New Books

“I Was Winston Churchill’S

SECRETARY”, by Phyllis Moir. (Angus & Robertson, Sydney. 6/-). As may be supposed, this is an intimate study ot the character, habits, working methods and home life of Britain’s greatest man.

Miss Moir was Mr. Churchill's private secretary for many years, and she writes of him revealingly, but in a very friendly and respectful fashion. He was in his early twenties when he first became a public figure, and he is 66 now, and al ways he has been upon the public stage— usually prominently, but sometimes as a severely discredited figure. Is he what he has been sometimes called —an erratic genius—or does he really possess qualities entitling him to be Britain’s trusted leader in the most critical moment oi Britain’s history? Miss Moir’s book gives the answer.

“Fortunes In Minerals —Simple

Tests and How to Make Them”, by lon Idriess (Angus & Robertson, Sydney. 10/-) Australia's most popular author, himself an old miner, herein tells you how to find and identify almost all the minerals which are of any use or value.

This is a handbook that will be found, in future, in the library of the mining engineer in the city, and in the swag of the prospector in the field. It is sur prising that it has not sooner been written. AH sorts of metals, hitherto ig nored, are in demand nowadays.

“Pacific Pilgrimage”, By Norman

Goodall. (Published by the Livingstone Press, 42 Broadway, London, S.W. 2/-.) Mr. Goodall, a high official of the London Missionary Society, in 1939 and 1940, visited the LMS stations in the South Pacific, and this little volume is the re sult of his observations. His first-hand impressions of the Cook Islands, Samoa, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Nauru and Papua are interesting and useful; but everything is seen through the spectacles of an uncompromising missionary, so that his vision is limited and his conclusions a little cramped. Which means that he is a good missionary, but that he cannot visualise these vast Pacific territories, except as a field for missionary work and an appendage of missionary organisation.

“Man And The New Order”, By

Professor S. Angus. (Published by Angus & Robertson, Ltd., Sydney. 2/6.) Professor Angus is an advanced thinker, and a man of broad, tolerant, humanitarian views— so broad and so tolerant that the bigots of his Presbyterian Church have, three times, made him the object of a first-class “heresy hunt”.

But even this famous constructive thinker fails to get very far when he seeks a practical plan for inaugurating “a new order” now. He finds the average individual responsible for the failure of the present order; and, so that we may have a new and better order, he urges that we begin to build for our new order by produc ing a better race of men. Which is quite sound, and logical, and professorial, but gets us precisely nowhere.

May it be very respectfully submitted to this eminent scholar —and many other eminent scholars—that while the character of humanity (which ranges from the superior Nordics to the rapidly-breeding Brazilians, from the stoical Chinese to the mercurial Latins) cannot be changed much in half-a-dozen generations, the system which has produced the deplorable present order can be changed very quickly, if the reformers only will start in the right place.

And the right place is the point where money power takes charge of democratic government, and twists or destroys its essential purpose.

True democratic government (“the greatest good for the greatest number”, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, etc.) has been a slow evolutionary growth. Money power is a monstrosity of recent growth, the product of the machine-age and very rapid communications.

Our present social order, based on the indus trial and economic conditions of a century ago, able to adapt itself to the slow-moving changes of the past five hundred years, accustomed to a simple, gold-based currency and international

free-trade, has failed to take care of mass production, “national self-sufficiency”, cur rencies that have neither base nor balance, and a tempo of life that is ever-accelerating, as telegraphy follows railways and steamships, and motor cars follow telephony, and air-borne transport follows radio. Parliaments could not control these things because, while the little men entered Parliaments to play about with gold chains and titles, and make a show of government, the big men took charge of the new economy, and used it for their own aggrandisement.

The forces which broke the old order deve loped within a few decades: in a few decades, they can be destroyed. But, before they can be attacked, they must be seen. It is the duty of Dr. Angus, and people like him, who wish to point the way to the new order, to name the evils which virtually have destroyed the old order. But none has the courage to do it. And so the masses go stumbling along in the dark ness, from war to depression, from depression to revolution and destruction and, possibly, to another dark age. Dr. Angus recognises the evils, but is too much of a gentleman to name them; and, in seeking the remedy, he hunts too far afield.

Mr. C. Bates, of the New Guinea Dis trict Services Department, has been

spending leave in Australia, during the

last couple of months.

Mr. A. McHugh, son of Mr. and Mrs.

J. McHugh, of Suva, Fiji, is serving with the AIF in Libya.

District' 0^a bee E„^r in Lau

Group, Fiji, married Miss Joan Charlton, only daughter of Hon. F. R. Charlton, QBE, at Suva Holy Trinity Pro- Cathedral, recently.