But
unfortunately the inessentials--and among these I have the temerity to
include the great European War, or, at any rate, very much that is here
told of it--are so harrowing that they do not accord with the pleasant
story to which they are tacked on. I would not ask to be spared the
knowledge of anything faced by other people while I sat immune at home,
but there are many incidents which cannot with decency or dignity be
served up in fiction to add a thrill to the enjoyment of an hour's light
reading. Miss JOAN SUTHERLAND would have done well to have left detail
to more serious exponents, and to have discarded entirely one scene
of bestial cruelty which has no real bearing on her tale. Never in a
novel--and seldom in historical accounts of fighting--have I been asked
to wallow in so much gore. It is all the more regrettable because when
Miss SUTHERLAND uses her imagination on less horrible subjects she is
much more successful.
* * * * *
Mr. ARTHUR TURBERVILLE has taken almost over-elaborate pains with
his sketch of a type which must have been common enough in the new
armies--the young officer of pacifist leanings, who, intellectually
convinced of the futility of war and by no means out of sympathy with
the ultralogical or illogical (and anyway impossible) position of the
Conscientious Objector, yet joins up and makes the very best of a bad
job.
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