Trouble Is Enough

MEMOIRS OF A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE--General Rafael de Nogales--Harrison Smith ($3.75).

Looking like Peck's bad boy, Venezuelan General Nogales stands in full Turkish uniform in the frontispiece of his book to give readers a foretaste of mischief to come. It comes: should the supply run short in one hemisphere there is bound to be plenty in the other. The doughty general craves trouble as a cat craves fish, can nose it from afar. Do or die is no mere shibboleth to him, but sober truth. "For certain men not to do is to die, to die a spiritual and very disagreeable death. From such a death I have been running all my life."

He started sprinting young. At the age of 20 he called President Castro, dictator of Venezuela, a torturer and a bully, got out of the country quickly. Since then an almost continual exile, he has retained throughout his roving career "one fixed specific purpose only: the liberation of my country."

A killing along the Rio Grande made Nogales jump for Asia. Then he did military intelligence work prior to the Sino-Japanese War, cleared out to Alaska in time to save most of his skin. He followed gold down into Nevada, went broke with the boom, rustled cattle along the Mexican border. When President Gomez relieved Castro as dictator of Venezuela, Exile Nogales made tracks for home. He soon fell out with Gomez too, harassed his government with interminable border fights. Failure was just threatening to rob him of military adventure when the World War began. He tried to get in it with the Allies, ended up with the Turks. Nogales Bey got plenty of excitement fighting Britishers, Russians, Armenians in the Near East.

Since the War General Nogales has written Four Years Beneath the Crescent, The Looting of Nicaragua. If jaguars, hurricanes, boa constrictors, crocodiles, firing squads do not get him first, Venezuela may be liberated yet.

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