It is quite probable that the reader does not know of the death of
George Boon, and that "remains" before his name upon the title-page
will be greeted with a certain astonishment. In the ordinary course of
things, before the explosion of the war, the death of George Boon
would have been an event--oh! a three-quarters of a column or more in
the _Times_ event, and articles in the monthlies and reminiscences. As
it is, he is not so much dead as missing. Something happened at the
eleventh hour--I think it was chiefly the Admiralty report of the
fight off the Falkland Islands--that blew his obituary notices clean
out of the papers. And yet he was one of our most popular writers, and
in America I am told he was in the "hundred thousand class." But now
we think only of Lord Kitchener's hundred thousands.
It is no good pretending about it. The war has ended all that. Boon
died with his age. After the war there will be a new sort of
book-trade and a crop of new writers and a fresh tone, and everything
will be different. This is an obituary, of more than George Boon.... I
regard the outlook with profound dismay. I try to keep my mind off it
by drilling with the Shrewsbury last line of volunteers and training
down the excrescences of my physical style. When the war is over will
be time enough to consider the prospects of a superannuated man of
letters. We National Volunteers are now no mere soldiers on paper; we
have fairly washable badges by way of uniform; we have bought
ourselves dummy rifles; we have persuaded the War Office to give us a
reluctant recognition on the distinct understanding that we have
neither officers nor authority. In the event of an invasion, I
understand, we are to mobilize and ... do quite a number of useful
things. But until there is an invasion in actual progress, nothing is
to be decided more precisely than what this whiff of printer's
shrapnel, these four full stops, conveys....