HONOUR OF SOLDIERS

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1930, Page 2

HONOUR OF SOLDIERS

BEHAVIOUR IN GREAT WAR. RECENT WAR BOOKS ATTACKED. A defence of. the honour of the soldiers of the Great War against the attacks of certain types oi war books which have had wide circulation is im.de in the current issue of The Month, the journal of the Roman Catholic diocese of Auckland. . “It is a strange commentary on the vagaries of popular taste that the public which buys war ■ books ui a type against whicn we cannot too strongly protest is the same public which raises an outcry if hats are not raised before a cenotaph commemorating the sacrifices of brave k’nsmen who .aid down their lives in the various fields of the world conflict.” The Month says: “During, the Great War, and shortly afterwards, we remember war books that were harmless and often humorous, as well as others that showed in a clear light the gallantry and the patience of our troops. Of the former class were the books of lan Hay and Crosbie Garstin; of the latter, John Ayscough’s ‘French Windows and Sir Philip Gibbs’ ‘The Soul of the War? Afterwards, there came a series of books more or less bitter and written to show up the futility of war. Another Atve of books relating to the war were reflective, detached and dispassionate. It seemed, then, that the end of war books had come. “Suddenly, out of an open sky, an- ( ter very distinct type of book relating to the war appeared. It based its claim tv notice on the ground of stark realism. At the present time,, books of this kind are following one another in such rapid succession that publishers claim chat they are seriously affecting the sales of better class novels. As a writer of war books iias said: ‘The present war books are conceived in dirt, and publirhed for what that dirt will bring? We deny their ‘realism.’ These nauseous publications would proclaim to the world that the men who fought uur battles, and suffered, and died, were brutes and beasts, and their morals were on a par with pigs. These are the very heroes, to whom we have erected'monuments in every city and town and village in our land. Yet when a book of this type is banned, or reprobated, there is a public outcry. The very sales figures cry aloud that they se>we a public that likes them.

“The chivalry of the days of old romance may have been missing from the blood-stained, mud of Flanderp fields, but our soldiers fought like men. Their deaths may have been wholesome and in ghastly form, but they did not die like dogs. No war chaplain or returned soldier can recognise the obscenity and blasphemy that stalk unashamed through th" pages of the books of which we write, as being a reflex of conversational usage in the trenches, or behind the lines. The life of the soldier w -B not an uninterrupted wallowing in immorality and the dirt oi the battlefield was not of the kind to. which these books give glaring prominence. “If anything is worse than the books written by highly imaginative men who may or may not have heard a shot fired, it is the books by women. In these latter, the limits of decency are left so.far behind as to need a-telescope of considerable magnitude to view them. It is time our people rose up ini their wrath and determined that no < more such compounds of filth should pollute the minds of the war generation and those who have, and will, come after. The time has long passed since the mudrTngers should have been forcibly removed from the precincts of the cenotaph. In common with decent citizens, to whom gratitude is an everyday garment, we prefer to raise our hats.”