O F all essays in fiction which deal mainly with one
particular type of person, possibly it is hardest to construct a satisfactory story of schoolboys. A few writers, of course, have succeeded ; but those who have been school- boys themselves know how large is the number of more or less hopeless failures. Either the boys do not speak like boys, or they do things which are not done by boys, or the schoolmasters who look after them are unsatisfactory, or in a hundred small ways, almost indefinable, something in the book strikes the reader as jarring or wrong. And the reason, perhaps, is not very bard to see. It is only in the hands of the most skilful of writers that the schoolboy will go into a book at all. To write a book that moves, you must have some kind of action, and the stubborn fact is that in the life of a schoolboy there is very little action indeed. What is there, after all, to write about? It is a matter of intense interest to Jones major, no doubt, whether or not he succeeds in winning a scholarship at the University, or in getting his colours at cricket or football ; and so it is to his parents, and possibly his tutor. But it is of no interest to the public in general whatever; and there is for all practical purposes no other action to make a schoolboy story move. The only really interesting problem belongs to the psychologist, and it is not given to all writers to make much of the psychology of those hazy years that lie between fourteen and eighteen. Only a few, indeed, have even tried the task.
But if genre pictures of schoolboy life are so often un- satisfactory to those who have been schoolboys themselves, it is none the less tree that they frequently please and interest those who know least about the subject. The thought occurs whether that reflection would be true of other genre pictures, as, for instance, of the daily life of the modern soldier in peace and war. Is the soldier like the pictures that have been painted of him during the last ten or fifteen years ? Or do those who are soldiers themselves find the pictures of modern soldiers unsatisfactory, and is it only because the layman knows so little that he accepts the pictures given him as in the" main true and satisfactory? It is a question, if you think of it, which has only come up for an answer during the last twenty years or so. It was in 1889 that Mr. Kipling in " Soldiers Three " gave us the first thoroughgoing study of the British private soldier, and since 1889 Mr. Kipling has had imitators, though, for what- ever reason, they have not, in regard to studies of soldier life, been very numerous. And as to Mr. Kipling himself, there need be no very great difficulty in discovering where the truth lies. It is possible for the most whole-hearted admirer of Mr. Kipling's soldier studies to be a little dissatisfied with "The Gadsbyri," for " Gaddy " himself here and there comes a little near a likeness of the Gnardsnien of "Under Two Flags." But though now and then Mr. Kipling's Army officers are not wholly convincing, there is something which compels belief in his stories of private soldiers. Here you get, surely, something permanent and elemental. Private Terence Mulvaney—he was " rejooced afterwards, but no matcher, I was a corp'ril wanst "—if Ile did not ride " Ould Obstruc- tionist," the mad elephant, round Cawnpore and break his head with a Martini-Henry rifle, and if he never actually became reincarnated at a Queen's Praying at Benares, and if he never actually helped " Lift'nint Brazenose " to " take Lung-tung-pen nakid," still, those are precisely the deeds which we all of us believe he would be capable of doing. Learoyd, again, the huge Yorkshireman who preferred to use the butt to the bayonet—" Sitha," he said softly, " thot's better than owt, for a mon can bash t' faaee wi' thot, an', if he divn't, he can breeak t' forearm o' t' gaard "—and the little Cockney sparrow-man Ortheris, who was no good in the breast-to-breast business at Silver's Theatre, but " guv 'em compot from• the lei" flank when we opened out " (" Hi used thirty rounds goin' down that valley, an' it was gentleman's work. Might 'a done it in a white 'andkerchief an' pink silk stockin's, that part. Hi was on in that piece "),—both the big Yorkshire dalesman and the Londoner who has risen from a "little smitchy boy lying loose 'tween the Temple an' the Dark Harches " to be "that very strong man, Thomas Atkins," are to-day permanent beings; they are, the three of them, the British soldier.
Mr., Kipling, indeed, may stand to-day, perhaps, beyond criticism so far as the particular point of the present essay is concerned. That point is suggested by the publicition of a small book entitled " Smithy," by Mr. Edgar Wallace (The Tanis Press, ls.) If Mr. Wallace has not won the right to be compared, so far as serious work is concerned, with Mr. Kipling, still, he must be given the credit of having created, for what it is worth, a new reading of the British soldier. Mr. Kipling tells us, in the first instance, of the British soldier in India, the soldier who, like Ortheris, under the heat and stress of Indian, skies, is occasionally "sick for London again ; sick for the sounds of 'er, an' the sights of 'er, and the stinks of 'er ; orange-peel and hasphalte an' gas comin in over Vaux'all Bridge " ; who has left all that to serve his Sovereign beyond the seas, ".where there ain't no women and there ain't no liquor worth 'avin', and there ain't nothin' to see, nor do, nor say, nor feel, nor think." That picture hits home ; can Mr. Wallace show anything like it P Mr. Wallace does not, in the first place, put the soldier whose life he describes in such difficult places. Instead of the parade-grounds of Lung-tung-pen, and the bastions of Fort Amara, you are given as a background something much nearer " Portsmouth 'Ard on a Bank 'oliday." And, in that atmosphere, is Mr. Wallace's private soldier a con- vincing likeness, or a mere caricature ?
Mr. Wallace's soldiers up to a point are new. They have very little to do with the battlefield. It would be difficult to place them, so to speak, in the atmosphere of fights like that of "The Drums of the Fore an' Aft " or " With the Main Guard." With the exception of a passing reference to bayonet-work as a valuable means of doing unlikely things in pursuing a warrior of the type of De Wet, there is hardly a single reference in this little series of sketches to serious fighting. That is a side of the soldier's life on which Mr. Wallace scarcely touches. Instead, he occupies himself with the ordinary business of everyday humdrum life in barracks, detailing conversations on the Army topics that crop up day after day in the newspapers, and imagining or describing the incidents and excursions of such a life with a humour that compels laughter, even if the laughter is here and there a little doubting. Certain premises conceded, for instance, what could be a pleasanter notion than that of the two soldiers who get special leave to be excused parades in order to take photographs " portraying Army life," with a view to assisting recruiting? Neither of them knows anything abotirt photography, although one of them has become possessed of a cheap camera. The whole battalion is paraded in marching order so that " Nobby " Clark may take a photograph. " "Ow do you do it, Nobby P' sez Smiler. `It's as simple as drinkin',' sez Nobby, gettin' down 'is camera. I point it at you—push this cut-off, and you're took in a minute.' " Unfortunately, the camera had been supplied by the purveyor without a leris, so that the battalion paraded without any result being trans- ferred to the film ; unfortunately, also, it was necessary for Nobby to show his Adjutant the result of the photography- parade the next day. No matter; the "photo-chap" was equal to the emergency, and supplied " a photo of a regiment at 'ome took on that very parade." Most unluckily, the photo- graph eventually supplied did not meet all the requirements 'of the C.O. The Adjutant shows Nobby the result without com- ment. Nobby, also without comment, salutes and withdraws to ask his " pal " Smithy the remorseful question : " Was there anything I said to the photo-chap last night that'd make 'im think we was 'Ighlandere ?" Somehow or other, delight- ful as the idea may be, we remain a little doubtful as to the probability of a parade being especially ordered with a view to a private soldier taking a photograph; but the following scene, at all events, is natural enough. Private "Nobby" Clark has been studying the mysteries of ju-jitan. Three times running he manages to upset " Spud " Murphy, who is consoled in his wrath by the assurance from his comrades that "no one else was strong enough to be experimented upon, so we calmed him down, an' he said he'd go on be& an experiment."—"' Suppose I'm a robber,' sex Nobby, ' an try to pinch your watch. Now what you've got to do is' to catch 'old of my coat an 'arf strangle me.'—' I can do that; sez Spud, brightenin' up." However, Spud is made to fall in a violent and futile manner. " That's what you call Ju-jitseo, is it ?' sez Spud.—' Yes,' sez Nobby, puttin' on 'is coat; that's why the Jape always win au the Russians always That's Ju-jitsoo, is it ? ' sez Spud, takin' orf 'is cont. That's it, Spud,' sez Nobby. I 'ope it'll be a lesson to you—I don't charge you anything for learnin' you—but I'm willin' to give lessons at fourpence a time to any young military gentleman present. Who'll 'ave fourpennoth ?'-
That's Ju-jitsoo, is it ?' sez Spud, in a sort of dream; an' then 'e makes a rush an' knocks poor old Nobby over an' sits on him.—' What's the Ju-jitsoo for this, Nobby ? ' sez Spud, givin him a punch.= Lemme get up,' sez Nobby." That, of its kind, is as good as can be, and so is the humour of the chapter in which is discussed the "erudition" of the private soldier, who tries to floor his fellows by private study of a cheap encyclopaedia; so also is the fun of "The New Rules," a situation in which Private Clark appears in the role of referee at a cricket match. B Company, with Private Clark as referee, plays G Company, and G Company wins the toss. " Crawley an' Spud Murphy was the first men in, an' I could see Spud didn't 'arf like None of your larks, Nobby,' sez Spud.= Go on, my man,' sez Nobby, very haughtily,, 'attend to your business, and don't talk to the referee.'—' If you give me out,' sez Spud, wettin"is hand an' ketchin' hold of the bat, ' you just look out for yourself?— ' Out! ' sez Nobby.—' What for?' roars Spud, an' all the
chaps come runnin' I warn you off the field,' sez Nobby firmly, ' for threateniu' the referee.' " And so, in one way and another, G Company is got rid of for eleven runs. The last extract is typical of the whole. It is all excellent fun; but is it, after all, the modern private soldier? Even the layman cannot make a mistake in thinking it a little too farcical. But if it is admittedly too farcical, and if, also, it is admittedly amusing, what value does it possess ? Only, we fear, the value of caricature. It is good caricature, but it does not come near the level necessary for the psychologist endeavouring to present a thoroughly convincing picture of the British private soldier. Mr. Wallace's private soldier is admirably amusing ; but simply because he is only amusing, he is unimportant.
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