LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3383, 15 January 1919, Page 53

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICES. " The Glory of the Trenches." By Coningsbv Dawson. London: John Lane. "The Bodley Head." (Cloth; 3a 6d.) This little book, by the son of a noted literary man, whose own experiences are told in "The Father of a Soldier," tells the effect of the war on one fighting man —a man who had been consistently trained in pacifist principles, and joined the Colours from a sense of duty and a conviction of the justice of his cause. The motto of the book is admirably illustrated by its contents : " The glory is all in the souls of the men; it's in nothing external." In " the souls of the men " and the realisation that they are souls, not merely bodies. That this should be the discovery wrought of the hideous trench warfare is indeed amazing. Mr Coningsby Dawson gives his own observation. In effect he says: Iwas Mind; now I see. And what has wrought this change? No sudden cataclysm! no migjjty preaching; but a slowly-growing vision of the Divine immanence, and the Guiding Hand always at work behind phenomena; nothing, yet everything : Now that I've been out of the fighting for a while I see that the religion is there —a .religion which will dominate the world when the war is ended. ' It's a religion in which men don't pray much. With me, before I went to the front, prayer was a habit. Out there I lost the habit. What one was doing seemed sufficient. I got the feeling that I might be meeting God at any moment, so I didn't need to be worrying Him all the time, hanging on to a spiritual telephone, and feeling slighted if he did not answer me directly I rang Him up. If. God was really interested in me, He didn't need constant reminding. When Ho had a world to manage it seemed best not to trouble Him with frivolous petitions, but to put my prayers into my work. That's how we all feel oxit t-here. I couldn't have told you how I saw God before I went to France. li/s strange. You g 6 away to the most damnable undertaking ever invented,

and you come back cleaner in spirit. The one thing that redeems the horror is that it makes a man momentarily big enough to be in sympathy with his Creator—he gets such glimpses of Him in his fellows. There was a time when 1 thought it was rather up to God to explain Himself to His creatures. Since then I have acquired the point of view of the soldier. I've learned discipline and my own total unimportance. In the army discipline gets possession of your soul. You learn to suppress yourself. To obey implicitly. To think of others before yourself. You learn to jump at an order, to forsake your own convenience at any hour of the day or night, to go forward on the most lonely and dangerous errand* without complaining. You learn that there is only one thing that count* In life, and only one thing you can take out of it—the spirit you have developed in encountering its difficulties. x*our body is nothing. It can be'smashed In a moment. How frail it is you never realise until you have seen men smashed. So you leam to tolerate the. body, to despise death, and to place all your reliance on courage, which, when it is found at its best, is the power to endure for the sake of others. Mr Coningsby Dawson then goes on to compare the feelings -with which a Tommy receives orders from Headquarters—of the meaning of which he is utterly ignorant, —with the way in which he thinks of God : '' As a commander-in-chief whom he has never seen, but whose orders he* blindly carries out: The religion of the trenches is not a> religion which analyses God with impertinent speculations. It is a religion which teache3 men to carry on stoutly and sayi "I've tried to do my bit *s best I know how. I expect God knows it. If I 'go west* to-day, He'll remember that—remember how I never let * pal down, and how I played the gara«. So I guess He'll forget about my sinsv and take me to Himself." That's the simple religion of the trenches as I have learned it—a Teligion . not without glory. To carry on as bravely as yon know how, and to trust God without worrying Him. This simple faith must inspire • with, strong hope and courage all who read of it, and realise how Widespread must be its effect on the millions of fighting m«4 now returning to their homes and bring* ing with them, in addition to their wound* and the remembrance of numberless sufferings, this strange "Glory" of child-like faith and absolute reliance on the mighty, unseen power, which, in spite of all *p« pearaiice, guides the affairs of man. In an earlier part of the book the author gives his experiences as a wounded man in a French hospital, and bears witness, to the heroism of the men and the tender-, ness of nurses and doctors. His own case was a lengthy one, and he was sent to his home in America to recruit. It was there, in the long quiet hours of convalescence, that he began to see the trus meaning of all he had been through, ana " x the Glory of the Trenches" burst upon him in its true significance. The vision began to grow; he saw things in truer perspective. A part of their secret was that througli experience in the trenches the men had learned to be self-forgetful j "but that was not all. The great thing was that they had found God and learned the meaning of true brotherhood. Before the war they were just common, ordinary; —very ordinary—men. Now they wer* heroes, who had overcome the world be* cause they had overcome themselves.

" St. Tom and the Dragon." By Ethel " Turner (Mrs H. R. Curlewis). Loftdon, Melbourne, etc. : Ward, Lock, and Co. (Cloth ; illustrated ; 55.) Tom St. Clair at the age of 16 is ap unusually thoughtful boy, with the outspoken directness of the true colonial Circumstances, have rendered him selfreliant and introspective. Although h* is good at games and takes off most of the class prizes, his mind is largely set pft higher and more serious things. In tbik case of little Anne Godwin, a beautiful, ill-used child of nine and her dissolute, drunken father (once a gentleman and » scholar), Tom is brought lace to face witfc the evils of drunkenness, bad housing mal-sanitation, and all the other "dv&gpapf' of slum life. The boy's generous in« etincts and humanitarian feelings are »| once fired and he enters upon -the gre»# crusade of social service. While still i,i school and under discipline, he yet su& > ceeds in touching the hearts and con« p sciences of many persons who have hither* to been indifferent to the sufferings of others, especially a wealthy, kindly dup tiller and his ambitious, extravagant wife, , who" have already discovered the unsatis« fying nature of mere money, and are ready —although they know it not—for better things. The little " St. Tom" comes quit* naturally to this boy-philosopher, and, though originally given in joke by hie school-fellows, marks the esteem which " they felt for one whose generous ana truthful nature was essentially simple and boyish. This is the moat serious story that " Ethel Turner" has yet given to her wide Australasian public. It is full of pretty and pathetic scenes connected" with the rescue of little Anne and Tom'* daring schemes for the personal out of certain most desirable reforms. With the author's usual skill and understanding ehe manipulates the difficult character of the hero, which might easily have degenerated into that of a prig or ai impudent young puppy, bat in its modesty and sincerity merely arouses admiration.It is the author's opinion that not niereto the war just over, but the period of soci.a| struggle and reconstruction on which th* world is now entering must largely be de> cided by the young men and warned " before they begin to want money mofs than anything else in the world," and while tliey are still able to realise the ugliness of greed, profiteering, unfair competition, and all the other crimes of Might against Right which threaten to overwhelm the whole world in universal ruin.