomer who, in 1845, predicted the size and place of the planet Neptune, and of the events which delayed the publication of his discovery. And in Seven Essays Mr. George Sampson dis- cusses his interests. English literature, and chiefly English poetry, come first ; the cause of education, not as a science but as a creative art, comes with them, and music and the theatre. A discussion on the place of literature in life, a defence ofSir Henry Irving against his professional detracters, a comparison of the artistic personalities of Bach and Shakespeare, a study of the career of Mozart, are some of his other subjects. Cambridge University Press publish both books on May 9th.
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It is welcome news that the Independent Press are reissuing in a uniform edition some of the works of that distinguished theologian Dr. P. T. Forsyth, who died over twenty-five years ago. The first three volumes, This Life and the Next, The Person and Place of 7esus Christ, and The Work of Christ, will be ready for publication
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