THE DARK SHADOW

Evening Star, Issue 19994, 11 October 1928, Page 5

THE DARK SHADOW

YOUTH'S REVOLT AGAINST WAR What are the young men of to-day thinking about war? And, in particular, what aro the reelings of those who survived the horrors ol the Great War? And what are they saying to young lads between eighteen and twenty-one? Have there been any frank statements in public print protesting against glib and thoughtless references to the next war, and the dreary, murderous pessimism which does more than half create the evils it anticipates? .Have young men entered into a. conspiracy of silence? No, by no means. .In magazine and book, in prose and poetry, they are uttering their souls and discharging their consciences. The world should read, and not merely mark, learn, and inwardly digest, but do something stark and effective if civilisation is not to bo blotted out a.. . savagery reign in the slime that is left.

One of the most horrific descriptions of experience is furnished hy Beverley Nichols in the Now York ‘ Herald Tribune.’ Under the title of Sad Young Englishmen ho tolls what the form master at his school said when Nichols proposed as the subject of an essay ‘ When i am Twenty-live.’ The master’s comment was:—“ You’ll none of you over bo twenty-five.” This was in 1917. Fathers and brothers had gone to the war, and at eighteen all those schoolboys would have to go. Nichols, having received permission to put a question, asked: “If wo shall none of us ever bo twenty-five, what is tho use of us learning how to write English? What is tho uso of learning anything at all?” The master’s answer was in the form of an imposition of a thousand lines from ‘ The Merchant of Venice.’ (Do such idiots still find work as masters?) Ho got tho thousand lines, and ten years later tho boy who wrote tho thousand lines sent him his autobiography, published under the name of “ Twenty-five,” and with the inscription, “To a False Prophet from a Former Disciple.” Ho now asserts that every young European has at tho back of his mind tho shadow of futility, or approaching damnation. Call it neurosis, call iv what you will, it is there, and has blighted every phase of young English art, letters, drama, and life. Said a brilliant young pianist to Nichols, remonstrating against the degradation of music into parodies and jazz:—“What was tho use of studying for years when at tho end there mayn’t he any audiences left, to play to? When the concert halls of Europe may bo blown to pieces? When I myself may have my fingers shot off, my eyes blinded, my arms gone? ” Nichols then describes a picture representing the new mechanised army of which England is so proud to-day. Tho young warriors had their faces covered with gas masks, their bodies clothed in steel and leather, and before them rolled a parade of ugly, monstrous tanks like ancient dragons of the prime. Sights like those make young men sad, for they show that every single inch of Europe is thickly sown with tho germs of war. Young men visualise far more acutely than the old what a future war would mean. It would end not only civilisation, but human existence itself. Nichols conversed on the subject with a, distinguished and elderly member of Parliament. In the course of a sharp discussion Nichols pointed out the common, vulgar, wrecking fallacies of the day, such as that methods of defence always advance as quickly as the methods of a.'rack. Then why not roof London in and get the people used to living iu holes and wearing gas masks? The parliamentarian dismissed the whole subject, as men generally do when they are beaten in argument, with a joke about the weather. Another friend, a Conner fellow student, had been led to a feeling of despair because ho was sick and weary of seeing tho streets full of beggars and ex-soldiers, willing to work, hut unable to got it. This neurosis is affecting the whole intellectual and artistic life of young England. Opera .seems dead, symphony concerts are dying, hut every seat for the Russian ballet is solci. Tho reason is that poets and artists are suffering from moral “ shell shock.” Strident orchestration and mechanised movements are the result. Stravinsky told Nichols tint on the cover of his first piano sonata lie had had printed in largo letters; —“ This sonata is to bo played with absolutely no expression whatever.” This is of a piece with the general feeling that anything is futile. One roads these things with a shudder and a sense of unspeakable depression. Docs it yield any comfort to say that the neurosis is inevitable reaction, and that time will bring back the saner outlook?

At this point there comes piping hot from the Press ‘ The Way of .Sacrifice.’ Its author is Fritz von Unruh, member of a Prussian military family which has long moved in Court circles. Entering a crack regiment, ho was soon struck by the futility of the life, wrote a play which became at once a success and a scandal, and when the war came ho was ordered to write r. propaganda novel which should inspire the army before Verdun and carry it on to victory. Instead of doing so ho wrote ‘ The Way of Sacrifice’ a most harrowing picture of modern fighting, realistic in the highest degree, and a merciless exposure c,f the madness of war.

The military authorities felt that his family was too influential for him to bo shot or oven disgraced, but ho was officially declared insane, and was only liberated when a Grand Duke appeared and spirited him off to his country estate.

‘ The Way of Sacrifice ’ thus became propaganda for peace. Type-written copies were circulated in the army, and could not be suppressed. It was read in the sodden trenches, and became a tremendous influence on the minds of the Gorman soldiers. Only when tho revolution came could it be printed and published. It is in brief the story of one [(articular company from the day of mobilisation to the long struggle before Verdun. Soldiers enduring tho miseries and agonies of warfare are

driven to speculate upon such ultimates as duly ami destiny and the future of ttie race. “ Who can explain the madness that blows through I,lm generations of mer? ” People who prate of the glories of war have surely never hern in scenes like those described in this tremendous book, scones that abound in blood ami corpses, limbless men ami blinded men, and everywhere officers urging storm troops, and everywhere shrieking and bursting shells ami flaming Hades. Youth’s revolt against war becomes more tense if one may judge by the number of now books in which young writers express themselves and .give free play to their convictions. Another of the most recent volumes is ‘ The Bitter Bud,’ by Jo' i Brophy (London, J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd.). It is a novel in which the war experiences of a young English soldier are narrated in a way which leaves no doubt that the author himself was cither the hero or at any raid had seen and felt the horrors of tho struggle in France. Like many books of the kind, it has a hitter tang, and does not spare t) . average British general, who, instead of qualifying for his job, had for years concentrated on polo and cricket. Tho love of sport on tiie part of officers lost many a soldier his life, even if u kept alive the sense of honesty and fair play.' What was to be the bitter endP. Would it take tho form of all the combatants going mad, _ and leaving nobody but the politicians and the staff to direct armies that had become mobs of gibbering idiots? “Metal would prevail over flesh and mind in the end, in the nd! ” Hope of anythipg less brutal seemed merely a delusion. Nevertheless, it were better to be tortured and killed in company with honest soldiers than to bo dishonoured in ease 1 arid fat living. “ Life could not buy selfrespect no death destroy it.” When the war ended tho two friends could not remember why they joined tho army. Wo all feel war’s horror, but there might be a worse; the horror _of cowardice and slavery, making possible the ultimate triumph of tho Beast.