WAR BOOKS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 13

WAR BOOKS.

[The following, hy Mr H. M. Temlia*W| appears >■ Introdnetio* is » reseat BUas Mathews Catalogue, in which a special seettai is devoted to war books.]

There seems nothing mow to be said abont the books that portray oat, war. Enough has been said, and perhaps too much. Yet whan I looli again over their familiar baaks, ignored of late, I feel that very little, hitherto, has been said of their safe ject; not of the gist of the mmtt«% though it raises a deal of talk. It is a eommon complaint that tM great book of the war has yet to btj . written. I hope that is true. I feel sure it is. But perhaps they who h**sj been most insistent abont the fact ihtA it is overdue would not enjoy it if tt surprised them among this months new publications. Would it bear look* ing at? The police might gat busy* It might threaten to change the commos mind on which rests, in apparent security, much that is dear to us. So let the critics who are dubiorw over the best that has been done, 89 far, and are still looking for the great book of the war, the book as a Tolstoy would have written it, let them maitttain their patience and wait. Some of us are more asily satisfied. We eaa be content with what candid works about it we have. An honest record suffices. Plans and maps can put the. clock back. As to those four years, • which were the prelude to the great change in Europe, books about them that are not books have magic A date and the name of a place will transport a reader whose hold on the urgent present in indifferent. He becomes lost in a summer that is about as valid as Nineveh, but oddly enough its light is more vivid and betraying than that of the current day of the week. That casual and unbelievable daylight, for its look is common, which falls on little figures in the familiar landscape, who J are unaware they are ' actors in tragedy, is a significant reality at last. Its brightness is omi» nous and fixed now. The men are dead, or most of them, who were i» France and Gallipoli in 1914 and 1915, but they move again, in the very light of the time when their world without end 'was ending. Now we would learn, if we could, the hour and the spot when those men spoke, and exactly.what they said and did. The rummiest thing now to me is that even I heard some of them talk* ing, yet then the bright sky looked so much a firmament that I listened as I would to anybody else. Who-were they.! The direction in which Europe was.going veered slightly when a. man among some haycocks picked up a telephone at the only moment when, it could be effective, spoke, and put down the instrument, -having changed. t&e likelihood of history, Ut a cigarette, . and grinned at -a chance stranger,, which was me. Is there any "thriller," as we call such books, which has the fascination of General Spears' "Liaison," 1914? A few words about the casual episodes of those. days have implications, for some readers, that will not be sensed in the great book of the war, when it comes.. Let us leave that book to readers, who, a century hence—we will suppose that people then will be not only, interested in reading matter, but will have it—may sort over the books done in our years and will declare where the classics aire. It is no concern of ours. For us it is enough that some of our war books,are good, and most of a queer interest. Posterity will please itself. If you look over a bibTiograhy etf the will want the whole day for thaif— it is' astonishing to be reminded of so much that is not only . good to read, but good in itself , good compared with the best of the poetry and narrative of the years before. It is certain we have poetry, an dprose narrative with the war the subject, a* near to being the real right thing as most that the • Victorians contributed to literature, even though we have net, had the great book_ yet. : • '. Apart from literature there are very many records, without which a- collec* tion of-war books is incomplete. They are too often out of print, and it u curious that, books abont our war are still shy-of appearing on the barrows of Farringdon Street and elsewhere, if we -omit the once expensive autobiographical apologies and explanation* ; of th? Highly Important; and even, the, last, are not'without their instructive charm. But It is just those books, now not easily found, and not to be recora- . mended as. great literature, without whieh a historian of the years ij.9141918 will be as misguided as a provincial person anxious for bargains in a Sunday market of Houndsditeh* Without their qualifications and advice his hope and confidence will be his undoing. • How could he have guessed what is suggested, for example, in "The War Diary of a Square Peg! * Or let him peep into a little pamphlet entitled "A War Museum,*''which'ir mainly of quotations from' the newspaper Press of those years; and then remember that; the most casualties of battle were done to the mind. That new knowledge will lead' him such a pretty dance that he wiß begin to surmise the difficulty of. eves starting Ms history. And would he know something of the actuality ofthe battle front, for even that should concern him? Then he may pnt aside "All Quiet." "I-commend to his attention Chapter VII of "The History of 9th Division." Remarque never, reached the suggestion of horror therein described,.though that history, being official has no sensational intent... Or ; "Four Years on the Western Front *»- by a Rifleman is an artless and faithful record-worthy of the strict attention of a student who was not there, bnt is. There are scores of such volumes, among them Vol. XII of "The Official" History of Australia in the War," because it is all of photographs. Books that are not booksf Well, this particular sore will be within- my reach" till bookshelves fade out of my picture.