THE ENGLISH SOLDIER
Vain Glory. A Miscellany of the Great War. Edited by Guy Chapman. (Cassell. 8s. 6d.) WE had reached a point at which no more War-books of any originality were to be expected, but within the short space of a few weeks two have appeared which are quite unlike anything previously published. One is Mr. David Jones's In Parenthesis, in which the individual experience of modern
warfare for the first time crystallises into an epical form of great poetic intensity ; the other is this vast, bulky miscellany which does not fit into any literary category. It, too, is an epic of a kind—the collective basis on which some future Homer can build his Iliad. It consists of extracts from the best accounts written by those who fought in the War on each side and on all fronts, these extracts being arranged chrono- logically with occasional short connecting passages to give sufficient historical continuity. It is a work which could only have been done by someone with a passionate interest in the event, with an unrivalled knowledge of all that has been written about it, and with a literary and historical sense to guide him in the selection of what is valid and significant. And yet it would be wrong to imply that the book is dryly objective ; it has a certain ethical purpose which is best given in Mr. Chapman's own words : " War is not a tragedy. . . . It is, quite simply, a disaster which, like a railway accident, may affect for a little time those involved. but does not divert at all the main historical movements. Stripped of that grandiose word ' tragedy,' war affects individuals. And that is all this book tries to show. Its aim is no more than to present, as it were, a cinematograph picture in which crowds hurl themselves to and fro across the set and one's eye is arrested by some single figure in momentary isolation against a background of turmoil. If it has any central thread, it is the line of progressive demoralisation of men and women working under pressure and excitement. That there was a moral disintegration, both of troops and civilians, few would care to deny."
Mr. Chapman is not out to deny the heroism which men display in war ; his book shines with its glory. But he is out to prove that war serves no useful purpose, not even an ideological one. Another passage from his introduction must be quoted, not only because it expresses this truth so clearly, but also because its application to the present conflict in Spain is inescapable : " The peculiarity of war lies in the fact that whole communities are directed to a single objective, victory ; and the reason for which they were induced to co-operate, the clash of philosophies and creeds, is forgotten in the closer obsession of the desire to win. It is not the belief in the cause but the strength of the desire for victory, which, as it waxes and wanes, is the basis of what is called morale."
It is a paradox which this book illustrates so clearly that we won the War because we did not particularly believe in it.
It may be presumptuous to claim that " we," the British, won the War ; we merely resisted disintegration the longest, and had never, like the French, to contend with ominous mutinies. It is most interesting to see how this quality in the English soldier—his phlegmatic indifference to the rhetoric of revolution no less than of war—is not only the secret of his morale, but also the strength of his writing. There is a certain quality in our national temperament which appears as steadiness in action, as realism in politics, and as empiricism in philosophy. This same quality leads to objectivity in writing, which is the prevailing characteristic of the English contributions to this volume. If the German and French contributions are so much less extensive, it is simply due to the fact that a War literature such -as we possess does not exist in these countries. There are books by professional writers; but the " human document " is rare. The Frenchman will reflect about war and the German will boast about it, but neither is interested to ..describe it exactly and dispassion- ately. " Stegemann pictures very dramatically in his well- known and first-class book how with drawn sword, at the head of my Division, I threw myself on the enemy who were already entrenching on the Djonk Bahir "—that sentence could only have been written by a German. And these are as unmistakably French : " My bombers sprayed the Boches, and they ran back. I climbed out of the trench. I was as certain that I was as good as dead as I was of the sunlight.
But what serenity was mine, the serenity of a man dying in a state of grace. . . ." And here, to complete the com- parison, is the English type : " I'd lost my watch, so I tried to tell the time by the sun, cautiously shifting my tin hat off my eyes to have a peep. It stood straight overhead in an enormous arch of blue. After an age, I looked again. It still stood in the same place, as though performing a miracle for my special discomfort. Then I began to shout feebly for stretcher- bearers, calling out the name of my battalion and division, as though that would bring men running from all points of the compass. Of course, it was idiotic and cowardly. They couldn't hear, and, if they did, they oughtn't to have come. It was asking ;hem to commit suicide. But I had lost my self-respect. I hoped I should faint, but I couldn't."
Mr. Chapman does not entirely limit himself to eye-wit- nesses's accounts. There are a few extracts from speeches and despatches, and the home front is not forgotten. There is Lord Devonport's complaint that the soldiers and their dependants were getting too much pay, and there is a neat table showing how as the War progressed the dividends rose.
Perhaps the newspaper files would have yielded a good deal more of the sordid side of war, and in so far as it is meant as an indictment made the book all the more damning. As it is, the predominant impression is of incredible human suffering, of inexplicable submissiveness, of quiet voices bearing indifferent witness to these wrongs. HERBERT READ.
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