LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 123, 16 February 1918, Page 11

LIBER'S NOTE BOOK

A Frenchwoman on the Hun. A deadly indictment of the studied barbarity of the ILiiii invaders of ! France to the civil population, espeei- ! ally the unfortunate French women, is jto bo found in a little hook, "Six I Women and the Invasion," the narrativo of the. wnr experiences -of sorrio French.ladies who inhabited as much ! as they could of their country liouse at Mnrnv, neiir Luon, after the Germans had invaded their district. Apostrophising tho "one -unbearable quality of the Runs, their hypocritical selfrighteousness. 1 ' the author;; remark;— You resemble the. woman of whom the Bible says: "Sho wipes her mouth, and says, 1 have done no harm." Yon reject with a shrug of vonr shoulders those of your actions which might' make you uneasy. Your, accommodating consciences do awny with them, and they immediately fall into oblivion. But we aro sure to remember what you forget. . . Do not reject the title of Barbarians. It is the only one that suits you. You might have, been fine Barbarians, but for ft long time to come you will bo only' shabby civilised men. • In the Key of Blake. A spiritual, Blake-like touch is dominantly evident in a little volume of verse, "A Lap Pull of Seed," by Mas Plowman. Plere are somO fine lines from a poem entitled "Lament over the Body of a Nun": God, who is life and light,' Out of forebeing's night Created earth ..and crowned liis. work . with man. -' >' ' : In every pulse of human,vein The Everlasting lives, showing again The loveliness and order of His plan; For, liko the perfect artist, He In His creation dies, and wo Live as He lives In us, Who gives This seal to .'endless, ageless strife afresh— His living presence manifest in flesh. Whence whoso sacred - flesh despises, Then God's another' plan devises, And mdkes oblation to the Eternal Void. He wars against the living God: On Love's still-breathing heart linth trod; He worships night creation hath destroyed. A Notable War Book. Both _ English, French, and Ameri-can-reviewers soem to agree that Henri Borbusso's hook, "Lo Feu," tho English translation, of .which is entitled "Under lire, tho Story of a Squad," is essentially "the book of tho war m its grip and rcniorseless presentation of fact. James Douglas writes of the 1 English translator's work ill terms of highest praise, remarking:. Some unknown man of genius who calls himself Eitzwater Wfay has translated the supreme novel of the war, and hero it •is in its divine simplicity of truth, ufldraped and unbedizened. There are some ■ translations which are them- j selves originals, and this is one of them. I do not hesitate, to put it on the shelf beside Urquhart's "I'abclnis" or Fitzgen\ld's "Omar," for it is in my mind already a classic. Vainly' I grope for a clue to the identity of this creative translator, who is at once a man of letterSj. a master of prose, a specialist in Trench and English slang, a poet and a prophet mora terrible than. Tolstoy. Truth, of course, is the summit of satire, the apex of irony, and this, journal of a platoon is the nude truth of war as it is seon by a. common soldier who is also an artist and philosopher. But it is a story which is steeped in the beauty of comradeship, and it is told with the most flawlessly delicate art. To read thisbook is to understand. If any hook could kill war, this is the book. A Famous Quotation. Johnson's celebrated lines on Shakespeare, ' / "Existence saw him spurn hoi' bounded reign, And panting Time toil'd after, him in vain," which occur in the opening, section of tho prologue he wrote for Garrick to declaim at the opening of Drury Lane Theatre, havo once more caused p •literary controversy. A Mr. Georgo Loane, writing to "Tho Times," protested that he could not understand them. "We must be content," lie said, "with a quite vague suggestion of something infinite in Shakespeare's powers. Charles Lamb was content with that. Apologising in a letter for a misplaced sentence, he writes:—'Wo airy mercurial spirits, there is no keeping us in. Time (as waß said of ono of usKtoils after, us in vain. But why Time should so " .restrain mercurial spirits'does not appear." Thereupon a Major Butterworth wroto to point out that Lamb had on another occasion made a particularly happy reference to Johnson's lines. IJnder dato of January 8, 1811, in Crabb Robinson's Diary, he says, is the following entry: "Some ono, speaking of Shakespeare, mentioned his anachronism in which Hector speaks of Aristotle (Trpilus and Creseida, Aot 11, s. ii, 1, 166). 'That's what Johnson referred to,' said Lamb, when he wroto: — And panting O.'imc toiled after liim in vain.'" "Evorybody describes tho weaknesses of liumanityj and man's absurd aspects, by transferring, them to imaginary personalities. . . . Why? Because we know human weaknesses by ourselves, and, to clescribo them truthfully, must express them in ourselves, since a given weakness goes only with a given personality. Few writers have the capacity to do this. They strive so to delineate the personality to which they, transfer, their weaknesses as- to avoid recognising themselves. Would it not be better t-o say outright, 'This is tho kind of man I. am. If you do not liko me, I am sorry, but" God lias made mo so.' . . . Lot every man show just what he is, and thou what has been weak and jaughshle in him will become so no longer."—From Tolstoy's Diary, under the year 1851.