Social Studies: II

SIS tq LEITERS IN CANADA: 1959 decided to travel by the means used by ordinary Peruvians. To the luxury hotels, guided tours, and organized activities beloved by the travel agency, they preferred informal observation ofthe country and its people. On foot, in packed buses, and in local trains, they watched the Peruvian scene, wherein the first interest of novelty changed gradually into the pleasure of familiarity. A venturesome reader will undoubtedly yearn to follow in Professor Woodcock's footsteps, to see for himself this exotic land of great Inca remains reminiscent of Agamemnon's palace at Mycenae, of pack trains ofllamas, and offlocks ofsnowy herons. He must, however, be prepared to take in his stride dirt, smells, poisonous snakes, and the practical discomforts apt to be the price of local colour. Above all he must be a hardened early riser, since trains in Peru, as in Sicily and Greece, apparently all start at dawn. In his fascinating study the author paints a perceptive picture of the old and the new, of ancient remains and contemporary dictators, of a rugged land and a friendly and likable people. SOCIAL STUDIES: II / J. M. S. Careless This section is stronger in biographical and weaker in regional writing than in previous years. Only a scattered number of books concern themselves with the various regions of Canada, though last year's opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway is duly celebrated. But there is a wide choice of biographies, autobiographies, reminiscences, and memoirs: some quite good, a few significant. One that is significant is Friends: Sixty Years of Intimate Personal Relations with Richard Bedford Bennett (London and Toronto: Heinemann, pp. x, 137, illus., $2.50), by Lord Beaverbrook. It is short, general, and often vague or incomplete; but because there is so little written on Bennett's life, and above all by anyone who knew him as closely and sympathetically as did Beaverbrook, it is of special value. It is full of revealing insights, oftantalizing extracts from personal letters, and filled as well with the frustrated hopes of two New Brunswick empire loyalists, who saw their imperial visions fade in the heedless politics of Canada and Britain between the wars. The most remarkable feature ofthe book, however, is the sharply unflattering picture it conveys of Bennett: and this by a friend. He appears invincibly narrow, pompous, conceited, self-righteous, and self-seeking-in fact, everything his enemies said he was. Perhaps this proves it. But one is disposed to conclude with some such apothegm as "love is blind," or else, "save me from the candid friend." Another valuable study is Ask No Quarter (Longmans, Green, pp. 3II, $4.50), by Margaret Stewart and Doris French. This is a biography of Agnes Macphail, Canada's first woman M.P. (and a great deal more, besides, than this mere sexual statistic). She was not only a pioneer, tracing out a pioneer's hard path for other women to follow her in public life (few have), but a highly capable independent member, a determined social reformer who particularly left her mark in the field ofpenal reform. This volume, then, recounts a significant Canadian career with warmth, clarity, and understanding throughout. In the process it effectively depicts Agnes Macphail's Grey County background in the U.F.O., her contacts with political figures as varied as woodsworth, King, and Drew, and always expresses the joy in life and people that made the buoyant, friendly Agnes so different from the spinster school-marm her opponents sought to portray. Yet the study would have been far more valuable had it been documented in some degree. As it is, this is a popular, readable account ofa woman who deserves to be well remembered; nevertheless, it somewhat lacks in depth, and more remains to be done. Ralph Curry's Stephen Leacock: Humorist and Humanist (Doubleday, pp. 383, ~i4.95) is a conscientiously documented biography, written from the basis ofwidespread scholarly research. To say that the author, director of the Leacock Memorial Home in Orillia, is an American professor of English not only comments on the character of the work, but also on the Canadian scholarship which never quite got around to it-there being...