LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17687, 26 July 1919, Page 2

LITERATURE.

"BLIND ALLEY."* A BITTER BUT.' BRILLIANT STORY. Br Constant Reader. " Peril apa Ihis wax, all this desiro far conquest, all this struggling- for the right, is producing only another world tho eanio as tho old ono. Soma hate, scone love, same material desires, same vain spiritual aspirations. Pushing frontier posts about, and the samo rivers flowing unperturbed under now flags. Striving and killing, just to push along a road without an end, a blind alloy, right enough." In these three or four sentences are condensed and concentrated tho purpose, the motive, the idea, and the moral of Mr VV. L. George's brilliant but bitter wax novel, which bears the characteristic title "Blind Alley." "You said we'd come to a blind alley. And 3'ou talk as if _ all tho world had done so too." This fairly enough represents tho attitude of the author and the atmosphere of tho story, the scene of which is England, the action covering the period from tho evacuation of Gallipoli to the signing of thr» armistice. °

" Blind Alley" is a book which inevitably challenges comparison with "Mr Britling Sees It Through," and it is impossible* to avoid a comparison between the standpoints of tho two novelists; more especially since Mr W. L. George was, at the beginning of his iiterary oareer, an ardent dis ciple of Mr IL G. Wells. To-day Mr Wells has "got religion"—this latest development colouring all no more recent work—but Mr George still pursues the definitely materialistic way so clearly marked out by Mr Arnold Bennett and his school. Tho point reached by Mr Wells may best be illustrated in an extract from his latest story, " Tho Undying Fire," described as "a contemporary novel," which essay.: to put the Book of Job in twentieth century setting, with the essential problem unchanged by tho accumulated knowledge of three thousand yeare. Speaking through the mouth of his principal character, Job Huss, Mr Wells thus defines his religious belief: — This _ spirit that comes into life—it is more like a person than a thing, and so I call it He. And He is not a feature, nor an aspect of things, but a selection among things. . . . He seizes upon and brings out and confirms all that is generous in the natural impulses of the mind. He condemns cruelty and all evil.- . . . I will not pretend to explain what I cannot explain. It may be that God is as yet only toreshadowed in life. . . . To me it seems that the creativo desire that burns in me is a thing different in nature from the blind process of matter, is a force running oontrariwise to tho power of confusion. _. . But this I do know, that once it is lit in a man. then his mind is a light hcnceforth. It rules his conscience with compelling power. It summons him to live the residuo of his days working and fighting for the unity and release and . triumph of mankind. He may be mean still, and cowardly and vile still, but he. will know himself for what he is. . . . Some ancient phrases live marvellously within my heart, "I know that my Redeemer livcth." Mr George puts into the mouth of Sir Hugh Oakley, of Knapenden Place, retired hanker and county magnate, all his thoughts, ideas, and impressions of England in war time; and it is an exceedingly matcrialistio England that he depicts, without a trace of tile spiritual impulses wh:ch Mr Wells has been at such pains to discover. The Germans were cm the Marne and London was in hourly expectation of hearing thai Paris had faUen:—

Sir Hugh saw England living through a terror of the soul She had thrown over her old chivalrio id-eas in the hour of her need, she found decency didn't pay, and grew determined to be decent only if it paid. To the sound of her new war cry ' A Bolo! a Bolo!" at the behest of the Billings and Bottomleys who crowded her musio halls, her railway carriages, and especially her Kensington drawing rooms, she was asking for the revision of naturalisation certificates—that was for the dishonouring of her note? of handL The world was upsido down. Blunt England had made secret treaties: Lloyd George, ex-Radical, was accepting Protection; the Ministry of Munitions was establishing an embargo on the right of skilled men to move from firm to firm . . . they were building a world armed and tariffed, a world which delighted in hostility and hated Wilson. .- . Wilson the very hope of civilisation, because he wanted to tear their weapons from their bloody hands and unite them in a league of peace that had no respect for the vested interests in slaughter. Yes, in America lay the only hope. They, the youngest children of the world,' were not bound close by the bonds of hatrod in which the old empires had been nur-

tured. No .doubt they too had their covetousness, their flaunting Roosevclts, their greecly Rockefellers . . . but they had moral dreams; they were not the slaves of cocked hats, orders, epaulets, flags, aguillettes, the things for which men die. Wilson expressed all that, that desire to establish a stable world, where the individual would be free from the quarrel of State.

The characters in " Blind Alley" suggest some family relation to the characters in Mr Arnold Bennett's satirical comedy, "The Title." Sir Hugh and Lady Oakley, their daughter Monica who goes into a munitions factory and " carries on" with the head contractor, Frank Cottcnham,; their son Stephen who comes back wounded from the war; and Sylvia who marries and divorces husbands with alarming felicity; Westcott, tho pretty maid, who after an "affair" with an airman, finishes up in Piccadilly; and Cradoc the village grocer and conscientious objector, all give Mr George opportunity to initiate and carry on discussions reflective of English , life and opinion during the most trying months fA the war. Indeed " Blind Alley" may be accepted as a fairly faithful picture of the things which did not find their way into the newspapers but which nevertheless formed subjects for current conversation. And Mr George, while ostensibly writing a story, has contrived a caustic history of the war itself, conveyed in a series of etchings deeply bitten into the metal by the acid of actual occurrences. Stephen, after his return wounded from the front was a groat trial to his mother: Lady Oakley initiated a vigorous discussion on war books. " Ordeal by Battle " was her favourite, !but Mrs Moes held for " Between the Lines." " So graphic," she said, and at intervals " So graphio.' f Lady Jesmond Bpoko up for " Gallipoli." " It makes me realise tho jfoetry of the war." "Ah," said Mra Moss, "Boyd Cable iB so graphio." Then camo Stephen's outburst. Fortunately none save Louise, who sat by hia side, heard tho first words: "So graphic! eo Daily Graphic 1" His voice grow louder. " All that sort of thing," he said, "is tosh. Fleet street. Slush. There's only one kind of wax book; Haig sends you a ohapter of that every day. I can toll you that out there war books make us tired. Fellows out there don't want war books. They writ© 'em in Flanders ink, one quarter blood and three-quarters mud." Tho party stared at the young man, and for the first time Sir Hugh discerned in him a change. He looked pale under the sunburn, more hawk-like than ever about tho nose, as if savagery had crept into the flippant boy. Stephen started at his plate and went on. " There's things they don't put into the war books, because they aren't nice and cleaned up, and they'd interfero with the circulation. Fellows out there don't sit for Bairnsfather, stick on dummy whiskars, and juggle with grenades; they don't wash night and • morning and put on a clean shirt and a noblo Sunday .school expression as patented by Mr Eric Kennington, They aren't fighting for the right; fighting for their grab's more in their line. They don't talk about a clean peace; they bale their boota out and try to keep th*> rats off their face while they sleep." " Stephen, old chap," said Sir Hugh. But- tho youth went on. entranced: " Over here you think war's a revno. MElions of people sitting in tho stalls, in London, looking on. And people liko lan Hay up the idea that war's a manly sport, if only you keep your soul white, and play the game liko Christian gentleman, you'll come out with your self respect and half a dozen medals. Fight the Germans according to the precepts of Dr Arnold, fair aind square, a good blow between the eyes, and shako hands a fear, no malice. War books make me Esck. Those people would be pontic about Charles Peace. Fighting like gKivfclemen! The English Tommy as Nature's gentleman: Tdealistio bank cierfo! temporary gentlemen out thero, temporary fools hero! lot's pro-

tend; don't let's bo literary till it*B over, ! r u dono fighting. They don't fight like .knights m ft beastly tcrarnakut like rata in a common drain; that's more liko it, bayoneting mon in tho back instead of tho Irant, because its safer; that's moro liko it, . . Hitting below the belt when you got & ohanco, because it's softer. When the L&ndsdowno letter came out. Sir Hugh felt that somebody had at last expressed him. "He couldn't swallow Mr Hamsay Macdoaald, any moro than he could swallow tho patriotism of Miss Christabo] Pankhurst. They wore too rowdy for him, but Lord Landsdowne, so guarded in his proapocts to negotiate, bo animated by moderation, formulated wnat Sir Hugh mi glimpsed; that his class, which he still loved, must fall before anarchy if peace was not soon made." Stephen gave him no sympathy:— all the samo," he said, Torya and Radicals* 'They all hate the other side instead of loving their own. I suppose I'm £oing into politics; they give an opportunity to rajirour. and J suppose 111 go oo the democratic side because I'm fed ur with the old side, but 111 never pull it off with people who AV( ?t'ii es 01 collars, 111 be the same as it was out there. We were all l.G.'s, and we tried to carry on with the but it was no good." J.u"^; G " . te.rnp° -gentleman, I know NKT Hugh. " but what's an Oh, Not Even That. How those fellows hated us! They couldn't get the hang of the talk; they used to oall us old dear,' when they nx-ant 'old bean,' and that 'sort of tiling. Looked upon us as a lot of Eton and Oxford snobs, and clustered among themselves and wished they could get their pips off. Talk of mixing the classes! Sou can do it, but it 8 like mixing port and ginger ale; makes a rotten drink." There were trniea when Stephen felt ratner lonely. " His father was very little in the house, and strangely depressed; his moiiier adored hm, but she was war-mad, as if she were the victim of a religious .revival, of a war-religion comprising the fine manly faith of Mr Bottomley, tho revengefulness of Mir Haymakers, and the pure stucco of Mr lan Hay . . . clean living and no damned thinking. Monica was no good either ; since she had come back from Rochester she moved in a mechanical dream, doing silly jobs in pen and ink for her mother and father, and making endless ill-fitting garments for British prisoners who d done her no harm. Louise was the only good sport. After a row with one's mother, when one's mother had been raving against Huns, and Russians, and Poles, and everybody else, "and asking tho Home Office to have them driven out of Brighton and Maidenhead into the raid areas, so as to jolly well learn 'em to be foreigners, one could always go to Louise. Louise was the only creature he knew who lived above the battle.'

Towards the close of the book, there is an illuminating conversation between Monica and her father: " But, father, is there no joy of life for you? You didn't always talk like that. You ÜBed to bo glad when the spring came. You used to say that, whenever the world came alive again, so did you." Sir Hugh laughed. "Ah, yes; those were the days of spring onions, these are the days of spring offensives. What's the good of all this, coming up only to die' .Whafs the use of Mother Muddlepate, Nature, as they call her, breeding and breeding, only to kill?", Monica did not reply far a moment, then said in a shaky voice: "You're horrid, father, horrid, like the rest of you. Stephen's horrid, full of sneers. ... I think it's hateful; you take all the courage out of us. How can one believe in the war if one doesn't think it makes people finer?" "Why believe in it? said Sir Hugh. " Don't," cried Monioa, in a tone which puzzled him. Someone ... I was told that the war had brought the world to a blind alley. . . . Oh, don't take things away from me. I must believe in it, unless you oan give me something, else to believe ,'n." " Monica, dew," said Sir Hugh, taking her arm, " don't force yourself to believe : n things you don't believe in. The war's _ hero; so is smallpox; we must get rid of berth of them. Yes, you're .right. The world is a blind alley. And wo shan't get it out, get rid of war, I mean, for ever, unless we understand the war, unless we realise that it was engineered in the interests of separate nationality, and that, so long as sharp national differences are kept up, so long will war continue to break out. Monica tad broken with Cottenham, but not until the _ intrigue had badly compromised them both, and anything further must end in_ a divorce scandal. Subsequently Monioa had an offer of marriage, and the conversation loading up to the proposal illustrates the way in which the novelist brings into his story all the movements and happenings of the time—the month was June and the year 1918: "I wish I hadn't taken leave," said Hurn, "even though it was only four days. Every moment one feels we may go pop. We just saved it at Amiens; wo half saved it at Ypresj now they're bursting in on the south. . . . Paris may go. God knows what's going to happen." He paced the room agitatedly. "I must get back to-night. I can't believe we're going to be licked." "But surely you don't think that?"

"I don't know, I don't understand. It's incredible. If it hadn't been for Byng at Arras we were done. And yet we go on cracking , . . nearly. Are we going to crack for. good? Laugh at me if yon like, but many a night I've knelt in my dug-out and prayed." Monica was shocked. In her class one prayed in church on Sundays. So she bravely cribbed from Mr Harold Begbie: "They say the war has brought about a spiritual revival." "Yes," said the young man, grudgingly. " Sometimes I think so. Yes, perhaps. You wouldn't believe it, the most hardened sinners go down on their marrow-bones before going over the top. Some people call it fire insurance, but I'm not 60 sure. You know, when you're out there, with the eternal stars over your head in a sky black and deep as hell, all alone because you can't see your fellows, and nobody by your side except death, you can't help believing. It would bo too hideous not to. A world aa terrible as this must bo balanoed by a bettor one; without that it would topple over. And men who that morning were playing chess with you lying out in No Man's Land stiff in their blood, I can't believe they're still there". It's only their shadow that's lying tied in knots. One of our crowd started shouting out one night across the wire: ' Bertie! I say, Bertie, old beanl How are things up there? What? Not bo bad ; heaven's just topping? Yes, dear old thing, I hear. What's that? You say you've booked a pew for me. Right Oh 1 I shan't bo long.' They said he _ was mad." Monica looked at him with dilated eyes. Mad 1 Was Hum mad too? He terrified her. so again she beoame commonplace. "Oh." she said lightly, "of course, some people think' that one can talk to spirits. I suppose you've read 'Raymond'?" pi-urn stared at her as if thinking of something else. " ' Raymond,' " he said vaguely. ,r Yes, I skimmed through it the other day. It may be true." He drew his hand across his forehead. "Howcan one tell? Who cares whether this war is bringing us a purer and simpler domestic life? Or barbarism? Or whether indeed. Johannes is right, ond this is Armageddon, with _ Judgment Day before recess? We're alive. Can't wo take something while we're alive?" With a precipitancy thjjt shook her he added: "Monica, will you marry me?" " Blind Alley" can scarcely be called a novel in the strict sense of the word since tho stcry is mado subservient to the record of what England felt and experienced during tho war. Tho characters are mainly introduced for the purposo of expressing their opinions about the war. It is of interest to note that the experiences and opinions set down by Mr George havo had their parallel, almost without exception, in this dominion—a fact which renders tho novel of additional interest to New Zealand readers. This is a book which lends Hself liberally to quotation; and one of Sir Hugh's outbursts is peculiarly appropriate for the present moment. Cradoe, the conscientious objector. propounds tho principle fJi.it " nothing is worth fighting for, oxcept perhaps freedom." Whereupon Sir Hugh vehemently retorts: — Freedom I freedom! You Socialists have always got your mouths full of freedom. For a hundred years you've specialised in freedom, and there's hardly ono of you has stuck to his doctrine. Look at your own/leaders! At Hyodman, addrosainc roaruiting meetings, Will

Thorn© turned into a colonel; think of Herve, who for ten years before the war preached that the working men had no fatherland, advocated military strikes, and suggested that the proper billet for tie workmen's bullet is the back of his own officer; Herve supports this war with the aaine fury of eloquence; and Anatole Prance writes 30 volumes, in every one of which a sneer or a cry of hate greets every general who treads the boards: when thia war broke out he tries to enlist. Kropotkin was for the war; Soheidemann was for the war; Gorky was for the war. And your parties who got into power in opposition to war Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and all of you for generations have killed war with your mouth, camp along; 'with the bourgeosie. You didn't tell the soldiera to strike. Yoti didn't tell the workmen to strike. You didn't tell them to refuse taxes. No I All you Socialists, like the time servers. th<? lick-soittlcs you are, after all your talk at meetings, voted war oreditß am! supplied fodder to the guns. What's the good of you? Why I you can't even hold together in a nation, let alone in the world. Ycra quarrel, you wrangle, you burgeon off in sectional rivalry. In this country one can't ever find one's wa> among your Labour parties. _ Independent Labour parties. Trade Unions. Faibian Societies, British Socialist parties. Social Democratic parties. National Socialist parties. Trades Councils, National Guilds, and heaven knows what. For chaos you've only one remedy, and that's another chaos. If you do establish anything ifs either a Bolshevism where no man is safe and no man is fed, or some State Socialist machine run by Bureaucrats with brass buttons on their coats and electric buttons on their desks. You lead to a state where everything is regulated; where the London County Council will be controller of Paradise, where everything will be against the law because everything will ba law, and where thero will be no liberty because no man oan do anything he wants without slightly interfering with the equal liberties of others.