RECENT WAR BOOKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20481, 5 February 1930, Page 11

RECENT WAR BOOKS.

PROTEST BY lAN HAY. BELITTLING THE SOLDIER. LONDON. Feb. 3. Major lan Hay Beith, whose pen name is " lan Hay," in addressing a congregation of men in Coventry Cathedral made a spirited protest' against books which belittle tho soldier. It was said that a proper hatred of war had recently developed, but the natural reprobation of war was being allowed to obscure peoplo's judgment to such an extent that they were inclined to transfer the horror of war itself to tho men who fought. The soldier had suffered more tips and downs in popular esteem than any man. He could not help feeling that he was being unnecessarily bolitfled at present. Indeed, he was being insulted. "Wo are submerged," said Major Beith, " by a flood of so-called war books, which depict tho men who fought for us in the late war for the most part as brutes and beasts, living like pigs and dying like dogs. Sorno of these books were conceived in dirt, and published for tho profit, that dirt will bring." Tho most admirable thing about tho British soldier was his unconquerable cheerfulness in tho utmost squalor and discomfort, even in tho faco of death itself, but it was sometimes said to bo a representative picture of the British soldier .that ho kept up his courage by drink. Tho wotild-bo realists overlooked this, in order to express a genuine horror of war. It was tho soldier's desire that, he should not bo painted in the blackest colour,