Reading may be a disease or a delight; in either case, there are attendant evils and delicious rewards. From a very early age it has been my greatest pleasure, and I remember one or two occasions when, having been sent to the corn-chandler for pigeons’ food, I was coerced into a display of precocity by being made to read aloud some entirely unintelligible section of a newspaper for the edification of another customer. The merchant took a strange pleasure in my accomplishment; I used to think him amiably eccentric in consequence, especially as he gave me a penny for my pains.

There is much pleasure in reading aloud : I discovered it while I was at a kindergarten school, and exasperated my family by declaiming what was in my own book while they wished to peruse theirs in silence. It was vanity, I suppose, but I didn’t think of that until a man told me frankly, a few years ago, that his chief satisfaction in reading aloud was to hear the sound of his own voice. I was shocked. Honesty is so shocking.

For those Catholics who have always been fascinated by the part played by the late Sir Mark Sykes, and other of his colleagues who were very definitely Catholic in their outlook upon foreign affairs, in connection with British policy in the Middle East during the war, the two volumes of Miss Gertrude Bell’s Letters will have aroused hopes of enlightenment upon several problems and paradoxes. It must be said at once that in this respect the two large volumes are a profound disappointment. But that does not imply any disparagement of the most remarkable qualities and the very varied interest of her correspondence. Her letters have already been one of the most successful publications of the year. And as a record of the adventures and the indefatigable energy and industry of a patriotic Englishwoman who devoted her boundless enthusiasm, her oriental scholarship, her wide experience of the Eastern peoples, and her brilliant and attractive personality to the service of the Government during and after the war, they deserve all the publicity that they have received.

Nor do the letters themselves give any suggestion, such as is apparent in the writings of Colonel Lawrence, that their author has assisted in creating the legend that has grown round her name. Gertrude Bell is described on the wrapper of the book, and has been referred to in innumerable reviews of these two volumes as the ‘Uncrowned Queen of Arabia.’ But nothing could be more modest and frank than her own account of her work among the Arabs.

Just off Leicester Square, in inconspicuous St. Martin Street, a hoarding may to-day be seen enclosing a desolate plot of land heaped up with rubbish. There, until a short while ago, stood an ancient house, with lofty recessed windows and broad oaken staircase, carved chimney-pieces and painted ceilings, panelled walls and old-fashioned powdering-closet. Thither in the eighteenth century came time and again Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and many another Immortal; there night after night the greatest singers and violinists of the age filled the modest music-room with melody; and there Samuel Johnson delighted to read and talk and drink tea, and to show a side of his character unsuspected by Boswell—for in St. Martin Street at least there was nothing left of the Bear but his skin, and to those who dwelt there the Sage was mild as summer, full of social good humour, gay as a boy, sweet-tempered, anxious to please. That old house was the home of the Burneys, the happy talented family of which the great Lexicographer was wont to say, ‘I love all that breed, and love them because they love each other’ ; while the head and father of the household was Dr. Charles Burney, and of him Johnson wrote admiringly, ‘I much question if there is in the whole world such another man as Dr. Burney.’

When in 1776 Charles Burney, Doctor of Music and Fellow of the Royal Society, received from his bookseller the first volume of his gigantic General History of Music, he was in the enjoyment of an almost European reputation.

‘E.M. Forster warms the teapot well enough,’ said Katherine Mansfield (she had just finished reading Howard's End), ‘ but he does not put in the tea.’ How aptly this sentence defines and relegates our clever (in the worst sense of the word) too clever women novelists, so sensitive to the charms of nature and of art, of human relationships and of animal favourites, so obtuse, so stupid in the vicinity of sin! The demoralised, de-Christianised novel—when the writer has listened deferentially to her inspirer’s Eriiis sicut Deæ—bears witness to the absurdities of living without God, or rather in defiance of Him and His known laws.

‘Religion is like adenoids. We have read Freud and Havelock Ellis. We say “syncopated,” not “ragtime” like our elders nor “jazz” like the herd. There is no harm except pain.’ We see and touch in ‘Helen and Felicia (by E. B. C. Jones; Chatto and Windus, 1927) the blight of the author’s immoral theories destroying the vitality of the characters skilfully evoked. Remove chastity from the virtues, exalt conceit, and then write Helen and Felicia. In her Inigo Sandys Miss Jones had attacked, in the most ladylike way, a redoubtable situation; but her Inigo had not been able to give Charles what he wanted : her rashness has grown with the impurity of the modern novel, and her Helen serenely offers her husband to her younger sister, not out of Pandarus perversity, but because she is so fond of both. Eriiis sicut Deæ, surely, surely. Rosamond Lehmann at least had left her Judith pondering on Dusty Answers. E. B. C. Jones with less charm, less atmosphere, more experience, has not dared to look beyond the triumph of the three adversaries of the soul.

On disait I° édification, 2° art (ou métier), 3° divertissement, sacrifiant trop souvent au premier terme les deux autres. Nous disons, nous: I° divertissement: le théâtre n’est pas la chaire, la comédie n’est pas le prêche . . . ne confondons jamais les genres ...2° art (ou métier): les rèegles du sermon sont une chose et les règles du drame une autre : Dieu veut de l’ouvrage bien fait ... 3° édification qui est le résultat suprême. C’est par le moyen d’un art sûtr, par le plaisir qu’il donnera, que nous parviendrons à porter les âmes sur le plan de Dieu où nous voulons les aider à revivre, à se retrouver, à se reconnaltre, à fonder, à agir.

Henri Ghéon.

Within the past twelve months three plays by Gregorio Martinez Sierra have been produced in London : last winter Canciόn de cuna and El Enamorado, and, now running at the Strand Theatre, El reino de Dios. Of these the first and last may be said to belong to the théâtre chrétien (and Catholic) of modern Europe, considered in its wider sense. It is not proposed here to discuss Martinez Sierra as play wright, novelist, propagandist, publisher (El Renacimiento’), manager of a theatre (’ Eslava’ ), producer of plays—his activity is enormous—but to consider briefly those of his plays whose setting or action has a definitely religious colouring, and in particular El reino de Dios, Cancion de cuna, Lirio entre espinas, Los -pastores, for interesting though they are, we may leave out of present account his free adaptations of old plays, such as La adúltera fenitente by Agusti'n Moreto and others (on St. Theodora of Alexandria) or the Lucero de nuestra salvaciόn of Inocencio de Salcedo (Our Lady’s leave-taking of her Son when He started on His last journey to Jerusalem). In these he has, so to speak, revivified old bones, the ideas are ready made.

There is a tragic poetry in the phrase ‘going West’ and not even the apparent banality of a journey to America in a huge modern liner could undo the ancient birthright of that phrase. The wild October dawns came up cold and desolate in the wake of the flying ship, and night after night we plunged into the heart of stormy red sunsets, as if making an effort to keep up with the fugitive daylight—only to be defeated in the race as the starless nights overtook us and shrouded us in bitter darkness and shrieking winds. Perhaps it is because of the thinning of the atmosphere that sounds become louder at night; or it may be a question of emphasis and setting. But the noise of the ship always seemed to increase five-fold with the fall of darkness. The strenuous chorus of engine and screw, threshing and booming, vied with the piercing whistling of the wind and the surge of the waters along the side of the ship. In the midst of this weird uproar, the Italian emigrants on the second-class deck would group together and sing a goodnight hymn before going down below, a lovely plaintive Italian chant with seconds and thirds : ‘O Santa Vergine—prega per me’—pray for me—‘because I am in the midst of the sea.’

After six days of racing and tearing across the Atlantic, the sense of direction became an obsession, and the very soul felt as if it was streaming east and west like a banner in a high wind. As our ship slowed up to go into New York harbour, The Majestic, the largest liner in the world, sailed out on her way to Europe, and it was almost painful to see such an immense object as The Majestic proceeding eastward with so much confidence and weight, opposing the whole Strained direction of one’s being!