10

MUSIC

ARTS

IN REVIEW

DRAMA

Free Germany
Lives On In Book

THE SEVENTH CROSS—By Anna Segher—Little, Brown—

$3.00.

The story of George Heisler, one of seven fugitives fom a
German concentration camp, is not the hackeneyed tale of es-
cape from imprisonment about which so many books have
lately been written, but is a well-written, sympathetic account
of the underground movement in Germany.

George becomes a symbol, not
only to those who help him, but
to those who would destroy him
and what he represents.

To the~ Nazi officers in the
prison camp, Westhofen, he be-
comes the first terrifying crack
in the armor plate of their
tyranny, the infinitesimal sign of
their crumbling power.

Unable to face the effect of
one man’s escape from the horror
that was Westhofen, the camp
commander commits suicide af-
ter the seven crosses he had erect-
ed had failed to receive occupants
for more than six.

The new commander “does not
go in for that sort of thing” and
orders the trees that were crosses
eut down. Each hut in the camp
is allotted so much of the wood
for a fire the first time in
months they have had heat.

-“On that evening when the pris-
oners’ barrack was heated for the
first time, and we watched the
flames of the kindling wood that
we thought had come from the
seven trees, we felt nearer to life
than at any time later—much
nearer, too, than all the others
who are under the impression that
they are alive ... All of us felt
how ruthlessly and fearfully ott-
ward powers could strike to the
very core of man, but at the same
time we felt that at the very core
there was something that was un-
assailable and inviolable.”

Plan for escape was laid by
Wallau, the Communist leader,
whose undying strength of pur-
pose to defeat the Nazi dictator-
ship carries George on to freedom
even though he hears on .every
hand of his comrades’ capture.

Wallau himself is betrayed, cap-

tured. This is one of the most
heart-breaking sections of the
book, the story of man’s weak-

ness, his inability to stand up to
hardship even when the life of
his trusted comrade is at stake,
so that finally this very same
weakness destroys them both.

Wallau goes back to camp, to
endless torture and despair, but
not once does his unbending will
desert him. Beatings, starvation,
torture, incredible hours of ques-
tioning, fail to shake him. Dis-
cussing him the Nazi officers re-
alize what strength of purpose
they were up against.

“You'll excuse me, won't you,
Overkamp, for giving you some
advice now?”

‘Which is?”

“Have them bring you a raw
beefsteak from the canteen.”

“What for?”

“Because you'll sooner knock a
deposition out of that beefsteak
than out of the man they’re bring-
ing in here now.’

But George, the symbol of un-
dying free Germany, goes on, to
become a source of hope to those
left in prison camps, an inspira-
tion to those still able to carry
on the struggle against Nazi
tyranny, to await the day when
they will be able to take full re-
venge for the lives of their fellow-
men needlessly wasted by the Nazi

machine.

Life Seen
From The

Basement

THE LITTLE PEOPLE — By
Albert Halper — Harper —
$2.50.

Albert Halper’s position by
this time is secure as a novelist
with something to say who
Says it better than most. In
this, his last novel, the author
presents a backstairs view of
one of those swank establish-
ments which sell furs, haber-
dashery, and headgear for
ladies and gentlemen.

And who are “the little people”
whose unsung histories are chron-
icled here? Al, the undernourish-
ed elevator operator who “always
gets the dirty end of it” and
hides his heart under a flow of
wisecracks; Oscar the hatter, loyal
to his sick wife. who dreams of
some day breaking out of the
basement into freedom with a lit-
tle hole-in-the-wall hat-cleaning
business of his own; Bob, the Ne-
gro porter; John Narhigian, gray-
haired excitable Armenian ship-
ping clerk who presides over the

basement and has loaned money

to a rascally cousin; Roosty, the
youthful, miserable little package-
wrapper, day-dreaming of femin-
ine legs passing along the street
pavement above his head.

They are all those who do not
come in contact with the public
directly in the retail business of
selling furs, hats and haberdash-
ery, or do so only in the most
menial capacities; those indeed
Whose narrow world of basement
air, dingy rooming houses, and
dancehall recreation fronts on, but
never meets, the bright comfort-
able realm trodden by the store's
well-dressed clientele.

Despite some slowness in getting
under way the story picks up both
unity and intensity after the first
seventy pages; and from there on
it is Halper at his best, a mature,
hard-hitting, sensitive, and poeti-
cally tender Halper who has tight-
ened his style and freed himself
from the tag mannerisms which
marred his earlier work,

Halper’s sympathies are always
with the underdog, and in this
book it is apparent that without
sentimentality he has tried to do
what Mrs. Roosevellt once de-
scribed as the greatest contribu-

Little Theatre Production Acclaimed

—News-Herald Photo
John Goss, noted singer and
writer, caught by the camera 2s
he portrayed the part of Kurt
Muller in the Little Theater’s
production of “Watch on the
Rhine.”

See ‘Watch On The Rhine’

upstage into the full draperies that lined the stage—a perfect muffler. I hope the Little
Theater’s director will keep an eye on this for the next presentation, “Priorities,” which
is scheduled for early in December.—Elsie Anderson.

AV AN COUVER Little Theater’s first major perform-
ance of the season, “Watch on the Rhine,” was
presented recently for the benefit of troops stationed
locally, following a four-day showing at York Theater,
which wound up with a benefit performance sponsored
by The People.

The Little Theater is to be commended for bring-
ing to Vancouver theater-lovers this excellent anti-
fascist play, as well as for its casting, and the good re-
ception it received should encourage it to follow up
this success with other similar productions.

The scene is set in a country house near Waehines
ton, where Kurt Muller, anti-fascist underground
worker wanted in Germany, comes to bring his wife
and children to stay with his wite’s mother. The
mother, a “nervous” woman, as she stresses insistently,
has guests in the house, a Hungarian “refugee” count
and his wife, an American girl. The count recognizes
‘Muller and threatens to expose him to Gestapo agents
unless his demands for money are met. Muller, though,
refuses to pay off, bringing about the powerful crisis.

John Goss, as the anti-fascist Muller turned in e
sensitive performance and a convincing one, despite
the fact that on several occasions he was unfavorably,
placed on some good lines. Jack Bowdery as the Count
portrayed a fascist aristocrat most convincingly. The
structure of the play gives each actor a nice share of
the weight of the dramatic honors, and good coopera-
tion was evident throughout. Let me remark, though,
that several lines were lost through actors speaking

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Pres

tion fiction writers of today can
make, in showing the forunate
third in possession of security how
the other two-thirds live without
it. Certainly no one would quarrel
with this aim. Yet it is true that
sheeer human interest and pathos
may sometimes overbalance, or
limit, the author’s penetration- of
his subject matter.

Today, in the United States,
where some 10,000,000 men and
women are organized in AFL and
CIO unions, how is it possible to
write of the lives, the hopes and
failures and frustrations of hu-
man beings forming a part of the
working class world without so
much as mentioning a union? No
one would ask for a return to a
certain type of strike novel of
depression years with its structur-
al and stylistic crudities; but the
fact remains that no novel of to
day dealing with working class
characters can actually avoid all
reference to labor unions, even
though the characters themselves
may know little of organization
but live like moles burrowing in
underground darkness; an author
cannot slight his role of interpret-
er as well as narrator.

Surely Oscar with his rugged
intelligence, deep sympathies, and
strong sense of human brother-
hood, somewhere in his experience
would have encountered or at least
have heard of the benefits to the
workingman of collective bargain-
ing? One wonders, too, whether
Oscar's petty bourgeois yearnings
for independence have not also
blinded him to the probability that
his venture into proprietorship,
had it come to pass, would turn
out to be as shortl-ived as that
of the jeweller who preceded him
in the vacant store?

In a narrative which has such
a great number of characters, the
fact that each one of them stays
with the reader right through to
the end is itself indication of the
author’s artistic power. Neverthe-
less, one wants to see a talent as
vigorous as Halper's achieve com-
plete realism—in treating the lit-
tle people to a break once in @
while!—Lillian Gikes.

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