BOOKS

JUDGE NOT

by Aymer Roberts, Linden Press, London, 1957, $4.00, 195 pp.

Here at last, in this book, we are far away from gay people and gay bars, and find ourselves, instead, immersed in a genuine atmosphere of natural relationships, when for natural we intend what is not artificial. Because it is only too true that many people whose minds are museums of fossilized relics of outmoded thought, would still be inclined to say those relationships are not natural which are not heterosexual.

The opprobrium with which are regarded all books treating the all too human problem of homosexual relationships by people who are sectarian in their beliefs, narrow in their views, ignorant of facts, does not cast any shadow on Judge Not by A. Roberts. For, in this book, that true catharsis of all base feelings which we may have harbored at times within our breast, that catharsis through which we become better men and better women. that catharsis, I say takes place without we even becoming aware of it. when, after having completed the reading of a book which is a true work of art, we, suddenly, at the end of our reading, exclaim: "O Lord, we thank Thee for having created such human beings who, out of such great love as theirs, can bring such soulinspiring contribution to the daily burden of living."

Yes, living is a burden; but when it glows in the glow of supremely poetic homosexual relationships-such as those depicted by the author of

Judge Not, then, and only then, it ceases to be a burden and becomes the earthly manifestation of something which exists in its perfection somewhere, somehow, but of which we human beings can catch only a glimpse here on this earth, in such relationships as those.

Aymer Roberts shows that it is possible to be unselfish, all-forgiving, allunderstanding, a true fountain of ever-flowing love, because love makes of sex the handmaiden of the spirit of man: the unconquerable, indomitable spirit of man, that cannot, and will not, restrict the sphere of its activity, by the categories of the flesh.

We live not by bread alone, and the strength of living not by bread alone, is derived, among other things, by books like Judge Not by Aymer Roberts.

AUBADE

by Kenneth Martin, Chapman & Hall, London, 1957, $3.00, 158 pp.

How pleasant would the task of the book critic be, if he could but praise all books he is called to review...

Alas! but life being what it is, this can be only a fanciful dream.

Never as this morning, when having finished the review of Judge Not, I had to take up the review of Aubade by Kenneth Martin, was I so conscious of this truth.

Of course allowance is to be made for the subject matter of the two books: they both treat the theme of homosexual relationships, but in Judge Not we find a sublime peace pervading every page, and, with every page, pervading every year they describe; in the case of Aubade instead, we find the harrowing fever of those who seek and have not found, and the sense of illness, of maladjustment, of dissatisfaction and incompleteness; the sense, in short, that homosexuality