Books: France Hoist

L’AFFAIRE JONES—Hillel Bernstein— Stokes ($2.50).

With an ironic urbanity that used to be considered the sole property of such Frenchmen as the late Anatole France, but which a few U. S. contemporary writers have been able to show will look well on anybody, Author Hillel Bernstein hoists France with its own petard. In quiet but telling accents that should bring tears of joy to many a Yankee eye he tells a burlesque tale that is at the same time an uproariously effective caricature of French politics, French traits. Henry Jones, solemn U. S. citizen temporarily resident in Paris while writing a cookbook designed to glorify French cuisine, is accused by a Frenchwoman of having walked off from a restaurant with her husband’s coat. In the course of their parley a crowd collects. The spirit of Verdun and the iniquity of the War debts are mentioned, and by the time they have reached the Vive la France! stage the mob has grown to such threatening proportions that gendarmes arrive and escort Jones to prison. There it is assumed that he is a spy. Soon the affaire Jones becomes the question of the day. Governments rise and fall on the issue. It looks bad for Jones. In melodramatic fashion he is spirited away from the jail, held incommunicado in a mysterious chateau. He escapes, makes his way back to Paris where he gets involved in a U. S. fraternal order’s parade, is discovered and arrested again. By the time his case has been finally ironed out, he is almost proud of the disturbance he has innocently created. A cynical friend suggests that the whole affair has been adroitly fomented by the French Government as a blind for some sharp bargaining in foreign oil concessions.