"COMPOUNDS OF FILTH"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 36, 11 August 1930, Page 3

"COMPOUNDS OF FILTH"

WAR BOOKS CONDEMNED

ROMAN CATHOLIC ATTACK

A defence of the honour of the soldieri of the Great War against the attacks of certain types of war books which have had wide circulation is made in the current issue of "The Month," the journal of tha Roman Catholic diocese of Auckland.

"It is a strange commentary on th« vagaries of popular taste that the publi» which buys war boobs of a type against which we cannot too strongly protest, is the same public which raises an outcry if hats are not raised before a cenotaph com? memorating the sacrifices of brave kin* men who laid down their lives in thi various fields of. the world conflict.'* "The Month" says: "During the Great War, and shortly afterwards,- we remember war books that were harmless and often humorous, as well s as others that showed in a clear light the gallantry and the patience of our troops. Of the former class were the books of lan Hay and Crosbie Garstin; of the latter, John Ays* cough's 'French Windows' and Sir Philip Gibbs's "The Soul of the War." Afterwards, there came a series of books more-or les« bitter and written to show up the futility of war. Another wave of books relating to the war were reflective, detached, and dispassionate. It seemed, then, that th» end of war books had come. ' STARK REALISM. "Suddenly, out of an open sky, another very distinct type of book relating to the war appeared. It based its claim to notice on the ground of 6tark realism. At the present time, books of this kind ar« following one another in such rapid succession that publishers claim that they are seriously affecting the sales of betterclass. novels. As a writer of war booki has said: "The present war books are conceived in dirt, and published for what that dirt will bring/ We deny their 'realism.' These nauseous publications would pro« claim t» the world that the men who fought our battles, and suffered, and died, were brutes and beasts, and their morals were on.a par with pigs. These are th« very heroes to whom we erected monuments in every city and town and village in our land. Yet when a book of this type is banned, or reprobated, ther« is a public outcry. The very sales figure* cry aloud that they serve a public that likes them. BOOKS BY WOMEN. "The chivalry of the days of old romanct may have been missing from the bloodstained mud o£ Flanders' fields, but our soldiers fought like men. Their death* , may have been wholesale and in ghastly form, but they did not die like dogs. No war chaplain or returned soldier can re» cognise the obscenity and blasphemy-that stalk unashamed through the pages of th» books of which we write, as being a reflex of conversational usage in the trenches, •or behind the lines. The life of the soldier was not an uninterrupted wallowing in immorality; and the dirt of the battle.^ field was not of the kind to which, thesa books give glaring prominence. ■ "If anything is worse than the book! written, by highly imaginative men who may or may not have heard a shot fared, it is the books by women. In these latter, the limits of decency are left so far belimd as to need a telescope of considerable magnitude to view them. It is tiiM our people rose up in their wrath and determined that no more such compounds of filth should pollute the minds of the war generation and those who have, and will come after. The time has long passed since the mudslingers should .have been forcibly removed from the precincts 01 tn« cenotaph. In common with decent citizens, to whom gratitude is an everyday garment, wo prefer to raise our liats.