PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 71, 24 March 1934, Page 18

PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

"Testament of Youth," by Vera Brittain, is the most talked-of biography of the day, ana its publication has led to a.long controversy in England over the question of its form, style, and taste. Miss Brittahi has been calle.d on to defend her book and methods in person, a challenge which she answered brilliantly in a lecture delivered recently at the bookshop of Messrs. Bumpus, in London., The book w noteworthy for its sincerity, and frank memories of the shattering experiences that the war brought to the author. Sho was in her first year at Oxford in 1914, and left at 'the end of the year to enlist as a V.A.D., first serving in England, and then being posted abroad. In her autobiography, Miss Brittain is restrained by no feeble fastidiousness from presenting war and its attendant horrors in the I most graphic language. This fact, com-1 bined with her honest account of her emotional adventures and experiences has doubtless drawn forth the rebuke that the book is unnecessarily candid. I She however, rightly preferred truth to pleasant circumlocutions, and felt that experiences as vivid as her own should be presented in all their intimacy of love and pain. This was done on the author's realisation that no'picture of the war, written for posterity, would be complete which excluded its effect oh human psychology and the closest of human relationships. Her courage in facing this task at whatever cost in the hope of leaving behind a warning to the ordinary individual, must be acknowledged and admired. In its detail and suffering this personal record of sacrifice and bitterness must take its place -with the greatest examples of war literature. "Over the River," by John Galsworthy, published in the United States ,as "One More Biver," completes the third Forsyte trilogy. Throughout the history of the family Galsworthy has hela up a truthful mirror to English family life in the upper miadle classes. "Over the RiveI]-,".completed shortly before his death, makes a fitting ending to the series. It is the story of Dinny and Clare Cherrell; two sisters who, in different ways, have been unfortunate in their love. Clare-flies home from Ceylon to escape the brutality of her husband, Sir Gerald Corven, compromises herself (quite innocently), and is dragged through the Divorce Court. Although the book is perhaps not worthy to rank beside Galsworthy's greatest—(it seldom touches the peaks)—yet it pursues the even contemplative tenor of his best manner, and gives a remarkable picture of a family -whose traditions form too harsh a code for its younger members. The uneasy and bewildered way' in which Clare's . conservative parents accept, the consequences of her foolishness, and • their difficulties in adjusting their outlook, are portrayed with striking and masterly insight, ana with that complete absence of caricature, which, in Galsworthy, .we have come to take for granted; but which -is, nevertheless, a form of restraint not usually consistently practised even by our greatest writers. It is probably too early, even in view of his recent death, to form a just estimation of the effect Galsworthy has had on English letters. Perhaps his greatest claim to the recognition of posterity is not his beautiful and restrained style so much as the fact that he presents so true a picture of the class he portrays: the well-bred Englishman, not altogether at home in this bustling post-war world, disapproving to some extent of the activities of his children; yet with a pathetic realisation that the conditions of life have indeed changed-^-he finds it hard to agree that it is a change for the better. And Galsworthy has shown, quite unobtrusively, yet with very sure touches, that the fact is not that the older generation has become effete, but that it has been ousted from its old position by a newer, more pushing, more intolerant generation; and, unfortunately, one with less rigid ideas as to what constitutes good taste. But with it all. Galsworthy has always shown a firm conviction that beneath the surface the younger generation j \ve,re as good and fine men and women .as their parents; that they could -rise [to. an occasion; that they could, in a I crisis, display unsuspected qualities of sympathy and fortitude. The quietlydrawn character of Dinny Cherrell shows without any question Galsworthy's heartening faith in the newer generation; a faith which in itself is q, fit and worthy last message from so great a man of letters and so practised an observer of hia fellow-men.

There is one writer who has been "explained" more than enough, by his friends and near-friends; so it is not surprising to find Mr. Erie Gillett remarking in the "London Mercury" that "It would be pleasant to know that there are to be no more books about D. H. Lawrence."