"ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT."

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19666, 9 July 1929, Page 13

"ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT."

*0 TITO EBITOB CF TH* PJMSS. (Sir,—l read Mr Archer's criticisms ■n "All Quiet on the Western Front" la this morning's paper. For once I tgree with him. The book has just Dome my way. It is certainly a masterpiece in that it has depicted war for ta not in the abstract, not tollectively in armies and sections if armies; but individual war, the war as it was to one man who is * symbol to us of every man who went. Tho book raises us above all aationalitics to the plane, where we <*n all meet as human beings. The Russian prisoners—the starving French ■-all are dealt with as tenderly and honourably ag nun of his own side. As for the coarseness, the greatness of , book overshadows it and it bewraos quite a secondary matter. The i tathor claims that tho war was the tbttlute ruin of a generation, and I ttiok he has wilfully put in the coarsejust as it came his way, to show th*t» the ruin to those boys was as I Kwak from that source as from the *WjO visible effects of war. message tlinfc tho book sends out to, the world should be kept from Bone. By' all means put up a notice 'No ont> nnder 1H) please take out. Jkmgh it was a boy under 20 in the w»k who cried out his lifo while (Mgrene worked its way. Wo do not wißt to be cowards. Honour is the kaynotfr of the book and tenderness lo all weak things—but we do, all of mat to end wax. Let us not ban * book which mav end it,—Yours, etc., A WOMAN. My Bth, 1929.