MORBID WAR BOOKS

Evening Star, Issue 20586, 11 September 1930, Page 7

MORBID WAR BOOKS

MALIGNING THE SOLDIERS WRITERS' ATTITUDE , Tho present-day attitude toward war and those who wage it is that it brutalises and brings out the worst that is m human nature (says Percy G. Lug gate, a correspondent of the ‘ New Zealand Herald ’). This, no doubt is attributable in a large degree to the ood o) morbid war books that at pre -ont is deluging the world. Unfortunately most of the authors o. these works—no doubt for sales reasons —realising the morbid streak inherent m a large class of people, play on this -up till now little-known side of warfare—with a loud pedal. Their books are filled with detailed descriptions of prisoners executed while drugged with drink. • Episodes of cowardice, desertion, riots, and drunken looters crowd their pages in fantastic confusion, until decent-minded readers recoil in disgust. Tho, tendency of tho writers of these books to seek out tho few and far between sordid occurrences and thou lump them all together in one volume is deplorable and manifestly unjust. From it will steadily grow the impression that this was a common state of affairs, whereas really such things were rare, considering the millions of men under arms. * Take the authentic cases in proportion to tho number of men who fought in the war, and also in nroportion to tho number of years they fought, and it will bo seen that the percentage was really extraordinarily small. Soldiers are not angels—who is one these days ?—but they are certainly not the drunken, barbarous blackguards that these authors would have us believe, neither docs warfare make them so. In any given largo number of men —soldiers or civilians—there must always be a percentage of undesirables. In‘the argument, so often put forward by well-meaning people, that war brines out the worst in mankind, the indisputable fact that it also brings out very fine qualities is often lost sight of. In the last war men of all classes rose, time and again, to sublime heights ol selflessness, such as are not often seen in times of peace. Sublime heights are not alwavs spectacular or commented on, but then most of the men did very fine things as a matter of course, and would have resented comment. ■ Mateship, as expressed at the front, was the finest virtue I have ever seen •or expect to see. I shall never see a higher. During tho war the finer points In man showed up again and again m a manner impossible to realise in peace time. 1 thank God l lived to see it. No on© who did see it and experienced it could ever lose his faith in his own knd. To look round nowadays and seo on every side men concentrated in their own well-being, often to the detriment—in their selfish pursuit—of their own so-called friends, is saddening. But when I hear this class of individual —and their, numbers are increasing—speaking ignorantly of tho beastly, unmanly things they have learnt from these books as if they applied to -he bulk of our splendid forces, then L have to pocket my hands, take a good grip of myself, and walk away. For, of course, they don’t know, and I can’t blame them. No thinking man can truthfully say that he took an active front-line pan in the war and enjoyed it. .But to class our glorious lads of tho British Empire —who did their job, and did it well—with the fantastic creations of these morbid-minded, catch-penny sensation alists is an insult to the memory ol those who gave their all, and whose resting places he scattered by the hundred thousand far away from the land they fought so bravely to defend.