ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE.

GERMAN WAR LETTER. The Prince of Wales, in a recent speech, is reported as having said that the most important lesson learned from the Great War was that, there should bo no question of chance of another war. Much of the war literature that has poured from the presses in tho last few years has emphasised this point, but the stress has been laid rather on tho gruesome horror nnd brutality of war as the reason for its extermination. " German Students' War Letters," a selection from tho home letters of over a hundred young university men, all of whom were killed in action, toaches the same lesson from another and a nobler point of view. It was tho aim of all war propaganda on either side to make it appear that tho nations fighting one another were so different in thought, character and temperament, as hardly to be able to claim a common humanity. Now, it would be absurd to deny certain outstanding differences between, for example, the German and the English mentality. Tho sentimentality and lack of reticence which will permit a young German law student, in writing to his " tendorly-loved parents," to declare that, " for a new, a greater and a better Fatherland, I gladly sacrifice my young life ' would appear to his English contemporary as an unthinkably " soppy" pieco of bad taste. But, dig down deeper, and it is the likoness, and not the difference, in the letters that is most striking.

Reasons for Volunteering. Might it not be Frank Bloomfield, of Ilampstead, instead of Frank Blumenfeld, of Hamburg, who thus explains his reasons for volunteering: " Of course, it was not from any enthusiasm for war in general, nor bccauso I thought it would be a fine thing to kill a great many people and otherwise distinguish myself. On tho contrary, I think that war is a very, very tevil thing, and 1 believo that, even in fliis caso, it might have been averted by a moro skilful diplomacy. But, now that it has been declared, I think it is a matter of course that one should feel oneself so much a member of the nation that ono must unite one's falc as closely as possible with that of tho whole. And, ovon if I were convinced that I could serve my Fatherland and its people better in peaco than in war, I should think

it just as perverse and impossible to let any such calculations weigh with me at tho present moment, as it would bo for a man going to the assistance of somebody who was drowning, to slop to consider who the drowning man was, and whether his own life %vcro not, perhaps, the moro valuable of the two. For what counts is always tho readiness to make a sacrifice, not the object for which the sacrifice is made."

Karl Josenhans, having taken the let

tor-case from a French soldier, whom he has buried, finds a letter from the poliu's sister to say she is sending him two pounds of chocolate, and some gloves to keep out tho rain. Ho concludes naively: " Everything just like it is with lis, nnd when one reads such things it quenches the last spark of hatred toward tho French, even if one still felt one. 1 ' There is a curious echo of Rupert Brooke's "Their sons they gave, their immortality" in 20-vear-old Wilhelm Wolter's argument, whether it is easier for the young men to face death than for the older ones, the fathers of families.

" I hardly think so, for snrli a man knows . . that lie will survive . . . in his children. . . But 1 have not yet had time for any harvest; and am I to bo allowed 110 reaping '!" Some Literary Passages.

In literary value tho extracts are naturally unequal, since it was the matter rather than the manner which determined

10 selection

But, as a contrast between

tho beauty of tranquility and tho beauty of terror, ono could hardly exrel a young flying man's description of the Somme. He wrote: " My heart swells when I look down on the sunlit earth and see tho mountain ranges stretched below mo and

tho streams finding their way through tho marvellous colour scheme of green woods and meadows, dark blue sea, violet mist on tho vanishing horizon and pink cloud. Tho almost flat landscape here on tho Somme is exceptionally beautiful from above. Tho broad valley, with its shimmering marshes; the villages, with their lush meadows; tho of cornfields; the roads pencilling delicato lines through this mosaic; the intervening shadows of hills: all this constitutes such a wealth of colour and form that one can hardly lako in all tho details at once.

" But, beyond the Somme, and farther north, the raging battle; the cliurncdnp earth; tho blazing and smoking rains; tho never-ceasing flashes nnd explosions of shells; the suddenly-rising columns of smoke; the constant roar of drum-fire, which smothers everything in dirt and snioko: this is a gruosomcly beautiful spectacle." Kinship oi Humanity. The publication of such a collection as this can do nothing but good. The letters reveal that essential kinship of humanity, which over-rides minor distinctions of nationality, colour, class and creed. There is still only ton much strife an-] enmity in the world, but it would bo well for 11s all if wo were animated by the spirit which inado young Johannes Iwcr write home in these words: " In all

tho hate by which I am surrounded, I feel more and more strongly tho power of Jove. And I believo in it more and more, and it "becomes every clearer to mo that tho aim of my future lifo must bo to plunge evor deeper into the ocean of lovo Real lovo is the only thing that transcends this world of outward appearance; it aiono is everlasting, and when one has grasped this, 0110 is lifted above tho so-called horror."

" German Students' War Letters," translated from the edition of Philip Witkop, by A. F. Wcdd. (Metluicn.) \ I