FINAL WORD IN WAR BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 71, 20 September 1930, Page 25

FINAL WORD IN WAR BOOKS

"The last word in war Looks," is how Wyndham Lewis describes Eri.c Frobisher Hawkins-Drake's "Three Cheers For AH That," in an article in the "Daily Mail." Here, at. last, is a final and sufficient answer, to the calumnies against our brave lads at tho front broadcast by such recent memoirists as General Crozier, Mr. Eobert Graves, and others, says Lewis. Every man who fought will welcome it. Every cricketer will raise his cap. Well played, sir!—and I don't mean Kreisler. Mr. Hawkins-Drako occupied for nearly four years much the same portions of the Bcmme as I did myself, and was for a time in the ranks. His testimony is therefore valuable, and I can corroborate. I ask my little readers 'to dismiss from their minds the course and libidinous soldiery of recent war books und to concentrate on such a typical passage from Mr. Hawkins-Drako as this:— Fouilly-losrOies, 6th February, 1915: This morning Sergeant-Major Prune

came into our billet and asked Linseed il! he had finishing reading the pocket copy of Dean Stanley's "Life of Arnold," which he (Prune) had lent him. Linseed said he had. "If you like," said the sergeantmajor, "I will lend you another of Dean Stanley's works—'Lectures on the Eastern Church.' " Somebody else said: "The ideals introduced by Arnold at Kugby and adopted by the Army Council should have made caddishness impossible _ in this war, yet last night in the estaroinet I saw some cad wink at the landlady." I saw Prune frown. He merely said, however, "I doubt if you repeating such a thing about a fellow-soldier is quite good form," and walked out. Observe the stalwart figure of Ser-geant-Major Prune, one of the most pure-minded N.C.O.'s (Regular) in the Service, and a complete epitome of the Arnold ideal —clean, robust, manly, eheerfuln-ess, and no outmoded dogma —which permeated our fighting forces.