War novel
Benny Green
Now God Be Thanked John Masters (Michael Joseph £6.50) Some years ago in a volume of autobiography, J. B. Priestley, who spent most of the Great war on the Western Front, tried to explain, to himself as well as to .us, why he had never written a novel about this central incident of his life. His rather garbled explanation was that he was too keen to pick up the pieces of his life to face the horrors of the event which had smashed it. And in offering his excuses Priestley made the perceptive point that the intermingling of tragedy and comedy was so baffling as to defeat any faint chance he might have had of resolving the incongruities.
Since then, a few writers have attempted to tackle this most daunting of all modern themes, and have generally opted to concentrate on the tragedy at the expense of the slapstick. Among the books from men of Priestley's generation, perhaps R. H. Mottram's Spanish Farm trilogy is the most readable Great war book, and H. M. Tomlinson's All Our Yesterdays the most disgracefully neglected — even Paul Fussell's comprehensive The Great War and Modern Memory does not so much as mention it — but it may well be that there is a moral for novelists in the fact that one of the few indisputably great books on the war, Jaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk, is nothing less than a derisive farce.
It was obvious that John Masters would prefer the more solemn approach. None of his excellent Indian novels betray much taste for the ribald laugh or the bitter jest; the reader has only to pick up Now God Be Thanked to realise that Masters is embarked on what we have ,come to regard as a Saga. At nearly 600 pages, the narrative reaches no further than Christmas 1915, and any doubt of the seriousness of the enterprise is dispelled by the formidable array of family trees which serves as a preface.
Everything has been most meticulously researched; every chapter has its appointed place in the historical timetable: `Le Cateau, France; August 26, 1914', `Hedlington Race Course; Saturday, February 20, 1915', 'Near Loos, France; Saturday, September 25, 1915'. And in an attempt to lend factual weight to his fictional tale, Masters has bought in as ballast extracts from newspapers of the period. Almost all these are from the Daily Telegraph, as though in researching his project Masters had no time to study any rival publications, although the New York Times gets a mention, and there are several additional thick-type passages from Society columns and school Magazines. .john -Doi Passos was much subtler in playing that card in his vast trilogy USA, but I think that Masters makes his points effectively enough, often using the actual to place the imaginary in a frame of historic irony.
The other device open to him, of gradually infiltrating the creatures of his dreams into the ranks of the famous, he performs very well indeed, slipping his heroes into the inner councils of the Cieneral Staff, so that before the end Douglas Haig is almost exchanging words with the 'spectral offspring of the novelist's imagineItion. Whether the exchanges between the historic personages are authentic Masters does not say: Derby said, 'Kitchener told me it was imperative that we and the French do something to take pressure off the Russians, or there'd be a total collapse over there. He said we must accept very heavy losses to prevent that.'
On military detail and tactical deploy' ment Masters is as good as we would expect a man to be who once commanded a brigade of the Chindits, and although it is still early days so far as the trilogy is concerned, it is clear that he has been impelled to write his novel because he is deeply moved by the pathos of sundered lives, and has been wrestling all his life with the problem of how far a Montgomery or an Alexander might have found a more acceptable road to victory than the strategic obtusenesses of Haig and company. However, in order to convey his sense of loss to the reader, Masters has somehow to make us care for his victims, and there are moments when tragedy teeters on the rim of slapstick; the chapter 'St Pancras Station, London; Friday, July 17, 1914' seemed to me particularly fraught in this regard, with adulterous pantings and parted thighs sending hints of parody echoing over the landscape.
Masters was born in the same year that Great war began, which is an excellent qualification for writing about it. Tolstoy, who wrote rather better than Masters, has something in common with him. He too had seen military service as an officer; he too was writing — in War and Peace — about the war before the last; he too had little faith in the General as Genius. The first volume of the Masters work, at times heavy' going, nevertheless, retains its hold on the reader's imagination firmly enough to make him speculate about the appearance of part two. But I cannot help wondering if Masters, before he began, came across Priestley's warning words and considered them. Perhaps he did. Priestley makes much of the British genius for understatement by quoting the line, 'I know where they are, they're hanging on the old barbed wire.' Masters quotes those very lines on page 477.
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