Shorter Notice Le Silence de la Mer By Vercors, Les
Cahiers du Silence. (Hachette. 3s. 6d.) THIS short story is the first of a series of publications in the original French in this country of recent underground publications in France. It is beautifully printed and produced, and is obviously written by an experienced and able author, whose identity is naturally hidden under the pen-name of Vercors. It is the story of a German officer compulsorily billeted somewhere in a farmhouse in France where live an old Frenchman and his niece. The story is told by the Frenchman in the first person, and the beginning reads almost like a piece of subtle German propaganda, since the German officer is drawn as a noble chevalier sans reproche. But in the second part of the book, after the German's return from Paris, he is drawn as now completely disillusioned by his own fellow-country- men, and it is made clear that his noble sentiments and exquisite courtesy are completely personal and lacking in other Germans, so that he himself, at his own request, is sent to the Eastern front. The story is extremely well written, but is a piece of pure romantic make-believe which will deceive all who prefer sentimental stories to the rigorous truth. Never for a moment do we believe in any one of the three characters, which are waxworks in the daydream of a clever romancier but not an austere artist.
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