TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 21092, 26 May 1930, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE TIMES

Having been selected by his party as its leader in succession to Sir Joseph Ward, the Hon. G. W. Forbes becomes the new Prime Minister of New Zealand (states the New Zealand Herald). He has served a long apprenticeship for the position as member, as leader of a party in opposition and as acting-leader in office. On the personal side there is everything to be said in favour of the choice the United Party made. Mr'Forbes is deservedly acceptable personally in all quarters. He is of the type that makes many friends, few, if any, enemies. His reputation before elevation to Cabinet rank, maintained since that time, has been/ for plain speaking and plain dealing, for straightforward bearing, and for freedom from the bitterness and rancour which so often creeps into the cut-and-thrust of party politics. These are qualifies which make elevation to the highest office in a party and in Parliament the signal for general congratulations to a man who is certain to bear his honours modestly. But if the entry of the new Prime Miniscet iuto office is likely to be welcomed because so many wish him well personally, the task he will face when once confirmed in it cannot in any circumstances be so pleasant. To. play the role of successor to Sir Joseph Ward would not be easy for anyone whom the party could have chosen, and no exception can be made of Mr Forbes.

Novels about the War are mainly divisible into two kinds, The Times remarked in a leading article recently. The first have some sincerity about them. Either their authors have returned with a personal grudge against society and are determined to revenge themselves for their sufferings, expounded in not unflattering detad, and to write what will “vex somebody.” Or they are determined, like the old frescopainters when they pictured Hell, so to scare, horrify and revolt the reader that he shall never think of war again without trembling'and nausea. Fortunately for peace it has more honourable safeguards than a philosophy founded on disgust and fear. Fortunately for human nature it is never likely to fall so low as these writers hope, nor in the War itself did it sink at all commonly to the depths of their fevered caricatures. The War novelists in this class have no chance of giving us the truth along with the facts. They are bound to specialize in the discreditable. The second class of War novel, like the native guide, is merely selling the grisliness of the battlefield for what it will fetch while the market lasts. The recipe is simple. Emotion is recollected, re-arranged and heated up in tranquillity. All the ingredients of the convention go in —mud, oaths, explosions, blasphemy, injustice, cowardice, drink, physical horrors, sex, introspection, insanity. Given some narrative faculty, anyone could do it by this time. This is war of the “War books.” These meaningless atoms of driven humanity, surrendering to every fear and passion that comes, jockeyed by imbecile or malignant commanders and doomed to die for nothing, these, strange to remember, are our countrymen, and such is the Army in which they served. Stranger still, the Army was not defeated. Stranger again, a very large part of England to-day consists of the same men —and, since the “War books” are no respecters of sex —of the same women.