DEMAND FOR WAR NOVELS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 51, 1 March 1930, Page 21

DEMAND FOR WAR NOVELS

Itis difficult to account for the quite ■extraordinary popularity of war novels during, 1929, writes S. P. B. Mais, in the "Daily Telegraph." He remarks that the public showed no interest whatever in Mr. A. P. Herbert's superb war novel, "Secret Battle," when it •appeared several years ago, and it is worth' noticing that when even so obvious a masterpiece as "The Case of Sergeant Grischa" first appeared in an English translation some fourteen months ago, it met with a very different reception from that accorded to "All' Quiet on the Western Front," a much inferior work, which followed a few months later.

There is no gauging tho public taste. All we know is that up to 1929 the public could not be got to read about the war at all. During 1929 it was difficult to get people to read books on any other subject. This wading kneedeep in stark horror may have done something to mould public opinion to set its face against all war. It certainly achieved the less good object of accustoming the eye to many unsavoury words that have seldom or never found their .way into print before. It is to bo hoped that there will never be a need for them to appear in print again.