FICTION.
THE FIRE OF GREEN BOUGHS.*
Mits. R ICSARD'S novel commands attention not merely by its literary skill but by its unconventional outlook. A story of parents and children, it stands out amongst war-novels by its impassioned impeachment of the elder generation, for we do not think that we err in crediting the author with the opinions which she ascribes to the hero : "The indifference and callousness of old age was upon the people. It was as though all the resuscitated old men had some vampire joy in sucking the life out of the young. Everywhere through Europe it was the same. Age was conquering with a completeness which turned his heart sick, and yet there were people who talked of it as the Young Man's War.'" True, Dominic Roydon, the crippled soldier turned clergyman, had bought his immunity from further service at a heavy price. But this view colours the whole book. There is not a single person in the story, man or woman, beyond military age, who does not come under this condemnation. The old or elderly are either futile or hard-hearted "profiteers," greedy for gain or titles, pig-headed, unsympathetic officials, or blatant patriots, with the solitary exception of a chival- rous Nationalist M.P. Yet while tho tragic sacrifice of youth is thus insisted on, and incidentally illustrated by the suicide of a young wounded officer unhinged by the horrors of service, the central character does not illustrate the piteousness of the "slow green fire," but rather the triumph of an unscrupulous individualism. Sylvia Tracy is not a heroine, but a complex type of adventuress ; living as a pensioner on the bounty of a stingy uncle, and indemni- fying herself for her dependence by petty looting. She is brought up in a hothouse on sufferance without having the free run of any of its luxuries. She has no " useful " accomplishments. Forced into activity by the war, she has no equipment but her tongue, her wits, and her charm. As a war-worker she is a failure. She is a liar HS well as a thief. But she has courage and a spirit of humanity, in the exercise of which she violates official regulations and, by sheltering a dying German submarine officer on the coast of Ireland, incurs a charge of treason, and is only extricated by the intervention of the Nationalist M.P. and hor cousin the soldier-priest. Later on, while acting as secretary to a beautiful widow, engaged to a peer, she detaches Lord Carfax from his allegiance—not deliberately, however—but being dramatically confronted with the police officer who had arrested her, is driven into an avowal which outlaws her socially. But as she retains the sympathy and support of her cousin and is married out of hand by the M.P., Sylvia is far from being a piteous figure. She is interesting undoubtedly, as any one must be who is at once a minx and a sphinx, a Persian kitten and a humanitarian, a liar and a thief who does not stop short of stealing jewels in the room where her aunt is lying dead. But we cannot accept her as in any way typical of the tragedy of youth which preoccupies the mind of the author.
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