OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)
In No Man's Land (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is revealed a breadth of vision which may astonish some of us who have been inclined to regard SAPPER as merely a talented story-teller. Among the writers on the War I place him first, for the simple reason that I like him best; and I am not at all sure that I should like him any better if he cured himself of his cardinal fault. With his tongue in his cheek he dashes away from his story to give us either a long or short digression; no more confirmed digressionist ever put pen to paper, and the wonderful thing is that these wanton excursions are worth following. True he often apologises for them, but I do not think that we need take these apologies seriously. This book is divided into four parts, "The Way to the Land," "The Land," "Seed Time," and "Harvest," and in "Seed Time," at any rate, we have a series of chapters which require not only to be read but to be thought over. But whether he is out for fun, as in "Bendigo Jones—His Tree," or for pathos, as in "Morphia," he obtains his effects without the smallest appearance of effort. And I reserve a special word of praise for "My Lady of the Jasmine," and commend it to the notice of those pessimists who hold that only the French and the Americans can write a good short story. Thank the powers that be for SAPPER.
The Loom of Youth (GRANT RICHARDS) is yet another school story, but with a difference, the difference being, partly at least, that it is written by one who has so lately ceased to belong himself to the life described that his account must carry an authority altogether unusual. Here, one feels, is that strange and so-soon-forgotten country revealed for us from within, and by a native denizen. For this alone Mr. ALEC WAUGH'S book merits the epithet remarkable; indeed, considered as the work of "a lad of seventeen," its vitality, discretion and general maturity of tone seem little short of amazing. Realism is the note of it. The modern schoolboy, as Mr. WAUGH paints him, employs, for example, a vocabulary whose frequency, and freedom may possibly startle the parental reader. Apart from this one might call the book an indictment of hero-worship, as heroism is understood in a society where (still!) athletic eminence places its possessor above all laws. This in itself is so old an educational problem that it is interesting to find it handled afresh in a study of ultra-modern boyhood. The actual matter of the tale, individual character in its reaction to system, is naturally common to most school stories; but even here Mr. WAUGH has contrived to give an ending both original and sincere. Prophecy is dangerous; but from a writer who has proved so brilliantly that, for once, jeunesse peut, one seems justified in hoping that enlarged experience will result in work of the highest quality.
Quite a host of moral reflections, none of them very original, flock to one's mind in considering by what devious ways our Italian allies came to range themselves on the side of that freedom which they have always loved as well and bravely as any of the rest of us. For instance—a very stale reflection—one sees Germany overdoing her own cleverness and under-rating that of her neighbours—this more especially in her arrogant dominance of Italy's commerce; further, one notices the Hun's Belgian brutalities costing him dear in a quarter least expected; and again one realises Italy's decision as a thing mainly dependent, in spite of all Germany's taking little ways, on a righteous hatred of Austria—a consideration which brings one surprisingly near to gratitude towards the big-bully Government of Vienna. Our southern ally's loyalty to her beautiful "unredeemed" provinces, and her claim, which all right-minded Englishmen (I include myself) most heartily endorse, to dominate the historically Italian waters of the Adriatic, happily proved too strong for a machine-made sympathy for Berlin based on nothing better than a superficial resemblance between the histories of Piedmont and Prussia, and a record of nominal alliance with powers whose respect for paper treaties was always fairly apparent. All the same, in reading Mr. W. KAY WALLACE'S essay in recent history, Greater Italy (CONSTABLE), a volume which I cannot too strongly commend for its admirable way of telling these and similar things, I am struck most of all by the super-incumbent mass of Germanism that had to be burst asunder before the true Italy broke free. The story of that liberation is romance of an amazing order, for in it one sees the very soul of a great and ancient people struggling to renewal of life. It is more than good to have such an ally, it is an inspiration.
If you wish to complete your knowledge of the working of our new armies and learn something of the business of the A.S.C. you can do so without being bored in L. of C. (CONSTABLE), by Captain JAMES AGATE. The author is one of that bright band of Mancunians which The Manchester Guardian has attached to its august fringes. He writes of the business in hand, the vagaries of stores and indents and mere men and brass hats, on this and the other side of the Channel, all with a very light and engaging pen, and then spreads himself on any old far-off thing that interests him, such as the theatre, perhaps a little self-consciously and with a pleasant air of swagger most forgivable and, indeed, enjoyable. His chief preoccupation is with art and letters, it is clear; but, turning from them to the handling of urgent things and difficult men, he faces the business manfully. Of the men in particular he has illuminating things to say, redounding to their credit and, by implication, to his. To those who appreciate form in penwork this book may be safely recommended.
