BOOKS OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2896, 7 October 1916, Page 13

BOOKS OF THE DAY

: A NOTABLE WAR BOOK. Hundreds of books have already been written on various phases of the war, but I cannot remember reading anything- which has loft such an impression of horror—and pity—on my mind as a little volume, "lied Gross and Iron Cross," by "A Doctor in, France," which has just been published liy Mr. John Murray. It'is tho record of a British doctor in charge of a French Bed Cross station at a little village in" Picardy. The sadly shattered church is used as a hospital, and many of the patients are Germans, wounded men. left behind by tho enemy who had pressed too far ahead and had temporarily retired. These German 6oldier and officer patients of the English doctor and his assistant (an old French doctor of tho village) are of many different types, and the author's account of their narratives and conversations ia poignantly interesting and convincing. One fact seems to stand prominently fortli, the' hatred in which so many of the German soldiers hold their officers. Some of tho patients are sheer brutes, ungrateful, ready and only too willing, wero they suddenly restored to health and strength, to pounce, tigerlike, upon their kind and hard-work-ing benefactors. ■ Some suffer frightful agonies. There is, for instance, a description of the final scenes in two tetanus cases .which is almost too terrible to read. There is a grim and awful irony in the fact that just before these two cases arrived the medical store-house, with its stock of soruni, morphia, and chloroform, had beon smashed to atoms by the enemy's shells. With some of the patients mental agony rivals that of tho body. There is, for instance, a giant TJhlan, lying shot through the spine, and with but a few hours to live, who had taken part in the liorriblo massacre at Dinant. Now he lies in mortal terror of being left alona, even for a moment. Why this dreadful fear? The author explains: ' Tho Doctor said he was powerless to" spare the man his self-inflicted torture. Helpless and silent he sat by the Uhlan's side, listening once more to the gruesome tale of the massacre of the eight hundred civilians at Dinant. Ho knew the terrible story through .the depositions of the few survivors; ho heard it now from the trembling lips of one of the executioners. It was all oarried out with order and precision; the officers were there, to see that the work was properly done, and that it all wont off without a bitch—the men were rather more drunk'than was good for them. One of his comrades was shot dead by an as he threw down his rifle when orders were given to fire on the defenceless crowd. They slaughtered the men first, several hundreds of them, mostly old men, but many mere boys. Then the women by hundreds—mothers and wives, daughters and sisters, young and old.' . How many he had shot he I did not know, he did not remember, nor i did lie seem to worry much about it. It was all about the old woman. He i saw .her running down the street, but lishetcould* not run-very fast; she was a very old woman — "Eine sehr ; alto. Frail," raid he. He'stabbed her as.slie was entering' a house; she fell on-the threshold. As ho bent, over her. face to see if she was dead, she opened-her oyes, and looked at him with the same eyes as his grandmother had looked at him the day he started for the war, and bid her farowcll in their village church— the same 'sad, humble eyes. I'ho old woman was lioldicglicr .prayer-book and her spectacle-case in her hand, ]ÜBt as his grandmother was holding her prayer- ' book and spectacle-case in her old hands. She was quite dsad, but she kept on looking at him. Thenceforth those dreadful eyes, the eyes-of that: murdered old woman, haunted the man by day and by night. In the midst of carousings, on tho march, when lying down at nigh);, when awakening in the morning, "she came regularly, and looked' at him" ju6t as his grandmother had come and looked at him when he was a boy—for he nevfer had known a mother. The chaplain tried to persuade him' that his delusions all came from tho Btomach, and that he had' nothing to worry about, that he was defending the Fatherland, etc., etc.; the German doctors gave him pills, "which made the old woman come a littlo later at night, and also in the day—every time he was alone" —nothing drove away the spectral woman with the sad, wandering eyes. And, now he lies on the -straw-covered floor of a church; around him groans and shrieks'and blood and dying men. "Did j'ou see anybody as you earner" he whispered with a shudder. "For God's sake stay with mo; Bhe will come back if you go arfay. Don't go away. For God's sake stay with me! ' ■I wonder, by the way, whetner any such horrible spectres, may yet stand beside tho Kaiser's bed! The final .scene in this tortured creature's career is terribly pathetic, for the kindly English doctor mercifully conjures up an imaginary vision of the Uhlan's grandmother praying for him at tiie altar praying, ho may find mercy.

Ho looked at his grandmother again. A few moments later the terror .vent out of his eye, and a peace fell over his anguished face.

incidentally we got a portrait of tho lordly (Prussian officer, a nobleman, and a most arrant ass. He is a collector of Frcncli pictures, miniatures, and curios generally irorii tho chateaux of tho district, and the ingenuousness of his egotism would bo amusing were it not, in actual .truth, not a littlo disgusting. Adalbert Von _ Schoon-lieim-R<umpelmayer knows his Bernhardt by heart, holds tho "All Highest of Potsdam" in fanatical royorence, has a wholesome contempt for everyono not of noble rank. But he proves himself singularly ignorant of the French and British character. On ono I point tho Doctor cnlightous him with a certain frankness. "I tako it for granted that you know Germany well, and that it is tho true feeling of your country you have laid before me." (The Hun had been expounding the gospel of German hate of.England.) "But when you speak of England s feeling towards Geruiany, I bolievo' you aro on less 6afo ground. You havo told me that tho English liato the Germans; but I venture to tell you that I do not believe they do." "Do you really believe they like us?" said Adalbert, . his face lit up by an unexpected hope. - "No, thoy do not like you, but they do not hate you; they loathe you!" If tho Gorman is loathed by tho British, how much more so by tho French? Thero are descriptions iu this book which I do not care to quote, descriptions of tho villainies coihmitted, apparently by express command of the German commanders, 'by tho Hun soldiory. And_ tlio_ horriblo meanness of some of thoir misdeeds! Perhaps not oven the most awful stories of German Cruelties in this book will nioro disgust tho reader than tho tale horo tolj Of the way in whioh a beautifully-fittcd-up children's play-room iu a pretty French chateau ill tho neighbourhood was treated by the Gormans. They sniashod all the poor children's toys, "stabbed tho teddy bears," a felt monkey had its head carefully severed fioni its

body, orery doll ill "the place was decapitated, even tho gaily-coloured prints on the -wall had beon deliberately befouled wifcli ink. The Doctor writes: There is a naino for the treacherous invasion and the merciless pillage of a peace-loving land, and thousands' of arms «jb raising the gallows where somo day the guilty shall 6wing. But what is the name for tho hatred , that stole into this nursery, what is tho expiation that awaits the unclean monster who came hero to crush the laughter of these three little children under his cloven foot? How am I to classify the murderer of a doll ? AVhat unknown power o£ darkness led him ta this room? Animal instinct? Certainly not, for .not even the infuriated ape, sinister forerunner of primitive man, would havo simulated murder in carrying out his work of wantom destruction! Huraa instinct? Certainly hot, for' not evon the Hun could have destroyed the little belongings of these fugitive children, left by them in trust, in trust to what is sacred to every living mail.

The fate of the three little owners of those decapitated dolls was, alas, when the author wrote, unknown. Hurriedly taken out of the chateau by an English nurso when the first shell shuck the building, thoy were put in a pony trap to be taken away to a neighbouring convent. ' Even as they left the chateau a shell burst in the yard;

"lliey wore not at all afraid. They thought it was fireworks." Poor littlo kiddies, the road they had to travel was ploughed up by shells, the convent itself was - destroyed—"since then nobody has seen or heard anything of them, nobody knows if they are dead or alive I" Yes, if . tho British hold the Bochos in loathing, what must the French think of the "blonde beasts" ?

Josephine, a ministering angel of a, French nurse, an equally self-sacrificing nun, the village Maire, and Anatole, a hunchback barber, aro minor figures in the narrative, but aro etched in so effectively as to dwell long in the memory. The record.eiids with the.relief of the village by a. regiment, tha French Cuirassiers. Tho joy of the epecaclo once exhausted the doctor returns to his work in the church.

"Nobody has 6tirred," said the nun. "They are just the same—thoy don't seem to mind anything. The trooper ove? there, whom you said would not live 'through the day, just opened liis eyes as the buglo sounded, but lie closed thorn again. The' lance-corporal is spitting blood, a whole pailful, and it is all over his bed. Josephine is sitting with him." "Ah! le sang, le sang! Quo Dieu punisse celui qui fait couler tant do sang." (Ahl tho -blood,,the Wood. May God punish him who has made all this blood to flow.)

The Doctor, in despair at witnessing so much human misery, begins almost to doubt the existence of an Almighty who does not arise in His wrath and 'punish those responsible for the blood shed, the sorrow, the unutterable woe he sees around him. Tho kind and patiently trusting sister reassures him. "God chooses His time," said the nun. I warmly commend "lied Cross and Iron Cross" to my readers. It is one of the most human, the most realistic, most convincing narratives for which the war has yet been responsible. (Note: The author's profits on the book will- lie handed to the French Bed Cross Fund'/- New Zealand iprice,; 3sr 6d.) ■■