One Cherry, One Bite

SAM HOUSTON, COLOSSUS IN BUCKSKIN--George Creel--Cosmopolitan ($3). The annexation of Texas was so much a matter of politics that the real issues, violent and blood-spattered, are dimmed. George Creel* brings them to light through the colorful story of Sam Houston, dreamer, drunkard, man of action. A youth, in Tennessee, he showed dangerous scholastic tendencies, poring over Pope's Iliad, so his brothers set him clerking in the village store. Seeking refuge with the Cherokees, Sam announced in grandiloquent terms worthy of his master, Pope, that he preferred measuring deer tracks to tape; and later married a squaw as majestic as himself (6 ft. 6 in.)

From such lowly origin he rose through military apprenticeship under Andrew Jackson, six months' law study and admission to the bar, governorship of Texas, championship of the Indians, and national notoriety gained by a brawl with a Senator, to generalship of the Texan army, 800 strong. For Texas had at last revolted against the duplicity of the Mexican government.

Bitterly criticized for procrastination, Houston saw no reason for having two bites at one cherry, and proved his strategy by routing General Santa Anna, whose army outnumbered the Texans two to one.

Followed the wrangling and financial difficulties of a young republic, but Houston proved himself as excellent an administrator as general, dealt firmly with domestic problems, juggled adroitly the jealous rivalries of England, France, and the U. S.

The story of "Old San Jacinto" and his friends--Old Hickory, Austin, Bowie (of the knife)--is inherently so dramatic that his present biographer's insistence upon long documentary quotations only retards the action. Equitable, Author Creel prints interesting letters and records defaming his hero, but precedes them with such convincing evidence of Sam Houston's bravery and devoted patriotism, that one recognizes in the abuse merely the jealousies that accumulate around any dynamic personality.

* Chairman of the Committee of Public Information (i. e. "censor"), by appointment of President Wilson (1917-19).