NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19622, 18 May 1929, Page 15

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

A GERMAN AT WAR. AU Quiet on til* W««tern Trout. By Erich Maria Bemarqne. (Translated from the Gorman fcy A. W. Wheen.) O. P. Pnttam's Sons, London.

The tremendous advertisement given to this book in Sir lan Hamilton's Ansae Day speech must have made some readers a little suspicious. Others would be alarmed bv its sales report — 275,000 copies in live or si* weeks —and others by such an account of the author as had found its way into the cables (and is reprinted, with amplifications, elsewhere on this page). There was the case also of Barbusse, and of nearly all the other men of talent —not excepting our own C. E. Montague—who began as artists and ended as flaming propagandists. But there was nothing at all to be afraid of in the case of Remarque. He is a propagandist like the others, and like most of them also a deliberate striver after striking effects. He can moridlse when moransings are uncalled tor, and be sentimental when he should simply be silent. He can kill off his friends one by one, though at judicious intervals, and in carefully chosen ways. Ho can even leave himself lying dead, again in an arranged attitude, on the last half page—an amasing blunder it it was his and not his publishers' or translator's. But when all these things have been said, as they really must be, the book remains the clearest, simplest, fairest, most vivid, and, with one exception. most moving picture of the war. from cither 6ide, that the war generation itself is htely to geC. Arnold Zweig, also a German, lias drawn a more terrible picture of 'war from one angle, and he is also a far deeper thinker than Remarque and a dweiler in a vaster world. But Remarque will reach tens of thousands who will never even learn Zweig s name. His experiences at tho front are the experiences of the average man. and he nas the rare and for an average man—for except as an artist this i® what he us—quite uncanny faculty of saying precisely what they were. ISo on© else has even approached the reality of his pictures of bombardments and night raids, or shown so clearly what a soldier will do for food and drink, what comradeship means among men under fire, how the nerves can be steeled and the mind dulled to an animal level of self-preserving alertness, what touching and also horrible things discipline can mean, what a soldier can suffer on leave, what he can think, of his schoolmasters, even of his parents and ail others who have tried to direct his pre-war mind, what it means to be wounded, and handled by doctors, and fussed over by nurses, what a recruit suffers from the publicity of the army, what lies soldiers will tell, what thefta they will commit, what obscenities they will tolerate or indulge in as month follows month and they revert slowly but inevitably to the cave. There is of course beauty in Remarque as "well as ugliness, but it is not easy to give an impression of this in a review. In addition to the love of comrades there is the silent, consuming, terrible love of parents, and almost as terrible, the j love of silent peasants for their home, i There are the eager but stifled thoughts of the future —the companionships that will never be broken, the pleasures that will be shared, the long days of rest that will never end if they "come out of the mess." There are humour and laughter, and it "will perhaps be suspected also that there is a realism of language which makes the hair 6tand on end, as in fact, and often without sufficient excuse, there is. But it is a big book, and a true one, and if Remarque were asked why he speaks so frequently of things that most people never mention he would say that they are not only mentioned by soldiers, but arc as real a factor in their lives as their letters from home _ and their daiiy dread of the front line.

BORN TO SORROW. Willow &ed Cypres®. C*tb«riß» X, V«fc&oyle. Longmans. This is a delicate and penetrating psychological study of the only child of prini, old-fashioned parent®, who, though devoted to her, do not understand her and suppress her so severely that life for her only begins when she is sent to a finishing school at seventeen. She returns home to sorrow in the sudden death of her father, and for some time devotes herself to her mother Later she falls in lore with and marries a boy, who goes to the war, and simultaneously with her mother's death she receives news of her husband's desertion. This sounds melodramatic, as in fact it is, but Miss Verchoyle writes so well that the book is better than its plot.

A NEW ZEALAND NOVEL. The Olrl from Mtson Creak. By Walter Smyth. Mills and Boon. As in Mr Smyth'3 previous book, the scene* of this exciting yarn is laid in a small town in the North Island of New Zealand. The plot is not remark-' able, but the action is brisk and un--I'ngging, the denouement quite unexpected. and the colonial small town background well portrayed. It can be said also that Mr Smyth's highway robbers are as good as anyone else's, his mysteries as mysterious, and hit country lasses and moonshine whisky quite up to thriller standards. Where to find them in New Zealand is, of course, a different story. A 13TH CENTURY SAILOR. The Keys of England. By W. Victor Cook. H*rr»p. This is a romance of English seamen at that time in the thirteenth century when Simon de Montfort was fighting Henry the Third. Garth Aylwyn is a captain in the Navy of the Ports and the boldest rover 0? that time. H« sides with de Montfort chiefly because his enemy sides with the kins, and hi# faithfulness to his cause ana to Rosamund Parr, dauehter of the Bailiff of Rye, leads amazing adventures. Mr Cook seems to be at home in his period, and knows how to pile , up the thrills.

A LAUGHTER MAKBL ««»• Collection T*4ajr." *r Saa Traver*. London: Jot* Jmmm. A new book by the author of Th* Cuckoo in tho Xest" and ''Rookery Nook." Everybody knows, and has laughed himself ill, over Mr Travvra's neat, high-speed farces, and all that anyone will want to know about "Th» Collection To-day'' is whether, after a noefui gap of three years in Kit writings, Mr Trarer# is as good as «tor. He is. These are immensely funny stories, full of action, brilliantly oooe structed, and it is perhaps easier t« see in them than in his longer tale® what is his chief virtue, namely, hi* alert and crafty style. In addition *• the amusing short stories there are some re-tellings of ancient mytlw—■ Little Red Riding Hood, Midas, The Sleeping Beauty—so "well dona and ao amusing that on© hopes Mr Tr avers will do more of them. It is pleasant, indeed, to find that Mr Travers, like Mr \Yodehouse, keeps his form, tad* indeed, is better than ever. LIAM O'FLAHERTYMJ NBW STORIES. "The Mountain Tavern; and OttK tooriaa.** By Llud OFlaherty. London: tmm> than Cap*. The admirers of Mr Liam O'Flahertgr will be delighted to find that bis W* book of short stories shows him at hia very best. His technique—which is » unique marriage of the photographic and the lyrical—is firmer than ever. Ho chronicles moments and tiny episodes. and has Mr A. E. Copparo'a enviable gift of making the littto elusive details of landscape and *#•» ther contribute ju>t the right amotiiil to the human and animal tragedies that he prefers to draw. "Birth," •'The Blacs Rabbit," "Prey," and '"The Little White Dog" are brilliant little animal studios, and there are some new and remarkable example* of tho author's observation of tragedy in the lives of Irish peasants and fishermen. This is n worthy successor it "Spring Sowing." COSTUMES BY EROS. Costumes By Ero«. Ry Oonrtd A*—. London: Jonathan Case. Mr Conrad Aiken is much better known in America than in England, but this pleasant volume of short stories will make him one of the am*ll group of writers whom thoae_ who l*k* good work look out for. His quality as a story-teller varies rathir widely, but his prose is always rich and distinguished. The episodes are slight, and the action is very limited, _ but there is all a good artist's care in the psychology of the people. The whimsical title means merely that these ai» studies of actions and situations which come of love, and it well nts this whimsical, pleasant, and f,v melancholy and wistful manner of »• author.