WAR BOOKS

Hokitika Guardian, 1 April 1930, Page 7

WAR BOOKS

THE PRESENT DELUGE

SIR IAX HAMILTON’S WARNING

LONDON, Feb. 13. . Speaking at the annual dinner of the .Metropolitan Area of the British Legion on Saturday, Sir lan Hamilton issued a warning against the present deluge of war books. “We are living through ticklish times,’’ be said. “For eleven years the nation has been out for peace, not at any price, but at almost any price. Now there are signs of a- reaction. “Reaction is the natural child of exaggeration out of excess. On several sides we are tempting reaction by overdoing peace propaganda.”

It was rather odd that at the very moment when there were more people in the world who had fought in war, been shelled almost out of their skins, been shpt at like Aunt Sallies, been wounded, gone over the top—surely it was extra queer that these elaborate attempts to exclude virtue, nobility, and even valour from' war. should choose this time to begin to, flourish like toadstools on the tombs of our dead heroes ? The blazing and ..largely deserved success of “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Journey’s End”, had shown publishers how, by employing fine writers and by cutting out more thoroughly any touches of selfsacrifice, devotion, or love of adventure, they could go one better with the pacifist public.

DEFEATIST BOOKS. “What is going to be the result of these defeatist books; of these attempts to lay the foundations of the temple of Peace upon fear of danger rather than upon fearlessness of danger? You and I should be able to answer that question. You are each the centre of a circle of friends who draw their views on war from you. I meet ex-soldiers by the thousand every week, and as colonel of a regiment interview young gentlemen from Oxford, Cambridge or Sandhurst who wish to become officers. “I can tell you that the result of trying to present war to the public as you might push the dirt end only of a stick under a man’s nose and pretend that was the • stick, the whole stick, and nothing but the stick—the result of this is, ethically speaking, so great a failure already that our younger generation are in danger of becoming Jingoes.” COLONEL B. C. FREYBERC’S VIEWS, Lieutenant-Colonel B. 0. Freyberg, V.C., spooking at a dinner of the Folkestone Chamber of Commerce, also referred to war books. “The flood of war books at'present is interesting for you and me,” he said. “We know what went on dur<* ing the war. We know what is true and what is untrue. But there is another generation growing up, and for their sake I deprecate most strongly any such suggestion' as that the people who fought in the war weie drunkards or cowards. In my foui years of war service I saw only five drunken men. I do not know of a single man shot for cowardice. “The language, I know, was rough, but, on the other side of the ledger, I can tell you there were greathearted men, and I saw them in thousands risk their lives daily. That is what I feel about the present war books. They are written from the wrong angle entirely.”

BOOKSELLERS WITHOUT HONOUR. Other people give their views in the correspondence columns of the “Daily Telegraph.” One writer says: “I can bear testimony to the fact that the average officer and man was not as he is depicted in many books, but ‘a very gallant gentleman,’ and that many a padre was not, as the author of a recent novel would have us believe, but a 'white’ man tlnough and through. “We need to get rid of that muddled thinking which assumes that because war is evil, therefore every evil thing which occurs in war has its sole cause in war; whereas, some things are due to the habits-and mentality formed in pre-war times, which showed themselves in such incidents as are depicted with nauseating, detail in certain war books. “This nrobjem of the war hook is one of the many which beset those who, like myself, try to earn their daily bread by providing good and healthy and clean literature to those who frequent our booksshops. We, too, must surely pause and think awhile, lest we Income ‘war booksellers without honour.’ ”

Another writer says: “It is surely far better to read the books of such authors as ‘Bartimaeus,' ‘Taffrail,’ lan Hav, ‘Sapper,’ Conan Doyle, and others—all clean, wholesome reading, portraying the high ideals of their subjects.”