This Month’S New Reading

Book Reviews:

Post-Mortem for Greece,

Crete

THE second volume of the official Army history of Australia in World War II was published at the end of January. Called Greece, Crete and Syria, it is by Gavin Long, who was also responsible for the first volume in the series, To Benghazi.

Five other volumes are yet to come on the Australian Army’s part in the Second World War. The 4th, sth and 6th volumes will deal with the campaigns against the Japanese.

These post-mortems, published so long after the events, have the full flavour of ancient history. Perhaps it is as well. The dull, still-re membered agony of those dark days reduced to facts from the perspec tive of 13 years later, becomes not a matter of emotion, heroism or

Conducted by the Assistant Editor.

patriotic purpose but a calm appraisal of the moves, the reasons, the mistakes of two disastrous cam paigns in that period of too-little and-too-late.

The blunders of modern, total war come into the realm of the the stupendous; there are no small blunders. And those in Greece and Crete cost the British 32,000 casu alties—the bulk of them POW—and all their arms and equipment.

Mr. Long suggests that the fatal decision to withdraw the British from North Africa, where they should have remained to consoli date that position, for the brief and costly adventures in Greece and Crete, was due to Mr. Churchill’s autocratic nature and his determin ation to establish a Balkan front, come what may. Australia and New Zealand, who supplied—and lost—the bulk of the fighting units in the two campaigns, in those days of 1940-41, were prone, says Mr.

Long, to allow matters of grand

strategy to rest unreservedly in the hands of the UK leaders.

In addition, records of consulta tions between the Greek and British military, show now that the cam paign there was begun in a state of misundertsanding and mistrust on the part of Greece.

But at all events, the Greek cam paign was no long-drawn-out agony.

It was short—just 16 days between the time the Germans launched their attack and when the British troops were evacuated.

The scene then passed to the island of Crete which the British higher staff had failed entirely to prepare for defence. Australian and New Zealand troops evacuated there after bitter fighting in Greece were psychologically—and in the matter of arms—totally unprepared for the fact that in three weeks they were again trying to beat off the over whelming might of a fully-prepared Germany. This campaign also amounted to a mere matter of days.

The campaigns in Greece and Crete, perhaps achieved one object —German losses were heavy, and in Crete alone amounted to 4,000 killed and 2,600 wounded —all highly trained troops. It is believed that these heavy losses caused Hitler to review his plan for a similar aerial invasion of Cyprus.

This volume also contains an account of the Syrian campaign.

This was a victory, but doubt is now cast on whether it was necessary.

It is inferred that had it been undertaken at a later stage when the Germans were fully extended in Russia, Syria could have been picked off, almost at will, with larger forces of troops than were then available.

After the fighting ceased and the Australians, who had taken the brunt of it, were resting in Pales tine, there came the old complaints of their lack of discipline from the French and from the British. Aus tralians shrugged off most of the complaints but it did not make for good relations.

The Australians were accused of stealing Vichy officers’ wedding rings and depriving prisoners of their water bottles.

Such pin-pricks, too, make up total war. (Published by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. Obtainable at all Australian booksellers. Australian price, 25/-.)

Louise —Snuggling and

Smuggling

IN a thoroughly nice, refined way (of course), most people are in terested in smuggling, and although Smugglers’ Paradise will not help you much in getting that camphor-wood chest or extra bottle

of whisky through the Customs, you may be interested in how it is done in International circles.

This is the Big Time. Since the end of World War ll—an era of credit restrictions, dollar restric tions, currency controls, prohibited this and prohibited that —it has been a world peculiarly suited to smuggling on a large scale. Even at that, you say, is there enough material for a book?

We would not have thought so, ourselves, but this is written by a Mr. Anthony Were, who makes of it a very personal narrative, indeed.

Apart from the various smuggling rackets that it covers in the UK and all the Continent and North Africa, there is, for variation, a detailed description of the sex life of the creme de la creme of smuggling society. Even in these uninhibited days, it is still unusual for the biographer, as it were, to give one, for free, such a large chunk of his own sex life, but if half of what Mr. Were writes is true, then he, too, is a bloke-and-a half.

Above all, there is Louise, who after five years in the French Re sistance found the life of a social butterfly, to which she had been born, singularly tame. She there fore teamed up with a smuggler in a middling big way.

Mr. Were and Louise were soon en rapport— and Louise’s technique: La La! And likewise, whee!

Arm-chair adventurers (male) who have a yen to know what it is to make love with a house-broke tigress are strongly recommended to a course of Mr. Were. They will then know all.

Even if strictly true, a book of this sort cannot escape a flavour of bombast. However, Were has a gift of getting his odd characters on paper in a way that makes them human beings, if odd. One does not expect the international racketeer to be pint sized, suburban; and the characters are, therefore, satisfy ingly larger-than-life.

Good entertainment, even though it cannot truly come within the category of a useful contribution to human knowledge. (Published by Martin, Seeker & War burg, Ltd.; Australian price, 13/3.)

Murder with Emotion

SOME of our cleverer writers make a fetish of taking a number of indigestible ingredients and fashioning them into a story which the reader can manage to swallow even if it lies somewhat heavily on the stomach.

Edith Pargeter has done some thing of this sort with Most Loving Mere Folly.

A potter and her painter husband live compatible lives for 10 years in a village on the outskirts of Lon don, when their tranquility is shat tered by husband being brought home from a drinking jag by the

22-years-old mechanic from the local garage.

Suspiria, the wife, is 36 but the mechanic, Dennis and she fall in love and become lovers. They know they will “never change.” There remains artist husband.

Suspiria, believing that what she does with herself is for her to de cide, thinks that husband will also regard it as “one of those things” and co-operate in finding a solution to the three-cornered problem. But husband is more touched on his masculine dignity than Suspiria had imagined, stubbornly refuses to dis cuss the situation and commences to drink himself into a permanent state of intoxication.

Meantime Dennis, experiencing more of the conventional misgiv ings than either of the others, none theless does what he is told and be fore the situation has time to re solve itself further, husband is found dead, in his studio. Poisoned.

He could have taken the poison accidentally. Or deliberately. It could have been administered by Suspiria. Or by Dennis. Or by both in collaboration. Yet none of these possibilities completely fits the circumstances. Finally Suspiria is arrested and tried for murder, and, due to her strength of purpose, her clear-sighted anticipation of events, she is acquitted. Thereupon commences the private hell of the two lovers.

Considering Suspiria’s mental at tiude, the circumstances which forced these two ill-a ssor t e d creatures to bow to the convention of marriage are unconvincing. But marry they did, and settled down in Suspiria’s house. Dennis returned to his job at the garage; Suspiria, unsuccessfully, to her pots.

She was a cultured woman, an artist, Dennis, sensitive but the product of a lower-class large family living in a council house, subject to all the pressures and prejudices of the stratum of society into which he was born. They were pursued by a relentless publicity and torn by doubts; at no time did they discuss, freely, how the husband had met his death therefore, although never put into words, each enter tained some corroding suspicion of the other.

It is this play and tug of emotion that takes up the greater part of the novel. In the end—one problem is solved; the other, unresolved.

Police court cases served up in the metropolitan daily papers are proof that it is by no means im probable for youth and maturity to indulge in promiscuous love pass ages. In common-sense, of course, Dennis and Suspiria would have parted after a brief encounter; or even if caught up in the police pro ceedings that occupy the middle stages of their story, made a com plete break to pastures new after Suspiria was freed. But if you accept the material circumstances as laid down by Miss Pargeter, then

the emotional stresses and strains and the reactions of her characters will have a ring of truth and sincerity.

In fact nothing about this book makes common-sense. In common sense there was no need for any of the basic structure on which the story is hung—but if you can accept the basic structure as feasible, then the rest of the story is credible Within that limit, the dissection of emotions is skilfully done. (Published by William Heinemann, Ltd.

Australian price, 15/6.)

Plain Boiled Potatoes

THIS is a different dish—good in gredients and a very flat re sult.

If there were no readers of the sweet-simple story, with its measure of disasters but with virtue triumphant in the end, then obvi ously publishers would not print them. However, one wonders what place, exactly, there is in this over booked world for such stories as Kathleen Foyle’s Dancing Town.

Set in Northern Ireland, in the last years of last century and the early years of this, it would be much more fitting for the novel readers of that era.

It is well written, in a literary sense, but there is no depth to it.

The ingredients for a full-blooded story are there: the poverty of a mill-town, the autocratic but just mill owner whose obligations he feels, end with giving them sufficient to keep their souls within their bodies; the missionising zeal of the young doctor and the young priest; tantalising and destroying attract ion of the beautiful gypsy girl. But the result is stodgy British cooking where there should be a French cuisine.

The significant parts of the story are skipped over quickly, as though to put them out of sight. This, of course, is probably a fair summing up of life itself in that late-Victoria. early-Edward period. But it is un satisfying to the average reader of novels in 1954.

Some women might find it helps to pass an idle hour. Or your teen age daughter might like it—if teen age daughters read such things these days—which we doubt. (Published by Peter Davies, Ltd.; Aus tralian price, 15/6.) The annual general meeting of the Pacific Islands Society will be held in the Feminist Club rooms in Sydney on the evening of Feb ruary 25. This organisation is now many years old, and it regularly holds social gatherings where former residents of the Pacific Islands meet each other, and hear addresses. Colour films of Indonesia were shown by Mr. M. Sellev at the January meeting. The Society’s president is Major C. A. Swinbourne (Telephone XJ 3205), and he is happy to see Islands visitors at the monthly meetings.