GERMAN WAR BOOKS

Hokitika Guardian, 31 August 1929, Page 3

GERMAN WAR BOOKS

(Exchange.) Many years ago Disraeli declared that an author can wield much more power than a statesman. Some vindication of the soundness of this statement may he discovered in the report .from Stockholm that the nut mr ol ’"“All Quiet on the Western Front” is to he awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. It is understood that Remarque’s only serious rival was Mr Kellogg, of the United States, the author of the Peace Pact'. Evidently the Swedes, who arc naturally a peace-loving nation, have not a very high opinion of the ; efficacy of pacts and agreements for the maintenance of peace. And, in some measure, they may be right. The nations, for example, encourage one another to disarm, while they devise ways and means to avoid a weakening of their own naval and military powers. The Kellogg Peace Pact itself has been described over-censoriously in the National Review as a humbug which bamboozles even those who attempt to have faith in it. The suspicion which is expressed in criticism of the Pact must cause no little anxiety to statesmen, and, in addition, may tend to create illfeeling among the nations. Jt is evident that “ All Quiet on tlm Western Front ” was written with an idea of preventing war. The book has no historical value, nor has it any connected narrative running through iL It- is intended simply as a- portrayal of many epis'odes of war with all their inhumanity, horror, and destruction, and as such may he of some service as a deterrent of war. Of course, however, in order to achieve his object, the author has presented a somewhat onesided picture, in a more recent publication, “ The Storm of Steel,” Lieutenant Junger, who has already analysed the psychology of war, portrays, with little ,of the “ deliberate brutality” of Remarque, the German soldier’s outward experiences. Junger states that “there are ideals in comparison with which the life of an individual or even of a people, has no weight.” This pronouncement would be more easily understood were it expressed in a concrete form dr in better detail, but it would seem that the writer does not regard war as a

Present interest in recollections of the Great War may be due to two causes, namely, that a new point of view is presented in the German version of the conflict, and also that we can now look back towards that titanic tragedy more calmly than wqs possible when we stood nearer to it. A point of some importance is whether members of the young generation are reading such books as these with a view to forming their own opinions in the matter. If they are, what emotions and opinions do they carry away? It is more probable that the majority of the readers of these hooks are found in the younger generation than among those who, having been involved in the struggle, are now endeavouring to trace some kind of order or relation in the hnppennings during their wild and mysterious experience.