Page 14 — P. A. Features, March -17 -Foibles, Facts and Fancies fire Creative Herbie Scene: An enthusiastic London Labor meeting. Star of the evening: the Right Honorable Herbert Herbert Morrison,MP. Zealous chairman, working up the heat: “Who got us to ‘go to it’ after Dunkirk?” Audience roars: “Morrison!” “Who saved London from burning in '40-"41 2” ” “Morrison!” “Who gave us our indoor shelters?’’ “Motrison!”’ “Who started JLondons Green Belt? Who gave us woods and fields and fresh aire” Little fellow nips in quick: ‘“God!”’ Audience (righteously indignant) : “Throw him out—the dirty Communist.” (Quoted from .London News in the Ca- nadian Tribune.) The Road Ahead For a century Canadians have prided themselves on their close and friendly relations with their powerful southern neighbor, the United States. With the com- ing of the air age Canadians have another great neighbor, powerful and friendly, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Canada’s southern neighbor, Canada’s northern neighbor, and the United King- dom are all allied with each other and with us in this war against Germany. It is a‘vital Canadian interest —— the most vital of all Canada’s international inter- ests—that this close and genuine friend- ship of our three powerful neighbors with us and with each other shall remain and be still further consolidated in the years of peace ahead of us. Nothing less than this can guarantee the security of our country or of our children! (L. D. Wil- gress, Canadian Ambassador to Moscow.) - It’s The Deuce Wheeler is aghast at plans to destroy Hitler's war-making industries. The Sen- ator from Montana hates to see Adolf forced to play his last cartel. (Alan Max in the New York Worker.) Imperialism, (Lenin) sky (Lenin) Two Tactics (Lenin) 420 West Pender Street a kak | & ADD THESE OUTSTANDING BOOKS TO YOUR LIBRARY “Practice Without Theory Is Blind’’ - « «+2 Stalin Problems of leenitismy (Stalin) Foundations of Leninism (Stalin) Dialectical and Historical: Materialism (Stalin) State and Revolution (Lenin) Left Wing Communism (Lenin) - = Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kaut- Teachings of Karl Marx (Lenin) What Is Marxism (Emile Burns) (Postage Extra) PEOPLE’S BOOK STORE Kae | | ae ae | a a [ak | te | || a [ak Pak [ak Da ate ate ak Not One, But All The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation. It cannot be an American peace, or a Chinese peace. It cannot be a peace of large nations——or of small na- tions. It must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world. (President Franklin Roosevelt, reporting to the American Congress.) e 1945 Sermon A few weeks ago passengers on a Madison Avenue bus were treated by the driver to a briefiy acid discourse when he brought the jam-packed vehicle to a vio- lent stop, stood up and surveyed his clien- tele with a bitter smile. “You know,” he began, “Americans are pretty swell people.’ Yes,.they are, You give your money to charities, adopt the homeless and visit the sick. You give your blood to the Red Cross and nobody’ll go hungry if you can help it... BUT’”’ and here his voice rose to a menacing shout, “YOU WILE NO MOVE LO’ DHE REAR!” (Quoted from PM in Modern Digest.) In War and Peace Do the Tribune editors recall that on the eve of the war commentators were claiming that the Soviet economic successes of the brief and precarious interval of peace would not survive the first blows of war? It was these very achievements in the all-too-short and difficult period of peace that made possible the Soviet war achievements. It is a safe prediction that the other democratic peoples of the world will find the powerful peacetime economy of the Soviet democracy as necessary and decisive a bulwark as its Red Army and its efficient organization for war has proved to be. (Comment in New Masses on a recent New York Herald-Tribune editorial praising Soviet war accomplishments but expressing doubts as to the peace.) KK)? 40 .60 29 A5 A5 .40 A5 A5 25 50 Phone MArine 5836 cae HE | | | | A |i [ak 24 aK 5 [>i Pak Ke Ik ak Dia Book Review «| _ from a physical den and soared into heroism: _ Egon Hostoysky’s “The Hideous,” Reviewed by : Isidor Schneiderin New Masses —S SOVIET history and our own, if you read it well, has shown that hope as well as tragic emergency can act as releases for men; but in this grim time, it is the triggers of war that unloose hero- | ism and genius. This the Czech writer, Egon Hostovsky, illumi_ nates for us in a remarkable novel of a man who could not emerge from a spiritual den until, reduced to living like an animal, he broke vio 5) An engineer and inventor, he had sunk into the featherbed © isolation of bourgeois success and felt half stifled in it.The story = in his road from isolation to reunion with humanity. It is told he a long letter to bis wife, a letter throbbing with exultation and 13 penitence in’ which he tries to explain events whose meanings have — become elear-te him at last. The memories gone over in the letter begin in: the confused days of the Munich betrayal. After destroying the blueprints of a gunsight he has invented he discovers that the director of his fac tory is a quisling and has negotiated the sale of the gunsight to the Germans. At the dinner where he learns it an attractive Jew- ish woman with whom he has had an unfulfilled relationship comes to say goodby; she is on her way to refuge in Paris. All through the © evening his secretary who has arrived with the director cannot conceal her agitation. with the realization that his daughters whom he has caught smok. ing have suddenly become estranged from him in new found ma- E turity. : An impulse to settle something at least, in this chaos takes him — on a secret pursuit of the fleeing woman. In a Paris cafe, in g And these harassing impressions merge © meeting which, by the usual standards, is a suecess—for she ac- cepts him as a lover—he feels disillusioned, not by the woman, in ~ whom-he senses the same disillusionment, but by life. Something ~ is touching it that disarranges the affair that has just been ar- ranged. He prepares to return to his family when he receives a letter from his secretary confessing her love for him and warning him that the Germans, furious over losing his gunsight, are hunt- ing him, and that he must stay away. : The forced separation from his country and his family be comes the first stage in the physical isolation that ends in a cellar- life as subterranean as a mole’s. There he comes to understand the | joy of human fellowship and the freedom possible only within if. His yearning for it grows so strong that he accepts it even when itS price is death. The long letter is cut short by the summons to _ the exhilarating hours of life in, and for, a chosen human fellow- ship and for the first use of his skill that will be joyously voluntary though it will bring his death. : It is not easy to communicate the remarkable tension: main- tained in this story. As absorbing reading it matches any popular | novel, yet it does without the customary devices. There is no brisk dialogue, no whimsicality of character, little “action” in the or- dinary sense. But somehow the compelling exultation which moves = its hero has been breathed in to the writing. Somehow crucial re- lations are communicated; decisive deeds are done, and the process by which an “ordinary” man springs into heroism seems as natural # as growth. The quality of thinking here is high, as is the quality of the writing. There is something in the effect of this book, with its single character, that is akin to the subtle and significant gestures of the dancer, Angna Enters, whose performances held audiences breathless when, though alone on the stage, she filled it with move- ment and people. I have mentoined the embodiment of the spiritual isolation in | the engineer's exile and immurement. This is only one instances of the symbolic sense with which Hostovsky heightens his realism. As his other writing available in English shows, this is one of his special gifts. Hostovsky’s use of the symbol is not imposed upon but rises out of events, as in life we are constantly impressed with coincidences and connotations. The critics who have called for the taking over of the symbolic method of Kafka will perhaps see thei wish realized here. But it is probable that it is not a taking over but a personal development. Hostovsky’s symbolic structure has its # own rather than Kafka’s characteristics and are part of a distinct # & literary personality. = Most important, these gifts are so used on a theme of our time | as to make it relevant to any time, yet heighten its significance ix our own. =