LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3265, 11 October 1916, Page 57

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES

"The Red Cross and the Iron Gross." By A Doctor in France. London: John

Murray. (Cloth; 2s 6d net.) This is tha most vivid, poignant, an<l vital story of # the war that we have yet met with. It'is already in its third ku" r ge edition, and selling rapidly. It is War as a doctor sees it, at close quarters, with all its grim and terrible reality and sombre pathos. Startling scenes from the great world tragedy are enacted in its pages. The period covered is only about 36 hours, and the scene an improvised hospital in a little French village during the retreat from Mons. But in that short time and that restricted area we find a perfect epitome of the monstrous crimes and agonised endurance of modern warfare, as practised and inflicted by the most civilised and cultured nation in the world. And the doctor is an impartial observer: fain would he hate the ".Bosches "; but he cannot. Some individuals he anathematises; for others he has only pity, even admiration. Of the rank and file'he declares: "They were all so forlorn, so patient, so humble, so grateful for the little one was able to do for them. They were all delighted to come across a man who knew their language. Those who could smile grinned all over with joyous surprise. Those who could speak, or nearly all of them, spoke with humiliation and shame of what they had witnessed and what they had done." And one of these poor dying fellows voluntarily gave up his one chance of life in order to warn the doctor of the treachery planned against him. But of the officers the writer tells a very different story. Against them he brings tl.o most deadly indictment which man can bring against man. Those I saw were sullen, arrogant, and often insolent: displeased with everything and everybody, and most difficult to deal with. They always spoke of their rank and their Iron Cross, as if it entitled them to privileges shared by no one else. They would not lie side by side with their own wounded men. They were well pleased with themselves and their doings, frightfulness and all, and never did I hear from any one of them a word which sounded like disapproval of the atrocities they had ordered and witnessed. On the contrary, I heard a captain say that the Belgians had been treated much too leniently, and that all the civil population ought to have been driven out of their country, and those who resisted shot on the spot. This officer was a Prussian. Goethe, who knew his country well, said, 'The Prussian is cruel by birth ; civilisation will make him ferocious."

lii the month of a dying Socialist the author puts his most terrible accusations,

abundantly born,-; cut by documentary evidence—orders, notebook?, etc.—now in the hands of our authorities, sufficient in authenticity and volume to constitute

"hanging evidence against several of the commanding German generals and officers of all ranks, showing them to be morally and legally responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of helpless civilians under the mo.st atrocious and aggravated conditions." But in the mouth of a dying man such accusations gain force and intensity, for "suffering has no nationality and Death wears no uniform; and there are neither friends nor foes in the borderland dreaded of all. "Most men fear death, all men fear dying." Said this man, when entreated to keep silent in order to get well:

"I must speak. lam free at last. You had bettor listen. My companions are silent so far; but the day will come when they also will speak out, and with a far stronger voice than mine. Two months ago I was an honest man. I had not willingly offended the laws of God or man. and I could look my wife straight in the face without fear or shame. Now T am a thief, a murderer, and a villain. T know I am damned. I know where I am going to, and I know who led the way. It was he who led us through the burning streets of Louvain and through the smoking ruins of what was once called Aerschot: it was a peaceful town when we entered it, and it was a blazing furnace when we left it. It was he who made us shoot the women and children at Dinant. and sprinkle their houses with petroleum. It was he who made us loot and plunder Termonde and, drunk with wine and blood and lust, break into their houses and outrage their women. . . . Do not trouble

about me, you Red Cross people, for I have shot lots of your wounded at Taurines. Don't read any Pater Nosters for me. Sister, for I raped one of the nuns of the Sacre Cceur. whose prayers did not help her any more than your prayers will help me. ... I was a cowardly fool to' obey so long." (Then, turning'to bin dead officer) "You were no coward. Yon were as brave as a man can be. but von were as cruel as a man can be. Cruel to us, cruel to your enemies, cruel li!;c the man-eating tiger. . . • Put maybe it was not you alone wbo led us on: maybe you, too. brave as you were, lived in fear of somebody—somebody more strong, more cruel even than yon."

Thru follows a bitter, scathing condemnation of the higher officials—colonels, generals, field-marsbnls, princes, kings, and ''you. Emperor I" "No tortures the devil ever inflicted on the damned can be more terrible than the torments you, with the name of God on your lips, made us inflict on righteous men and harmless women and children."

Then follows a curse on the Kaiser's methods and menace and personality that one shrinks from reproducing, though knowing well its absolute justification as a true, if pitiless, indictment of "the greatest destroyer of human life and happiness that the world has ever known." One of the most striking parts of a book

which is in every page a human document, is the doctor's witness to the soothing effects of religion on the dying men with whom he had to deal, as well as on the heroic helpers who, in spite of their own agony, tenderly waited on and served their most I ltter and cruel enemies. There is, indeed, a tone of deep and true religious feeling throughout the whole book, emphasising 'the victory of the Red Cross over the Iron Gross; of'the Nailed Hands over the Mailed Fist," It is not only the old cure who can say :

God lives for ever. His life has no beginning and no ending. He is Life itself. You and I will die, maybe today, maybe to-morrow; but'Life'cannot die. God cannot die. He is watching over us as long as we live, and when we are dead ho is watching over us still. b

And surely the day of reckoning will come

"Trench Yarns." By "Peter." London Melbourne, etc. : Cassell and Co

(Gloth ; Is net.) This is a book of sparkling war stories, especially dedicated to "Subalterns of the Line," by one who professes to be, and no doubt is, one of themselves. The yarns are all of the cheerful, optimistic order, and make quite good reading. One of the best is the story of "The Haunted Farm." A physical experience setting foith one of those inexplicable adventures in which nothing is seen by the physical eye, while the sense of invisible presences is' so overpowering that it induces a ghastly, nameless terror which can only be. explained by the theory that "a strong thought or a deep emotion never dies," but leaves its impress on surrounding things or places, to be in turn reproduced by them. "The Christmas Truce" strikes a' livelier note, and the final sketch "All's Well" contains a happy expression of confidence in the two services, and our gallant defenders generally:

Don't worry. Keep smiling. There is a little wireless message coming to you from every single sailor on the high seas, and every soldier in the muddy trenches, it' you are tuned to receive it. Jack and Tommy are both whispering into your ear : ''All's well."

'The Angel Beneath the Cross." By Margaret Scot, Melbourne : Specialt'v Press (Ltd.).' (Paper; 2s 6d.) "

This story is an attempt to describe the after-death conditions of the author herself, without making any attempt to explain how these have been obtained. Like all books of this nature, its appeal depends more on the reader than on the writer—that is to say, that in certain emotional states it might prove very acceptable, though to the ordinary critic there seems little to commend it. The speculations in this volume do not reach even the lowest of the "Heaven Worlds," and are chiefly concerned with the author's initial experiences as a childwoman on the "other side." On the whole the story strikes us as being altogether too material in its attitude towards the "unseen"; it is overlong, and many of the details are puerile in the extreme; but there are a few wise sayings and interesting suggestions, and the idea of constant pi ogress is steadily insisted on.