COMRADES IN ARMS.

Waikato Times, Volume 117, Issue 19545, 6 April 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

COMRADES IN ARMS.

The War as f the Great Adventure. “COMRADES OF THE GREAT ADVENTURE.” By H. R. Williams. (Angus and Robortson.) “WATCHDOGS OF THE DEEP.” By T. M. Jones. (Angus and Robertson.) After seventeen years of peace Mr Williams looks .back almost with regret to the war: “■Civilian life,” he says, “has failed to furnish many returned men with all they deserve; peace has not been enriched with the comradeship they knew in the .army; baser ideals are preferred to the old unselfish spirit; and men do not know their fellows with the same intimacy as was possible in the army. Most have found the post-war years slipping by drab and uneventful.” It is to be feared that such an attitude of mind is becoming increasingly common. Unfortunately the war did not make the world lit for heroes to live in. Society apparently has only one use for heroes —to kill or maim them in a war. It is not difficult to explain the difficulty of the soldier in re-adjusting himself to civil life. The Army is a society in which anti-social behaviour is recognised and condemned far more consistently than in .civil life. The code enforced by common consent in the Army is simple and effective. It encourages generosity and unselfishness. It knows nothing of the fine distinctions which are made in civil life both by law and poi'blio opinion between commercial shrewdness and 'legal dishonesty. The man who tries “to put it across” his fel-low-soldier is liable to have the finger of scorn pointed at him. The unscrupulous financier or company promoter runs no such risk until he is unfortunate enough to trangress the legal limits of fraud. Hie may eat with judges and drink with politicians until that day comes. Considerations of this kind frequently ca-use the military man turned .civilian to long for the easy cameraderie of war. It is an old complaint, made seventy years ago by Tennyson:

Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? We have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not Its own; And lust of gain in the spirit of Cain, is It better or worse Than' the heart or the citizen hissing in war on bis own hearthstone?

There are other ways in which antisocial conduct Is condemned in war as it has never been -in peace. In war the nation has a job to do.. It needs its whole man-power to achieve the undertaking. Its government must therefore, in order to secure the favour of its men, recognise itheir rights. The wife and children left behind must be looked after. The troops home on leave must be cajoled, flattered and fussed over. Moreover the magnitude and importance of the job In hand demands the frequent sacrifice of private advantage for the advancement of the public cause. In peace of course the rights of the individual -must be respected, oven when' they 'conflict with the general good. In war private interests are not allowed this overriding power. But it is difficult, after all, to see why what -amounts to an indictment of the evils of peace should he used, as it is used by Mr Williams, as an argument in 'favour of war. If the State went to work on the troubles of peace with half the vigour that she lavished on war much of the ground of complaint would be removed. Enough has been said to indicate a general objection to 'Mr Williams’s thesis which is also the thesis implicit in the narrative of the straightforward and very untheoretioal Mr Jones. But it would be an injustice to leave it at that. Mr Williams’s book is an interesting and readable account of his military experiences first in Egypt and later in France. It Is plainly and simply written; and it represents 'the point of view of those “fierce Australians” of whom other war-books have much to say. To some extent their fierceness was only a legend which originated in their sturdy independence. The English general who saw 'the troops in Egypt said that they were a rough and undisciplined body of men and not fit for action. (He said so because the Australians in their anxiety to see a real live “brass hat” had crowded round his car but had forgotten to salute. Other illuminating accounts of hearty Australian drinking and full-merited Australian swearing help to portray the right picture. Mr Jones deals with life on board a submarine 'during the war. He is very matter of fact and, to tell the truth, even a 'little dull, partly because his story is overloaded with technical information. ' D.B.P.

THE AMOROUS ENGLISH. All About Love. “THE ENGLISH IN LOVE.” (Martin Seeker.)

The title of this book sounds vaguely comic. A Frenchman, one feels, would open it in llie expectation of a rich banquet of clumsy infelicities and pompous and stumbling passions. He would be disappointed. The hook is an anthology covering live centuries of expressions of and views about love, and if it reveals anything in particular it is that Hi ere is no fixed English attitude lo the subject. Every possiblo opinion (about whether people should fall in love, or why they do fall in *iove, or whether they do fall in love, or how, when, and where they fall in love) seems lo lie' expressed somewhere or oilier in those pages. There is the severe dictum of Dr. Johnson: “Love is only one of .many passions and it lias no great Influence on the sum of life.” There is the more tolerant argument of Mr Aklous Huxley: “ When all id said, is there a hotter indoor sport'.’ Bo frank with me; is there?" And Micro is, also of course the uncompromising romanticism of the lover who finds the world well lost. And this diversity of opinion about love itself is reflected In every aspect of the subject. .Marriage, for instance, evokes both Ihe opinion or Clnmcer (“No other egg is worth a bene") and that, of Karquhar: “I don’t think matrimony consistent with Ihe liberty of Ihe subject.” The uncompromisimr .moralist would doubtless Hurt in all Ibis sad evidence of the middled stale of our thinking on a very far-reaching department of Human life. The anthologists, indeed, hazard tho hope that “Ibis hook (Continued in next column.)

will do something to promote clear .thinking on the important subject of love.” The -reader will no doubt agree that this is badly needed. But he is far more likely to open the book in search of mere entertainment. Nor -should he be disappointed, for though this is obviously a book that cannot be read through at a sitting, there should Jbe something fin -its varied I; ■pages to suit all tastes. Apart, of j oou-rse, from the charm that springs !, from that very variety. Altogether an J: -admirable bedside book. D.H.M. ;