_(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)_
In _The Irish on the Somme_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) Mr. MICHAEL
MACDONAGH continues the story which he began in _The Irish at
the Front_. He gives us more accounts of the heroism of his
fellow-countrymen in the titanic battles that have thrilled the minds
of men all the world over. He writes with a justifiable enthusiasm of
the deeds of these gallant Irishmen. The book stirs the blood like
the sound of a trumpet. In a war which has produced so many glorious
actions the Irish are second to none. Even those who do not agree
in every point with Mr. JOHN REDMOND will admit ungrudgingly that
he makes good the claims he puts forward in his introduction to Mr.
MACDONAGH'S book. He tells us that from Ireland 173,772 Irishmen are
serving in the Army and Navy, and that in addition at least 150,000
of the Irish race have joined the colours in Great Britain--no mean
record. Mr. MACDONAGH is as proud of the glory of the Ulstermen as
of that of Nationalist Ireland. He dedicates his book to the _carum
caput_ of Major WILLIE REDMOND.
* * * * *
Mr. E.B. OSBORN, who has written _The Maid with Wings, and other
Fantasies Grave to Gay_ (LANE), will perhaps not altogether thank me
for saving that among the _Other Fantasies_ I throughout preferred the
grave to the gay. _The Maid with Wings_ itself is a beautiful little
piece of imagination--the vision of the Maid of France comforting an
English boy during his last moments out in No Man's Land. The thing
is well and delicately done, with a reserve that may encourage the
judicious to hope for good work in the future from a pen that is (I
fancy) as yet somewhat new. On the other hand, I must confess that the
Gaiety left me (though this, of course, may be an isolated experience)
with sides unshaken. "Callisthenes at Cambridge," for example, is but
little removed from the article that, to my certain knowledge, has
padded school and 'Varsity magazines since such began to be. Still, I
liked the plea for Protection against foreign imports in literature
and art by way of helping the native producer, though even here some
condensation would, I thought, have sharpened the point. But, after
all, reviewers are dull dogs to move to laughter (as no doubt Mr.
OSBORN will now agree), so I hope he will rest content with my
genuine appreciation of his graver passages, and will be encouraged
to give us something more ambitious and less open to the suspicion
of book-making.
* * * * *
The _Letters of a Soldier: 1914-1915_ (CONSTABLE) are letters to
a mother; letters also of an artist, and full of an exquisite
sensibility, a fine candour. I can best give you an impression of the
charming personality of this young French soldier (who survived his
first great battle, to be reported missing after the counter-attack,
since when no news of him has reached his friends), by quoting little
sentences of his, and if you don't want to know more of him after
reading them then nothing I can say will be of any use: "The true
death would be to live in a conquered country, above all for me, whose
art would perish.... If you could only see the confidence of the
little forest animals, such as the field-mice! They were as pretty as
a Japanese print, with the inside of their ears like a rosy shell....
How is it possible to think of Schumann as a barbarian?... I am happy
to have felt myself responsive to all these blows, and my hope lies in
the thought that they will have forged my soul.... Spinoza is a most
valuable aid in the trenches.... We are in billets after the great
battle, and this time I saw it all. I did my duty; I knew that by the
feeling of my men for me. But the best are dead. We gained our object
... I send you my whole love. Whatever comes to pass, life has had its
beauty." And then no more.
* * * * *
If Mr. HAROLD LAKE'S account of the British forces in Macedonia is
supposed to supply an answer to a not unnatural query as to what they
are doing there, I am afraid one must take it that in fact they are
doing nothing in particular. An intelligent British public believes
that at least they are immobilising important enemy forces and perhaps
accomplishing several other useful things as well, but the writer, who
has actually been _In Salonica with Our Army_ (MELROSE), frankly lays
aside high considerations of policy and, seeing it all in desperately
foreshortened perspective, knows only that he and his fellows,
having volunteered to fight, are being called on instead to endure
a purgatorial routine of dust and dulness, mosquitoes, malaria and
night marches, and the grilling away of useless days in the society of
flies and lizards, with only, as a very occasional treat, the smallest
glimpse of anything resembling a Front. And all this is in a country
so desolated by centuries of war that in spite of obvious natural
fertility it is a sullen treeless desert--a desert of blight and
thistles, as profitless to our men as their periodically deferred
anticipations of a grand advance. A book that sets out to record
vacuity can hardly be crammed with thrilling literature, and I am
not going to pretend that Mr. LAKE has achieved the impossible. All
the same one found points--for instance, his desire that someone
(apparently England for choice!) should colonise Macedonia; and his
most right and appropriate plea for fairer recognition of those who
have sacrificed their health in the national service. A man, he holds,
who is to suffer all his life from malarial fever has done his bit no
less than plenty who bear the honourable insignia of the wounded in
battle and the snout of a mosquito may be as valorously encountered as
the bayonet of a Hun. And so say all of us.
* * * * *
I can read Miss MARY WEBB'S studies of the peasant mind with great
pleasure, but at the same time I am doubtful whether she is as
successful in _Gone to Earth_ (CONSTABLE) as she was in her first
novel, _The Golden Arrow_. My difficulty--and I hope it will not be
yours--was to believe in the power of _Hazel Woodus_ to make very
dissimilar men lose their hearts and heads. That _Jack Reddin_, a
dare-devil farmer with love for any sort of a chase in his blood,
should pursue her to the bitter end is intelligible enough, but why
_Edward Marston_, a rather anæmic minister, married her and then
forgave her escapades with _Reddin_ has me bothered. I can admire
Edward's forgiving spirit, but cannot altogether pity him when his
methodical congregation said straight and disagreeable things. In
fact my total inability to see _Hazel_ as _Edward_ saw her somewhat
detracted from my enjoyment of her history. That being said the
rest is, thank goodness, praise. Miss WEBB is a careful and sincere
workman, who, whether you believe or disbelieve in her characters,
writes with such real compassion for suffering that she cannot fail to
enlist your sympathy. Additionally her vein is original, and she only
needs a little more experience to make a great success of it.
* * * * *
Presumably the eleven stories in _The Loosing of the Lion's Whelps_
(MILLS AND BOON) are published for the first time, as we are not
given any notice to the contrary, and I can imagine that Mr. JOHN
OXENHAM'S many admirers will derive considerable pleasure from them.
Mr. OXENHAM'S weak points are that sometimes he fails to distinguish
between real pathos and sticky sentimentality, and that when he tries
his hand at telling a practical joke he does not know when to stop.
There are, however, stories in this volume which deserve unqualified
praise. The shortest, "How Half a Man Died," is the best; indeed, it
is a real gem. But "The Missing K.C.'s" has a genuine thrill in it;
and, in a very different manner, "A By-Product" is proof enough that
the author can get his effects all the more readily when he keeps his
own feelings under the strictest control. Mr. OXENHAM'S XI. has weak
points in it, but on the whole it is a good side.
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Farmer._ "DON'T YOU KNOW, YOU LITTLE THIEF, I
COULD GET YOU TEN YEARS IN JAIL FUR STEALIN' MY APPLES?"
_The Boy._ "EXCUSE ME, SIR, BUT YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY MISINFORMED. I
SHOULD COME UNDER THE FIRST OFFENDERS ACT."]
* * * * *
Another Impending Apology.
"John Kelly, Aughanduff, while going to Dernaseer was attacked on
the road by a bull belonging to Thomas Kelly, and knocked down
and had three ribs broken. He was attended by Dr. ----, and we
think such dangerous animals should not be allowed to wander at
large."--_Irish Paper_.
* * * * *
"J.A.M. required for St. Mark's Girls' School, Dublin."--_Irish
Times_.
A case for the FOOD CONTROLLER.
* * * * *