BOOKS OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2717, 11 March 1916, Page 9

BOOKS OF THE DAY

ARNOLD BENNETT ON THE WAR. Mr. Arnold Bennett, the well-known novelist-, is one of the many English authors to wlion} special facilities have been afforded for studying the war at close quarters.::. He ; recently contributed to a London paper a series of articles on his . and these have ' oww .been collected and republished in a handy little-volume entitled "Over There—War Scenes on the Western Front" (Methuen and Co.). Mr. Bennett may not tell us much that is. new, as to mere facts, but here and there he invests a well-known incident' .with an intimate awl original touch which is simply- but dramatically eloquent. I can only spare space to"quote the concluding sentences'of;a book, every page of .which, though, totally devoid -of mere sensation mongering or theatricality, is • possessed of a certain grim and compelling interest., Mr., Bennett' writes on the awful scene of desolation bow to be Witnessed at Ypres When you are walking through -that'which was Ypres,,: : nothing ■ arouses a < stronger feeling—half . contempt, half anger—than the .thought, of- the mean,, miserable, . silly, childish, and grotesque excuses which the wit'of Germany has : invented for. her deliberately ' planned crime. And nothing arouses ; . a more grim and sweet satisfaction than the thought that she. has al- ; ready* had /the gravest reason to regret it, and, would, give her,head, not' to have , committed it. Despite . all - vauntings, all, facile chatterii'gs about the alleged co-operation" ; of an unknowable and.awful God; all shriekings of.unity and power,, al.I bellowings about the perfect as-' , suranco of victory, all loud countings of the fruit of victory—the., savage leaders of the deluded are ' shaking in their shoes before the anticipated sequel of an outrage ineffable alike in its barbarism and its idocy. '(New Zealand price,- Is. 6d.) '