_Author of "She Buildeth Her House" and "Routledge Rides Alone"_
(_Eight Editions_)
Well-known as one of the most successful short-story contributors to
American magazines, Will Levington Comfort awoke one morning a little
over a year ago to find himself famous as a long-story writer. Seldom
has the first novel of an author been accorded the very essence of
praise from the conservative critics as was Mr. Comfort's "Routledge
Rides Alone," acknowledged to be the best book of 1910.
While young in years, Mr. Comfort, who is thirty-three, is old in
experience. In 1898 he enlisted in the Fifth United States Cavalry, and
saw Cuban service in the Spanish-American War. The following year he
rode as a war correspondent in the Philippines a rise which resulted
from vivid letters written to newspapers from the battlefields and
prisons.
Stricken with fever, wearied of service and thinking of Home, he was
next ordered by cable up into China to watch the lid lifted from the
Legations at Peking. Here he saw General Liscum killed on the Tientsin
Wall and got his earliest glance of the Japanese in war. Another attack
of fever completely prostrated him and he was sent home on the hospital
ship "Relief."
In the interval between the Boxer Uprising and the Russo-Japanese War,
Mr. Comfort began to dwell upon the great fundamental facts of
world-politics. But the call of smoke and battle was too strong, and,
securing a berth as war-correspondent for a leading midwestern
newspaper, he returned to the far East and the scenes of the
Russo-Japanese conflict in 1904. He was present at the battle of
Liaoyang his description of which in "Routledge Rides Alone" fairly
overwhelms the reader.
Few novels of recent years have aroused the same enthusiasm as was
evoked by this story of "Routledge." Book reviewers both in this country
and in Europe have suggested that the book should win for its author the
Peace prize because it is one of the greatest and most effective
arguments against warfare that has ever been presented.