Of a war-story reviewed in these pages some months ago I remember taking occasion to say that the author had damaged his effect by a too obvious wish to injure the reputation of a certain cavalry brigade (or words to that effect). Well, a book that I have just been reading, The Squadroon (Lane), might in some sense be regarded as a counterblast to the former volume, since its writer, Major Ardern Beaman, D.S.O., has admittedly intended it as a vindication of the work of the cavalry in the Great War. I can say at once that the defence could scarcely have found a better advocate. Major Beaman (who, I think superfluously, figures in his own pages in the fictional character of Padre) has written one of the most interesting records that I have read of personal experience on the Western Front. Partly this is explained by his fortunate possession of a style at once sincere, sanely balanced and always engaging. Also his story, apart from the matter of it, reveals in the men of whom he writes (and incidentally in the writer himself) a combination of just those qualities that we like to call essentially British. Cavalrymen of course will read it with a special fervour; but I am mistaken if its genial temper does not disarm even so difficult a critic as the ex-infantry Lieutenant—than which I could hardly say more. In short, The Squadroon is a belated war book in which the most weary of such matters may well recapture their interest.
Written in the last great ebb and flow of the War, when the censorship still prevented anything like carping criticism of matters near the battle-front, The Glory of the Coming (Hodder and Stoughton) naturally resolves itself into a pæan of praise of the French and British armies in general and the American troops in particular, both white and black. Mr. Irvin S. Cobb brings good credentials to his task, for he saw the advance of the German army through Belgium in 1914, and in this book he describes the combined resistance to their last great effort before defeat. The accident, if we may so call it, to the Fifth Army has had nowhere a more eloquent apologist. “They were like ants; they were like flies,” he says of the Germans; “they left their dead lying so thickly behind that finally the ground seemed as though it were covered with a grey carpet.” There are interesting strictures in the later chapters on some of the quaint semi-official delegations and personages who persuaded the United States Government to let them come over and visit the War; and there are a number of quite good yarns of the Yankee private, related in the Yankee style. But better than all the American stories I think I like that of the Bedfordshire soldier who, when asked by the writer to direct him to Blérincourt during the chaos of the great retreat, replied, “I am rather a stranger in these parts myself.” Perhaps by the way I ought to make it quite clear that the title refers to the coming of the American troops, and that, although the line, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,” is also quoted in the prefatory stanza, there is nothing in the book about Mr. “Pussyfoot” Johnson.
I suppose the War did throw up a great number of worthy pomposities genuinely eager to serve their country in some conspicuous and applauded way, and old Mr. Thompson, the principal figure in Young Hearts (Hodder and Stoughton), may be taken, on the authority of J. E. Buckrose, as an East Riding variant of the type. He had always some patent scheme for winning the War or improving the Peace, and no doubt deserved all the ragging he got, though I lost my zest in the matter before the author did. Mr. Thompson had two daughters: a minx (almost too minx-like for belief) and a never-told-her-love maiden of sterling worth. The latter marries the good-young-man-under-a-cloud (the cloud was, of course, a misapprehension or, alternatively, had a silver lining), though the minx shamelessly tried to “bag him,” as she did every eligible male, the good sister tamely submitting under the impression apparently that the other was a perfect darling. I indeed seemed to be the only person who really understood what a little beast she was—and possibly the author, who finally allotted to her the beautiful unsatisfactory young man with the emotional tenor. Commended for easy seaside reading.
To Recalcitrant House-owners: Let and let live.
