TRAGEDY AND COMEDY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 142, 16 June 1923, Page 19

TRAGEDY AND COMEDY

"Brmytage and the Cui-ate." By A. M. Cogswell. London: Edwin Arnold and Co. (Australasian Publishing Company, Sydney).

Mr. Cogswell has a sad story to tell in this book of the rough treatment given to weak and convalescing men of the British Army during the war. "Ertnytage" is just an ordinary and average man, and "The Curate" is just an ordinary curate, who had preached much about the duty of men to serve in the war before, they were compelled to go. He went himself as a private, although utterly unfitted for the work, and he was exactly 48 hours in the line when he was wounded in the leg, sent to "Blighty," and from there to a labour camp in Boulogne, as a C 2 man. The book relates to the C 2 period, combined with work and hospital treatment. Stephen Gwynne, the well-known writer, introduces* Mr. Cogswell's unusual book, and, in doing so, remarks : "I rejoice that the book should be published, for it is a desperate picture of the slavery inseparable from ttny such war of nations. . . . Generally, the book interested ma very greatly, and has left a mark on my mind. I think it would do the same for anyone who was in the war on who was affected personally by the war; and it does not leave i a desolating impression, though it contributes to one's fervent resolve to prevent, if it be humanly possible, the whole thing from ever happening again." The treatment to which the. British convalescents were subjected to as described in this book is borne out by statements made by our own New Zealand men on return. When Stephen Gwynne refers to the "fervent resolve to prevent the whole thing happening again," he is writing of the "brutal stupidity," as he bluntly calls it, shown by those in high authority in imposing suck absurd tasks on sick men of filling bags with pebbles from the beach, carrying them to a heap in the oamp.and picking them up a?ain. He shows how some cruel blunders \vere committed by the British Army in its treatment of men in convalescent and labour camps that were avoided by the French. "All the hustling up, th& smartening, was a damnable pedantry the French, who knew their business did not so worry men." "Eraytage and the Curate" is asad book, and it makes one's blood boil at times to read it, because of what seems to clearly to have been almost wholly indefensible tyranny How ever, there is plenty of humour in the story, and a not improbable love ep; sode. It seems hard how such a novel should have the conventional happy ending, but it has.