"That's the stuff. The editor of the 'Blue Sky' told me that in the first month of the war he received uncountable short stories in the line of 'Was He A Coward?' 'Coward V.C.' 'The Girl who Chucked up the Man who Funked for his Brother who Didn't' ... and so on. It's all very well in peace-time to pander to a certain maudlin moral hysteria in the reading public. But the war's real enough and raw enough—and ought to be immune from cheap serial exploitation." Carr spoke with the authority of one who since the fourth of August, 1914, had not once been betrayed into print.
"But the kind of penny serial stuff you mention is not real," Patricia argued; "it's about a quite pretty little war—a war in muslin with a light blue sash—the sort of war one could invite to tea with one's children and know it would not set a bad example. Far enough removed from the actual thing, to make it harmless. It's the sort of war in which the heroine is always a Red Cross Nurse without any previous training; with an adjustable face that can remind each and every wounded officer in the ward of his girl at home.... Did any of you ever stumble across that priceless gem: 'In spite of his lameness, he embraced her passionately!'?"
"That's the rank and file of war fiction," Carr said; "the next grade annoys me more, because it ought to know better: The pre-war psychological problem presented, with the war conveniently lugged in towards the end, as deus ex, to solve all difficulties, cut all strains, adjust all quarrels. Then, for want of definite conclusion, the Woman watches the Man (not the hero and heroine in this grade) depart for the Front, with a queer uplifted premonition in her heart that he will come safely through the Supreme Test—just he, ausgesucht—as we say in the dead languages."
Campbell cried indignantly: "Ye're unjust, Carr. This is truth ye were quoting. For in every single case all over the world, wasn't the war just bound to tumble unexpectedly into some seetuation or other, and deeslocate it?" Pat and Gareth exchanged a quick look; while Campbell went on: "It's far more unnatural to work oot the problem to its logical conclusion of what would have happened if the war hadn't happened."
"It just depends if you look upon the war as the sum total of what each individual's acts and feelings went to make it, and are still making it; or as a complete descent from the Absolute, regardless of atomic contribution?"
"Monism or pluralism—what does it matter?" cried Pat, impatient as usual with unprofitable theorizing. "The answer makes no practical difference either in the conduct or the result of the war."
Carr immediately accused her of pragmatism.
"The war has killed 'isms,'" declared Ran Wyman. To which Carr replied curtly: "Till the day when the 'isms' shall kill war."
"All the same, the sort of modern novel that tries to ignore the war, smells fusty—like a station cab. I've read a few: the author makes no allusion at all to the fact of the war; but at the same time his characters are rather inexplicably inclined to cold-shoulder Germany; almost to cut it dead ... instinctive second-sight, I suppose. General impression of: 'I know something about you, Mr. Germany, but I won't tell, 'cos this isn't a war-novel!'—intensely irritating. Also an occasional careless remark on the lines of: 'Yes, I want my son to learn how to box a compass—it may be of use to him in the far-off eventuality of European war, which I somehow think is not so far off as it seems now!'—Clever fellow!"
"And even granted," said Pat, "that the best authors—top-grade—wait for a focussed perspective of all this scurrying muddle——"