German Colonial Empire cost 180 millions of marks. A high price to pay for
a comic opera, even with real waterfalls! M. Tonnelat has combined
sobriety and exactitude with an exciting readableness.




The Book-Buyer


[_22 Aug. '08_]

In the month of August, when the book trade is supposed to be dead, but
which, nevertheless, sees the publication of novels by Joseph Conrad and
Marie Corelli (if Joseph Conrad is one Pole, Marie Corelli is surely the
other), I have had leisure to think upon the most curious of all the
problems that affect the author: Who buys books? Who really does buy
books? We grumble at the lack of enterprise shown by booksellers. We
inveigh against that vague and long-suffering body of tradesmen because in
the immortal Strand, where there are forty tobacconists, thirty-nine
restaurants, half a dozen theatres, seventeen necktie shops, one Short's,
and one thousand three hundred and fourteen tea cafés, there should be
only two establishments for the sale of new books. We are shocked that in
the whole of Regent Street it is impossible to buy a new book. We shudder
when, in crossing the virgin country of the suburbs, we travel for days
and never see a single bookshop. But whose fault is it that bookshops are
so few? Are booksellers people who have a conscientious objection to
selling books? Or is it that nobody wants to buy books?

Personally, I extract some sort of a living--a dog's existence--from the