(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
_The German War Book_ (MURRAY) is a work in whose authenticity
many of us would have refused to believe this time last year. It is a
pity indeed that it was not then in the hands of all those who still
clung to the theory that the Prussian was a civilised and humane being.
However, now that everyone can read it, translated and with a wholly
admirable preface by Professor J. H. MORGAN, it is to be hoped
that the detestable little volume will have a wide publicity. True, it
can add little to our recent knowledge of the enemy of mankind; but it
is something to have his guiding principles set down upon the authority
of his own hand. Cynical is hardly an adequate epithet for them;
indeed I do not know that the word exists that could do full justice
to the compound of hypocrisy and calculated brutishness that makes up
this manual. It may at first strike the reader as surprising to find
himself confronted by sentiments almost, one might say, of moderation
and benevolence. He will ask with astonishment if the writer has not,
after all, been maligned. Before long, however, he will discover that
all this morality is very carefully made conditional, and that the
conditions are wide. In short, as the Preface puts it, the peculiar
logic of the book consists in "ostentatiously laying down unimpeachable
rules, and then quietly destroying them by debilitating exceptions."
For example, on the question of exposing the inhabitants of occupied
territory to the fire of their own troops--the now notorious Prussian
method of "women and children first"--the _War Book_, while admitting
pious distaste for such practice, blandly argues that its "main
justification" lies in its success. Thus, with sobs and tears, like
the walrus, the Great General Staff enumerates its suggested list of
serviceable infamies. At the day of reckoning what a witness will this
little book be! Out of their own mouths they stand here condemned
through all the ages.
* * * * *
Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD, chief of novelists-with-a-purpose,
vehemently eschews the detachment of the Art-for-Art's-Saker, while
a long and honourable practice has enabled her to make her stories
bear the burden of her theses much more comfortably than would seem
theoretically possible. _Delia Blanchflower_ (WARD, LOCK)
is a suffrage novel, dedicated with wholesome intent to the younger
generation, and if one compares the talented author's previous
record of uncompromising, and indeed rather truculent, anti-suffrage
utterances one may note (with approval or dismay) a considerable
broadening of view on the vexed question. For her attack here is
delivered exclusively on the militant position. Quite a number of
decent folk in her pages are suffragistically inclined, and there is
a general admission that the eager feet that throng the hill of the
Vote are not by any means uniformly shod in elastic-sided boots, if
one may speak a parable. It is a very notable admission and does the
writer honour; for such revisions are rare with veteran and committed
campaigners. The story is laid in the far-away era of the burnings of
cricket pavilions and the lesser country houses. _Delia_ is a beautiful
goddess-heiress of twenty-two, with eyes of flame and a will of steel,
a very agreeable and winning heroine. Her tutor, _Gertrude Marvell_,
the desperate villain of the piece, a brilliant fanatic (crossed in
love in early youth), wins the younger girl's affections and inspires
and accepts her dedication of self and fortune to the grim purposes of
the "Daughters of Revolt." _Mark Winnington_, her guardian, appointed
by her father to counteract the tutor's baleful influence, finds both
women a tough proposition. For _Gertrude_ has brains to back her
fanaticism, and _Delia_ is a spirited handful of a ward. Loyalty to her
consecration and to her friend outlast her belief in the methods of the
revolting ones. Her defences are finally ruined by Cupid, for _Mark_ is
a handsome athletic man of forty or so, a paragon of knightly courtesy
and persuasive speech and silences, and compares very favourably with
the policemen in Parliament Square. Poor _Gertrude_ makes a tragic
end in a fire of her own kindling, so that the moral for the younger
generation cannot be said to be set forth in ambiguous terms.
* * * * *
_Arundel_ (FISHER UNWIN) is one of those stories that begins
with a Prologue; and as this was only mildly interesting I began to
wonder whether I was going to be as richly entertained as one has by
now a right to expect from Mr. E. F. BENSON. But it appeared
that, like a cunning dramatist, he was only waiting till the audience
had settled into their seats; when this was done, up went the curtain
upon the play proper, and we were introduced to Arundel itself, an
abode of such unmixed and giddy joy that I have been chortling over the
memory of it ever since. Arundel was the house at Heathmoor where lived
_Mrs. Hancock_ and her daughter _Edith_; and _Mrs. Hancock_ herself,
and her house and her neighbourhood and her car and her servants and
her friends--all, in fact, that is hers, epitomize the Higher Suburbia
with a delicate and merciless satire that is beyond praise. I shall
hurry over the actual story, because that, though well and absorbingly
told, is of less value than the setting. Next door to the _Hancocks_
lived a blameless young man called _Edward_, whom for many reasons,
not least because their croquet-lawns, so to speak, "marched," _Mrs.
Hancock_ had chosen as her daughter's husband. So blamelessly, almost
without emotion, these were betrothed, walking among the asparagus beds
on a suitable May afternoon "ventilated by a breath of south-west wind
and warmed by a summer sun," and the course of their placid affection
would have run smooth enough but for the sudden arrival, out of the
Prologue, of _Elizabeth_, fiercely alive and compelling, the ideal
of poor _Edward's_ dreams. Naturally, therefore, there is the devil
to pay. But, good as all this is, it is _Mrs. Hancock_ who makes the
book, first, last and all the time. She is a gem of purest ray serene,
and my words that would praise her are impotent things. Only unlimited
quotation could do justice to her sleek self-deception and little
comfortable meannesses. In short, as a contemporary portrait, the
mistress of Arundel seems to be the best thing that Mr. BENSON
has yet given us; worth--if he will allow me to say so--a whole
race of _Dodos_. For comparison one turns instinctively to JANE
AUSTEN; and I can sound no higher praise.
Love never seems to run a smooth course for girls of the name of
_Joan_; their affairs of heart, whatever the final issue may be, have
complex beginnings and make difficult, at times dismal, progress. I
attribute the rejection of the great novel of my youth to the fact
that the heroine, a rosy-cheeked girl with no more serious problems in
life than the organisation of mixed hockey matches, was ineptly given
that unhappy name. Miss MARY AGNES HAMILTON'S _Joan Traquair_
is true to the type. From the start she is handicapped by a bullying
father, an invalid sister, a lack of means and an excess of artistic
temperament, the last of these being not just a casual tendency to
picture galleries and the opera, but the kind of restless passion
which causes people to prefer sunsets to meals and to neglect their
dress. In due course she falls in love with a man called _Sebastian_,
another name which, if less familiar, is yet a sufficient warning to
the world that its owner is bound to be a nuisance on the hearth. This
_Sebastian_ was an artist, ambitious and of course poor; worse, he had
a touch of genius and--worst of all--he knew it. Nevertheless _Joan_
became his wife, supposing that this was just the sort of man to make
her happy. Instead, he made her thoroughly miserable, at any rate for
a good long time; but I doubt if any reader, even with all the facts
before him, will anticipate exactly how he did it. I certainly didn't
myself, although I feel now that I ought to have done. The point of
_Yes_ (HEINEMANN) is both new and true; I recommend the book
with confidence to all interested in the Joans and Sebastians of this
world.
* * * * *
[Illustration: "NOT THOUGH THE SOLDIER KNEW SOMEONE HAD
BLUNDERED."]
* * * * *
Our Cheery Allies.