CORRESPONDENCE

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1930, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE

“ALL QUIET.” Si Fj .—Will you allow me, as a member of the N.Z.E.F., to mfcke a few observations upon the above talking picture. Critics have hailed “All Quiet” as the greatest drama of the war—one that will end wars, and ’• (this is ’ where I enter my .protest) one that portrays war in its grim reality. I was two years in France, and served with the; infantry through the Somme, 1916, Messines,' Passcheridaele, and the Somme again in 1918. I mention this merely to show that I know what • I aril talking about, and I say. that “All Quiet” no more depicts war or the way soldiers behave thffn a temperance advocate depicts the liquor traffic. In plain language, soldiers are represented, as brute beasts. War may be brutal and beastly —I will grant that it is. But the men who fought (not only for themselves) did not behave like brutes or beasts. Still less did they behave like lunatics. Who ever heard of a man—an experienced soldier—deliberately exposing _ himself over the parapet (as Paul does) in broad daylight and leisurely proceeding to catch a butterfly? The disgusting spectacle of men fighting for food and tearing it like wolves was unknown, I miake bold to say, on either side of the line. The Germans were thorough if nothing else, and the proper supply of food for . the army would be, as it was with us, a first and essential consideration. From a military point of view, such incidents are impossible of credence. i Tf short of food, the Germans in “All Quiet” seemed/ to have an abundance of coffins. I confess I never saw any. A soldier, in Kipling’s words, “Goes to his God like a soldier.” He is buried in his uniform. I will not enumerate the many improbabilities in “All -Quiet”—jthey .are legion—but why, when Paul and Kat were bombed by an aeroplane, did they slowly; and unconcernedly stroll along until , a bomb got one -of them? There- was plenty of cover, and they were .going nowhere in particular. What was- Piul doing in the shell hole with the Frenchman iu the middle of an advance? He was not wounded. Men who had lost an arm or a leg (or both) did not behave as‘Paul’s friends, neither were hospitals conducted as jthose shown us. The suggestion is an 1 outrage on the Medical Corps of both armies. The incident of the cookhouse and the dixie of beans is equally incredible. Why should not the company’s rations be served to the survivors? Of course, they should, and,, of course, they would. Himmeistross, I imagine, was thrown in as a makeweight. The author himself did not believe in him. He is an impossibility, and the troops who would lie down iu six inches of liquid mud on a parade., ground arc non-existent. Old “Kat” was the only man whose death caused me any grief. I don’t say I ever met him, but his trench-lore, concern for his younger comrades, and his calm acceptance of whatever the day brought forth, stamped him as a true soldier of any army. . Tn conclusion, what of the bright side of war? Is there none? Is a nation at war a nation degraded? .Why does the Church exhort “Onward, Christian Soldiers”? Yes, soldiers. Let there be no mistake. So long as human :beings inhabit the earth, so long will there be wars. “All Quiet” depicts the soldier as'a brute, but surely of all concerned '.witli the business of a war the standing of the soldier on/the field is not the least honourable. —I am, etc., 10/ xyz.