TWO WAR BOOKS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 August 1929, Page 5

TWO WAR BOOKS

SHERRIFF AND REMARQUE. (By RICHARD JAMES in the Auckland Star.) The somewhat tiresome controversy which has followed upon the decision of the public libraries to ban Erich Remarque’s •“ All Quiet on the Western Front ” suggests a comparison between tliis novel and Mr R. C. Sherriff’s play, “Journey’s End,” which has been a< claimed as the outstanding drama or 1929. Both-novel and play deal with the Great War, but the methods adopted by the author of each are. entirely, different. Nor is this difference mere-, l.v one of technique, such as there must always be between fiction and drama; it is a fundamental difference in outlook and in treatment. And yet we have the word of those with actual war experience that each work gives a vivid picture of the soldier’s life.

Both Sherriff and Remarque practically dispense with plot, but there the likeness between their methods ends. To the least discerning reader it must be obvious that Remarque set himself out deliberately to write a realistic novel of the war. But I cannot think that Sherriff said that. I would rather suggest that his chief aim was to write an absorbing play, and that he chose .the late war tfor his subject as being that which he was best fitted to handle. He does not say with his late ffoe:( ‘ 1 War is a wicked thing: read this and see.” He rather says: “ This is a play: it is about the war; judge it for yourselves.” And the result, to my thinking, is infinitely more powerful.

THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR,

So absorbed is Remarque in his task —to achieve a terrible condemnation of warfare—that he lias concerned himself, with one side of the medal only. He lias shown us the ugliness of warfare—its terrors;, its filth, its cruel waste of youth and strength and talent. But fie lias nothing of the spirit of Rupert Brook, who wrote: —

Now, God he thanked Who has matched us with His hour, •’ And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.

He hns not shown us the nobleness of friendship and endeavour, of loyalty and of abnegation. He is entirely the propagandist:— .

“We overhaul the is to say, the ones that hqye a saw on the blunt edge. If the fallows over there catch a man with one of those , he’s killed ,at sight. In tlie next sector some of-our men were found. . .

’ Alter reading such a passage,: how good it is to hear what Osborne, middleaged and kindly, has to say to Raleigh, a young second-lieutenant newly arrived at the front line:— . A ‘I

“J.remember up at Wipers we had a maij |ltpt when lie was out \orr patrol. Just'mtydawn. We couldn’t get him in that night. He lay out there groaning all day. Next night three of our men crawled out to get him in. It. was so near the German trenches that they could have shot our fellows one by one. But, when our men began dragging,the wounded man back over the rough ground, a big German officer stood up in their trenches and called out: ‘Carry him! ’ —and our fellows stood up and carried the man back, and the German officer fired some lights for them to see by . . . Next day we blew each other’s trenches to blazes.”

The refreshing difference in outlook is obvious at once, and yet Sherriff paints just as compelling a picture of the futility and tragedy of the whole mad business. “ Next day we blew each other’s trenches to binges ” —what a commentary on the tragic absurdity off a system which allows such things to be!

“TO FORGET!” In order to give an understanding of the message that this play bears one must give some idea of the central situation. The whole of the action takes place in an officer’s dug-out. Raleigh, a boy straight from school, has been drafted to the company commanded by Stanhope, whom he knew intimately and greatly worshipped at Barford during pre-war days. War has changed Stanhope, who has become a “ bottle-a-night ” man, with a temper that is none .too mild. He is mere than friendly with Raleigh’s sister, and exercises his right of censorship over Raleigh’s first letter home, so that Madge may hear no evil reports of him. 'But Raleigh’s friendship is loyal, and he speaks in rapturous terms of his commander’s gallantry and of the love in which he is held by the men.' Then one night, Osborne is killed and Stanhope seeks to drown his sorrow at the death of his best friend in a wild carouse with his fellow officers; but Raleigh, shocked at this apparent callousness, holds aloof, and “feeds with the men.” Later, *he says to Stanhope: “How can I sit down and eat that when when Osborne’s lying—out there ” “My God!” replies Stanhope. “You think I don’t care—you think you’re the only soul that cares! .. . The one man I could trust—my best friend —the one man I could talk to as man to man—who understood everything—and you think I don’t care— ” And when Raleigh interrupts, he continues: “To forget, you little Tool—to forget! D’you understand? To forget! You think there’s no limit to what man can bear?” And then, in the end, the big attack comes, and Raleigh, mortally wounded, is tended devotedly by Stanhope in his last hour. There is reconciliation, and one knows that there will be a more

complete; one/ sqoxi—when Stanhope and Osborne and 'Raleigh and Trotter (dear, jhfdrbpping Trotter) will joke and smoke/ 1 and be all friends together at, “Journey’s End.” ; . 7 THE REUNION OF DEATH.

This is a story that Remarque could never tell. For him there is nothing comforting in the thought of death. But to Sherriff the reunion of death is obviously the greatest consolation which the war offers. * See how he makes Stanhope spy to Hibbert, who has had a bad attack of cowardice: “ Supposing the worst happened—supposing we were knocked right out? Think of all the chaps who’ve gone already. It can’t he very lonely, -therfei—with all those fellows. Sometimes I think it’s lonelier here.” - K’-C' M

And to Sherriff/:. .too, there is a romance about War*.TTt slits the imagination—the imagination | which makes Stanhope unable to look ati.the walls of the dug-out without-,thinking; df the strange unadventurous life which the earthworm leads beyond itliein— a wandering about - round the : stones and roots of trees.”- - ‘‘Therms something 1 rather romantic about it .all,” Osborne tells Raleigh. “'You |jrast always think of it like that if yon can. Think of it . all as—as romantic—it helps.” And that -is why lie reads “ Alice in Wonderland,” in the midst of warfare. . . . That, too—helps.