“The story moves with the rapid characteristic of Gibbs’s tales, but many of the incidents are more obviously manufactured for effect than in some of the author’s preceding books.”
+ − Springf’d Republican p11a Mr 14 ’20 280w
GIBBS, SIR PHILIP HAMILTON. Now it can be told (Eng title, Realities of war). *$3 (1c) Harper 940.3
20–5994
“In this book I have written in a blunt way some episodes of the war as I observed them, and gained firsthand knowledge of them in their daily traffic. I have not painted the picture blacker than it was, nor selected gruesome morsels and joined them together to make a jig-saw puzzle for ghoulish delight.... I have tried to set down as many aspects of the war’s psychology as I could find in my remembrance of these years, without exaggeration or false emphasis, so that out of their confusion, even out of their contradiction, the real truth of the adventure might be seen as it touched the souls of men. Yet when one strives to sum up the evidence ... are we really poor beasts in the jungle, striving by tooth and claw, high velocity and poison-gas, for the survival of the fittest in an endless conflict? If that is so, then God mocks at us. Or, rather, if that is so, there is no God such as we men may love with love for men.” (Part 8) Contents: Observers and commanders; The school of courage; The nature of a battle; A winter of discontent; The heart of a city; Psychology on the Somme; The fields of Armageddon; For what men died.
“The war writing of Mr Gibbs presents an interesting problem. He appears to be a reasonably sensitive observer, he has had exceptional opportunities for observing, and he writes with considerable fluency. Why, then, does his writing affect us so little?... Mr Gibbs’ style has no definite and unique outline; it is, as it were, a composite style, his voice has the indistinctness of the voice of a crowd. The style is adequate to his purpose because his sentiments have something of the same quality. They furnish, as it were, the greatest common measure of the more intelligent opinion and the more decent feeling about the war.” J. W. N. S.
+ − Ath p272 F 27 ’20 900w Booklist 16:274 My ’20
“His book is a bit querulous about the obvious indignities; but it is calm and terrible about the great wrongs.”
+ Dial 69:103 Jl ’20 90w