Inter-Arma (Heinemann) is the title that Mr. Edmund Gosse has given to his latest volume of essays, reprinted from The Edinburgh Review. No one who loves clarity of style will need assurance about the quality of these studies, which, with one exception, are concerned with some or other aspect of the world-struggle. In "War and Literature," a paper dated during the black days of October, 1914, the author attempts to realise what will be the probable literary effect of the catastrophe by recounting the various ways in which French writers suffered from that of 1870. An interesting prediction, too, as recalling what many of us believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest of volumes [the autumn publishings of 1914] will mark the end of what is called 'current literature' for the remaining duration of the war. There can be no aftermath, we can aspire to no revival. The book which does not deal directly and crudely with the complexities of warfare and the various branches of strategy will, from Christmas onwards, not be published at all." As they stand, these words might well serve as a mild tonic for "current pessimism"; not even the paper famine has brought them to fulfilment. Elsewhere in the volume is an instructive paper on "The Neutrality of Sweden" (valuable but vexatious, as are all the indictments of our insular apathy in the matter of influencing foreign opinion), and two or three interesting studies of French life and letters under the conditions of war. In fine, a book full of scholarly grace, such as may well achieve the writer's hope, expressed in his preface, of renewing the friendship he has already made with those readers "whose minds have become attuned to his," though they are now "separated from him by leagues of sea and occupied in noble and unprecedented service."
The author of The Dop Doctor, with her expansive style, always seems cramped in any story of under a couple of hundred thousand words or so. Perhaps the best things in her new book of short stories, Earth to Earth (Heinemann), concern The Macwaugh, a shocking bad artist with an immense thirst and the heftiest of Scotch accents. I don't think that there ever was or could be anybody like Macwaugh, or indeed that people talk or act like the majority of the characters in this book; but that's where, perhaps, "Richard Dehan" scores a point or two off those realists who mistake accuracy of detail for art. This amiable drunkard, though absurd, lives and moves. The author is evidently attached to him, and that helps. She has, indeed, something of the Dickensian exuberance which carries off absurdities and crudities that would otherwise be intolerably tiresome. She even seems to get some fun out of this kind of thing:—"'Write,' commanded the Zanouka with a double-barrelled flash of her great eyes;" or, again, "It's all poppycock and bumblepuppy," meaning, just, it isn't true.
If you are writing or intending to write a book about boys let me beg you not to follow the prevailing fashion and call your hero David. Within the last few weeks I have read David Penstephen, David Blaise, and now it is Miss Eleanor Porter's Just David (Constable) and I am beginning to want a rest from the name. David III., if he may be called so, has saved me from utter confusion of mind by being an American product and having a charm that is peculiarly his own. Cynics indeed may find his perfection a little cloying, and may say with some justification that no human child ever radiated so much joy and happiness. All the same, this simple tale of childhood will appeal irresistibly to those who do not draw too fine a distinction between sentiment and sentimentality. On the whole Miss Porter, although hovering near the border, does not pass into the swamps of sloppiness, and as an antidote to War fiction I can recommend Just David without any further qualification.
Richard Harding Davis will, alas, entertain us no more with his easy-flowing pen. These short stories, Somewhere in France (Duckworth), must be his farewell to us. And it is good to feel that his sympathies are so whole-heartedly on the right side. The first of the stories (the only one that has anything to do with the War) is a spirited yarn of the turning of the tables on a German secret service agent, with plenty of atmosphere and hurrying action. The rest are light studies of American life, of which I chiefly commend an extravaganza set in Hayti with a resourceful Yankee electrician, as hero, in conflict with the President in the matter of overdue wages; and the final item of a tussle between a stern and upright District Attorney and the might of Tammany, in which the author seems to have a rather whimsical mistrust of both sides. I always like to think of Tammany when our croakers are holding up everything in this poor little island to obloquy.
The God in the Car.
"Rumania asked permission for the passage through Bulgaria of several wagons of grain bought from Greece. Bulgaria agreed on condition that Rumania should release over 200 wagons of Bulgarian gods detained in Rumania."