18 OCTOBER 1924, Page 33

THE LITTLE GENTLEMAN ENLISTS.

Memoirs of the Foreign Legion. By M. M. With an Introduc* tion by D. H. Lawrence. (Seeker. 7s. (3d. net.)

M. M., we are told by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, was the grandson of an emperor, his mother being the illegitimate daughter of Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm, or perhaps of the old Kaiser Wilhelm I.—of one of the two, certainly ; he committed suicide four years ago in Malta. Mr. Lawrence was fairly well ac-

quainted with him, and he spends most of the hundred pages of his introduction in proving what a miserable cad he was, hypocrite, sponger, liar—" the little gentleman, God damn his white-livered gentility," exclaims Mr. Lawrence. And he makes out a very good case. We are quite persuaded in the end that M. M. was a disreputable fellow. It becomes a little difficult, though, to take an interest in his war experi- ences when we have Mr. Lawrence at our elbow, urging us, positively urging us, to take everything with a grain of salt ; and not a friend anywhere to put in a good word for him. "The book is in its way a real creation," Mr. Lawrence says. "But I would hate it to be published and taken at its face value." Of course, Mr. Lawrence does profess a tempered respect for him : "Well, poor devil, he is dead : which is all- the better . . . I prefer him, scamp as he is, to the ordinary respectable person. He ran his risks ; he had to be running risks with the police, apparently. And he poisoned himself rather than fall into their clutches. I like him for that." But that is moralism of Mr. Lawrence's own kind ; there are doubtless people still alive who prefer even the respectable to the treacherous and mean, and have never been entranced by the courage of suicides.

Such is the tribute which Mr. Lawrence brings to his dead acquaintance—a little out of place here, quite lacking in man- ners, but striking enough as a study in character. It rather discomfits us to see Mr. Lawrence paying off all his grudges ; but we remember that the royalties of the book are to go to those people whom M. M. swindled during his life, and Mr. Lawrence may have hoped to make a sensation of the book, and so to procure some measure of redress for the author's victims. The book would not recommend itself to many readers unless there had been such an added excitement. It is written in a pedestrian style, it is egotistic in a shallow way, and it is not powerful or hot enough to be, by its own momentum, a sued& de scandak. But first we must give an abstract of the book.

It is an indictment of the French Foreign Legion. M. M. was a citizen of—heaven knows where : America, perhaps, but his father and mother were German, and his mother tongue was German. In a fit of patriotism for something or other he joined the Foreign Legion in 1915; he had been told that quite a good type of recruit had been entering the Legion, and owing to his nationality—or lack of nationality—he was unable to enter any other service. He found to his horror

that there were no decent men in the Foreign Legion, that all his mates were thieves and brutal criminals, that the non- commissioned officers were more thievish and brutal than the men and abused incredibly the authority that was given them, that the officers were three-quarters of them Germans, and behaved precisely as German officers. When other people found out that he-was in the Legion they said, " What ? you are in the Legion ? But everyone must take you for an assassin, thief, t. highwayman, deserter, or bank forger ! " As soon as he had seen how he was situated he made up his mind to desert. -He could not bear the coarse food, the rough clothes, the smells, the lice, the route marches, the lack of intelligence in those around him. He looked round for every opportunity of deserting, though it was death to desert within three months of joining. But when his three months were over, he took his chance and managed to get across to Italy. His war service was ended.

Mr. Lawrence seems to imagine that there was something noble in this desertion. " I like him," he says, "for the sharp and quick way he made use of every one of his opportunities to get out of that beastly army." Alas ! where had that fervour of patriotism gone ? It vanished with the issue of army boots. Poor M. M. Doubtless the Foreign Legion contained criminals ; but had you expected it to be full of the idle and angelic rich ? Was your spirit too weak to bear any restraint ? Was your sincerity so slight that patriotism seemed admirable only if it did not conflict with comfort ? Doubtless a sensitive soul found much to lacerate himself in that intercourse with the unrefined. We remember reading of an English man of letters who was shocked almost to hysteria when the sergeant swore at him on parade, and whose nerves would not bear the brutality of the desperate threat, "I'll break your hearts ! " And if we take M. M.'s exposures at anything under their face value they amount to scarcely more than that. Were there not known in our own Army sergeants who were propitiated by tips ? Was rough play unheard of ? Were there no complaints of superior officers ? Of course there were ; and of course it was scandalous that men were imper- fect. But think of the debility and egotism of a man who deserts the cause he has adopted after the first hardships he meets with. No; we cannot agree with Mr. Lawrence. The fixity of purpose with which M. M. shirked the task he had tacen on was nothing to his credit. There were doubtless many rogues in the Legion, but we doubt if many were as despicable as M. M.