(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
In _Hearts of Alsace_ (SMITH, ELDER) your interest will be held less by
the actual story than by the profoundly moving and poignant picture that
Miss BETHAM-EDWARDS has drawn of life in the Reichsland under the
increasing burden of Prussian tyranny. It is a picture that one feels to
be absolutely true. The author writes of what she knows. This Alsatian
family--old _Jean Barthélemy_, the city father, crushed and embittered
by the fate of his loved Mulhouse; his two daughters and the circle of
their friends within the town--all live and move and look longingly
towards the West, as so many others must have done these forty and odd
years past. The plot, what there is of it, concerns the clandestine love
of _Claire_, the petted younger daughter of the Gley house, for an
officer in the conqueror's host, whom she had met during a visit to
Strasburg. _Claire_ marries her _Kurt_, a shady worthless knave, and, as
the book ends with the outbreak of war, is left to an unknown fate. Very
stirring are the chapters that tell of the tumult of emotion that broke
loose when the French guns were heard in Mulhouse; though here--as in
all those war stories whose only satisfactory end is the final confusion
of Kaiserdom--one feels that there is a chapter yet to be added. Miss
BETHAM-EDWARDS writes with all the vigour (I might add all the
garrulity) of intense personal feeling. Her book, as a race study, is a
real contribution to the literature of the War.
* * * * *
These are days in which some measure of sacrifice is rightly considered
the common duty of everyone, so long as it is sacrifice with an object.
Perhaps this consideration gives me less patience with the preposterous
kind, which, as a motive in fiction, usually consists in the hero
inviting all and sundry to trample upon his prospects and reputation.
This is what the chief character in _Proud Peter_ (HUTCHINSON) did. He
began by allowing it to be supposed that he was the father of his
brother's illegitimate child, the bright peculiar fatuousness of which
pretence was that thereby the said brother was enabled to marry, and
break the heart of, the heroine, whom, of course, Peter himself adored.
Also, many years after, when the child, now an objectionable young man,
nay more, an actor, was pursuing another heroine with his unwelcome
attentions, he very nearly spiked _Peter's_ guns, on being threatened,
by exclaiming, "I am thy son"--or words to that effect. Fortunately,
however, there existed, as I had somehow known would be the case, a
signed photograph that put all that right. Why, I wonder, is Mr. W. E.
NORRIS always so sharp with the dramatic profession? Was it not in one
of his earlier stories that somebody quite seriously questions whether a
good actor can also be a good man? On the whole, as you may have
gathered, while I should call Proud Peter a comfortable tale of the
eupeptic type, I enjoyed it rather less than other stories from the same
facile pen.
* * * * *
ARTHUR GREEN'S _The Story of a Prisoner of War_ (CHATTO AND WINDUS) can
be recommended to all who can still digest the uncooked facts. "I can
swear," he says, "that all that is written is Gospel truth," but without
any such assurance it would be impossible for even the most sceptical to
doubt the writer's honesty. Wounded and taken prisoner in August, 1914,
he suffered severely at the hands of the Germans, and his account of the
camp at Wittenburg does nothing to decrease one's loathing for that
pestilential spot. For many reasons it gives that a civilized race can
sink to such depths of cruelty and cowardice. Perhaps the only people to
whom it will give any comfort are those who have sent food and clothing
to our prisoners. But I am glad that this book came my way, because I
would choose to read facts of the War baldly written by a soldier rather
than any war fiction composed by imaginative civilians. "Of course I'm
not an author," he writes, and as far as grammar and spelling go it is
not for me to contradict him, but he has seen and suffered, and in these
days no one who has handled a bayonet need apologise for taking a turn
with a pen.
* * * * *
Encouraged, no doubt, by the reception accorded to that cheery little
volume, _Minor Horrors of War_, its author, Dr. A. E. SHIPLEY, has now
followed it with an equally entertaining sequel in More Minor Horrors
(SMITH, ELDER). This deals more especially with the pests attached to
the Senior Service, and familiar to those who go down to the sea in
ships--the Cockroach, the Mosquito, the Rat, the Biscuit-Weevil and
others. Of each Dr. SHIPLEY has some pleasant word of instruction or
comment to say, in his own highly entertaining manner. I like, for
example, his remark about the mosquito (whose infinite variety is
recognised in no fewer than five chapters), that, if he could talk, the
burden of his song would be that of the guests at the dinner-party in
_David Copperfield_--"Give us blood!" And I found good omen in the
cockroach world on learning that _Periplaneta Orientalis_, or the common
English sort, has _P. Germanica_ thoroughly beat in the matter of
empire-building. In short, Dr. SHIPLEY'S second volume, like his first,
combines instruction with amusement, and is well worth its modest
eighteen-pence to those on land who may wish to learn about the intimate
associates of their dear ones who are defending them upon the sea.
* * * * *
"In the Midst of Life----"
"Good Greengrocer and Mixed Business, sure living; death cause
of leaving."--_Provincial Paper._
* * * * *
[Illustration: _The Author (dictating)._ "'The room was filled with
dynamite, gun-cotton, nitro-glycerine, cans of petrol and other high
explosives. A train of powder had been laid and was swiftly burning its
way to the heap of combustibles. Clarence, tied to a post, listened to
the retreating footsteps of the Huns, a smile of contempt curling his
sensitive nostrils.' Clarence is in a tight place, Miss Brown, and I
don't know yet how we'll get him out of it. Can you suggest anything?"
_Amanuensis (brightly)._ "Why not have peace proclaimed?"]