God Wills It!

THE CRUSADE s--Harold Lamb-- Doubleday, Doran ($3).

In the Year of Our Lord 1095 Pope Urban II made a speech at Clermont. Said he: Let all Christians band together, march to the Holy Land, recapture Jerusalem, from the Turks. Once begun, for more than 300 years the Crusades went on; 2,000,000 men, women, children died because of them. The only really successful Crusade was the first, the one Author Lamb tells about: "... a migration, and a journey, and war. All kinds of people joined the marchers, lords and vagabonds, weapon men and peasants, proud ladies and tavern drabs. ... On the shoulders of their jackets they wore a cross, sewn out of cloth, and because of this they were called the cruciati, or cross-bearers." The Turks called them Franks, because most of them, especially in the First Crusade, were French.

But many nationalities were represented: Flemings, Lotharingians, Bavarians, Normans, Angles, Scots, Italians, Britons, Greeks, Armenians. After Jerusalem had fallen, Sigurd, King of the Vikings, came in his dragonships with 10,000 men. Altogether these Crusaders numbered some 280,000, of whom 250,000 died before they won Jerusalem. Nominal leader was Hugh, Count of Vermandois, who proved better at speaking than at fighting; then Godfrey of Bouillon took actual command, was first across the walls when they stormed Jerusalem. Other notables: lackadaisical Duke Robert Short Breeches of Normandy, red-haired Bohe-mund, Tancred, "finest sword of the Normans," the first to see Jerusalem; Raymond of Toulouse, Stephen of Meaux, Bishop Adhemar, jovial priest, stout-hearted soldier, Peter the Hermit.

In spite of dissensions, sickness, desertions, famine (sometimes they ate corpses), the army struggled eastward. Discipline was enforced by threatening excommunication. First Nicea fell, then

Antioch. Marching along the seacoast the army discovered sugar cane for the first time, liked it. The initial attack on Jerusalem failed; the second was their last desperate attempt. It succeeded; the Holy City was theirs; they killed for two days. After the Battle of Ascalon secured their position, most of the First Crusaders went home, left Godfrey of Bouillon as Jerusalem's king. Christians held the city for 88 years, till Saracen Saladin captured it in his Holy War (1187).

The Author. Author Harold Lamb wrote this book on a Guggenheim Fellowship-($2,500 for one year), followed the path of the Crusaders through Syria. Other books: White Falcon, Marching Sands, House of the Falcon, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan. The Crusades is the March selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Pastoral Theology

KINDNESS IN A CORNER--T. F. Powys --Viking ($2.50).

Kindness in a Corner is one of Author Theodore Francis Powys's best books: witty without malice, simple without silliness, kindly without sentimentality. The story tells of a little corner of England, the village of Tadnol, how the Rev. Silas Dottery pursued his quiet life there, what went on about him.

So immersed in his pleasant scholar's routine was Parson Dottery that he clean forgot the Bishop's visitation: when that worthy arrived to hold confirmation, all confirmable youths and maidens were at Shelton fair. So pretty Lottie Truggin, already confirmed, had episcopal hands laid on her again. Thus began Parson Dottery's troubles. But everyone, with the exception of the evil-minded Canon Dib-ben, his no less evil-minded wife, did what they could to help their parson: his housekeeper, Mrs. Taste, his sexton, Truggin, Farmer Spenke, Publican Toole. Everybody in the village was a character, shrewd in his own right, simple in his own way. Unlike most books ostensibly about parsons, Kindness in a Corner should offend no parsons.

Author Theodore Francis Powys, 54, is one of three brothers (John Cowper, 57; Llewellyn, 45), all writers, all married, all fond of walking, all clergyman's sons. When some of the Powys's were living in Manhattan a few years ago, Critic Paul Rosenfeld went to call. Said he afterwards : "What a relief to find literary people who have faces!" Author Theodore Francis likes winter weather, prefers villages to live in, believes in monotony. Other books: Fables, An Interpretation of Genesis, Mr. Weston's Good Wine, The House with the Echo.

Spiritual Melodrama

KING HABER--Alfred Neumann--Alfred H. King ($2.50).

The best historical romances now are being written by the Germans: Author Neumann, one of the youngest historian-romancers, is one of the best. His The Devil (Der Teufel) written on the same subject as Sir Walter Scott's Quentin Durward, made Quentin Durward seem like a nursery tale. King Haber (Konig Haber) is a collection of three stories, more like condensed novels than short stories, written several years ago, now translated for the first time.

King Haber was a Jewish banker of doubtful antecedents, who rose to great power in a German grand duchy,,became the lover of the Grand Duchess, father of her child. When the hostile nobility banded against him he saved the Grand Duchess by sacrificing his infant son, inviting death for himself. "The Patriot" (Der Patriot) is the story from which was taken the famed cinema of the same name (in which Cinemactor Emil Jannings played the mad Emperor Paul). It is the story of Count Fahlen, cold and cynical military governor of St. Petersburg, who played a complicated conspirator's game against his mad master, and apologized with his death. The cinema was good, the story is better.

Author Alfred Neumann, 35, is a Prussian, now lives in Munich. He made a reputation with Der Patriot (1925), Konig Haber (1926), won the Kleist Prize (1926) with Der Teufel. Other books: Die Rebellen, Rebels, Guerra (translation to be published this spring).

Mencken and God

TREATISE ON THE GODS--H. L. Mencken --Knopf ($3).

Just too late to be included in the latest edition of the Papal Index Expurgatorius appears Iconoclast Henry Louis Mencken's Treatise on the Gods. The next Index will certainly list it. For Mencken, "quite devoid of the religious impulse," makes of religion his unholy hobby, traces its history with ingenuity, learning, logic, comes to the conclusion that Christianity is on the decline, is glad of his conclusion. Says Mencken: "Everything that we are we owe to Satan and his bootleg apples."

No respecter of the religious impulse, Mencken has some illuminating things to say about it: "Always, in time of bloodshed, pestilence and poverty, there is what theologians call a great spiritual awakening. But when peace and plenty caress the land the priest has a hard time keeping his flock at prayer, and great numbers desert him altogether. ... I am myself a theologian of considerable gifts, and yet I can no more imagine immortality than I can imagine the Void which existed before matter took form. Neither, I suspect, can the Pope."

Mencken thinks polytheism still rears its many heads. "The God of the Episcopalians is an elderly British peer, courtly in manner, somewhat beefy, and, in New York, vaguely Jewish. The God of the Mormons shaves his upper lip, and believes in large families and a protective tariff. The God of the Methodists is an agent pro-vacateur, forever fingering his pad of blank warrants. The God of the Baptists is amphibious, and, in some of his aspects, almost identical with the Neptune of the Greeks.

Though his book purports to be a comparison of historical religions, most of it is concerned with Christianity, as the religious form most familiar to the western world. Mencken examines Christianity in detail, its Founder, its Bible, its Church.

Of the New Testament he says: "One might hesitate to liken it to any modern work of the first credibility, such as Boswell's Johnson or Eckermann's Gespraeche mit Goethe, but it is certainly quite as sound as Parson Weems' Life of Washington or Uncle Tom's Cabin." His concluding remarks are a typical piece of Menckenian irony: he describes a hanging he once reported, at which the Baptist prisoner loudly recited the 23d Psalm while the sheriff and the hangman were busied with the final preparations; the fall of the drop cut short the prisoner's words of praise. Says Mencken: "As an American I naturally spend most of my time laughing, but that time I did not laugh."

The Significance. H.L. Mencken is admired for his tickling wit, not for his uncomforting, uncomfortable common sense. His skepticism, shared tacitly by an intelligent minority of U.S. citizens, he voices in so vigorous and individual a manner that it can be laughed off by many who secretly agree with him. "No one will deny, I take it, that we owe the Rockefeller Institute, at least in part, to certain purely theological tremors in the donor. . . . However . . . this is really not an argument in favor of religion; it is simply an argument against the human race." The U.S. has no Established Church. Says Mencken: "A degenerated form of Calvinism, going under Methodist or Baptist labels, is now the state religion of the United States, but no American of any dignity believes in it."

The Author. Henry Louis Mencken, stocky, with broad, ingenuous face, fond of beer, is 50, a bachelor. A native of Baltimore, he still lives there, edits The American Mercury when he comes (at least once a month) to Manhattan. He worked as reporter on various Baltimore newspapers, became editor of The Smart Set (1914-23) with Critic George Jean Nathan; of The American Mercury (1924). Said Nathan of Mencken: "I respect him, and am his friend, because he is one of the very few Americans I know who is entirely free of cheapness, toadyism and hypocrisy. . . . He is the best fighter I have ever met. And he is the fairest, the cleanest, and the most relentless." Delighting to shock, Iconoclast Mencken was once shocked himself: by Author James Joyce's Ulysses (TIME, Feb. 17). Some of his other books: Ventures into Verse, Damn--a Book of Calumny, Prejudices (six series), The American Language, Notes on Democracy.

Ghostly Business

PHANTOM WALLS--Sir Oliver Lodge-- Putnam ($2.50).

Psychoscientist Oliver Lodge's faith is at the opposite pole from Skeptic Mencken's agnosticism (see col. i), goes farther than most Christians' hope. He believes not only that human beings survive death, but that they keep their memory, are able in some cases to communicate with the friends they leave behind them. Survivalist Lodge wanted not to die, wanted some scientific indication that his wish would come true. But he started with faith. Now "I know for a fact that, as individuals we survive the death of the body. . . ."

The book tells of proofs of survival, though it gives none. Most of it is taken up with arguments for the scientific plausibility of immortality. "We never find things going out of existence, though we do find them going out of our ken." Survivalist Lodge admits most scientists do not recognize the validity of proofs of immortality that have satisfied him; thinks that some day overwhelming proof will be forthcoming, hopes science will supply it. So far, "respectable psychic phenomena have been confined to mediums, automatic writing, table tapping, Ouija boards." But there have been "materializations": "ectoplasmic" bodies are seen proceeding from mediums; spirit hands, asked to dip themselves in paraffin, then to dematerialize, leave paraffin gloves.

Heaven to Survivalist Lodge is the ether, which he thinks may be the essence of cosmic reality, the real seat of life. To the ether a man's soul "returns" when he dies; there it abides, till it learns from higher beings (who also inhabit the ether) how to go up higher. Survivalist Lodge has made inquiries of some souls about their habitat, their habits. He reports: "Above all, family affection continues strong; the desire to help friends and relatives is perhaps the most prominent feature. [They] are evidently happy, amid gracious surroundings, surrounded by beauty like that of terrestrial landscapes, and under conditions which do not feel strange or unnatural."

The Author. Sir Oliver (Joseph) Lodge, 78, white-bearded, hale, once famed for his researches in wireless telegraphy, for the last 20 years has been famed for his zeal, his optimism, in psychic investigations. He believes that his son Raymond, killed in the war, sent messages to him. Survivalist Lodge is not a Spiritualist ; he is a member of the Church of England: believes not differently from but more than his fellow members. He lives on Salisbury Plain, near Stonehenge, near Lady Mary Bailey, famed airwoman. Other books: Life and Matter, Raymond, or Life and Death, Ether and Reality, Evolution and Creation, Modern Scientific Ideas, Science and Human Progress, Why I Believe in Personal Immortality.

* Poet Stephen Vincent Benet wrote his best-seller poem, John Brown's Body, on a Guggenheim Fellowship 1926--28.

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