iS 
LAND & WATER 
Books to Read 
By Lucian Oldershaw 
November i6, 191G 
I HAVE heard people say that they do not intind to 
road any books about the war until it is over. 
There is something to be said for this nltitude. 
We are too near to events to see them in jn-oper 
perspective and the time has not yet come when rvcry- 
ihinK may be told, so that books dealing with thr .ictual 
happenings of the war are necessarily incomplete. And 
yet the impressions of an eye witness are valuabk', and 
there is a great deal of the history of the past twn years 
that it is permissible to tell. Moreover, it is impossible 
to live in the midst of this great struggle for ciMlisation 
without being greedy for any genuine information as to 
how things are faring in the lighting line. Hence many, 
even of those who have made a hasty resolve to postpone 
their reading about the war, will welcome Mr. H. Warner 
Allen's 77(f Unbroken Line (Smith, Elder and (/o.. 6s. 
net), which has just the desirable quahties of a con- 
temporary war book. 
***** 
Mr. Warner Allen is the special rcpresentatiw of the 
English press with the French forces in the field, and his 
book is an account of the French lines from Switzerland 
to Nofth Sea, ivoml' iwmine'dc I' extreme droUe to l ho)inne de 
I'exii-Tnic gauche of a line about five hundred miles long. 
It is a work which, well illustrated and well mapped, 
provides for the general reader an excellent opportunity 
for a sort of stock-taking of the position on the \\estern 
Front. One gets a good idea of the different geographical 
features of the different sectors of " the unbroken line " 
and some notion of the different kinds of operations that 
have been taking place in each, up to the Somme offensive, 
whose earlier stages are described in the final ( liapter. 
In this kind of glorified guide-book making, Mr. Warner 
Allen especially excels in his portraiture of towns. His 
sketches of Nancy, Pont-a-Mousson, Verdun and Arras 
are particularly good, and it may be generally said that, 
in spite of a somewhat pedestrian style, hie has by no 
means succeeded in dimming the glories of his subject. 
Every here and there throughout the book there is a 
suggestion of the presence of General Joffre, which has 
an effect as uplifting and inspiriting as that " little 
touch of Harry in the night." 
* * ^ * * * 
^Ir. Maurice Hewlett has completed his " Hodgiad," 
The Song of the Plow (Heinemann, 6s. net), at a time 
which will secure for it a maximum of sympathetic 
attention. What had else appeared a sort of superior 
party j)aniplilet, now in the light of the unity wrought 
by the war may seem to have a more national significance. 
The Argument of what Mr. Hewlett somewhat grandilo- 
qiiently describes as " the English Chronicle " was 
originally intended to run as follows : — " A certain man, 
being in bondage to a proud Conqueror, maintained his 
customs, nourisht his virtues, obeyed his tyrants, and at 
the end <if a thousand years found himself worse off than 
lie was in the beginning of his servitude. He then lifted 
his head, lookt his master in the face, and his chains 
fell off him." This was how the end of it all seemed in 
1913. Now Mr. Hewlett has a dififerent vision. Hodge, 
in the crisis of the war, has made " the Great Assent " ; 
his master will recognise this, take him by the hand 
and restore him to his " land of birthright old," at least 
to the extent of giving up to him one tithe of the land he 
posses.ses. The agrarian revolution will be by assent. 
***** 
Apart fiom Mr. Hewlett's views on the land question, 
what of his poem ? He sings the plough and the man, 
and his subject somehow has not the same epic value as 
arms and the man. Hodge is heroic only in his patience, 
a difficult form of heroism to become lyrical about. As 
a background to the more or less villainous figures of the 
rulers and public men of England, we are bidden to watch 
the man at the plow, content with his daily work, thinking 
of little beyond eating and wiving, and worship])ing as 
his only Saint, " old Use and Wont." At its worst 
The Song of the Plow resembles those mnemonic verses of 
which zealous students of history make use of in order to 
of the W'ars of the Roses. At its best, there is some general 
interest in this poetical version of English history from 
an economic-social point of view, and in particular a 
fervent love of the English countryside thrills some 
passages here and there with a lyrical fire : — ■ 
" quiet land I love so well, 
And see so lovely as I roam 
By woody holt or grassy swell, 
Or where the sun strikes new-turn'd loam 
To gleaming bronze, or by the shore 
Follow the yellow'd curves of foam 
And see the wrinkl'd sand grow frore 
As gives the tide. 
***** 
Tho.se who are interested in the work of Sir Rabin- 
dranath Tagore will welcome the tMo new volumes that 
come to us from Messrs. Macmiilan and Co., a volume of 
poems in sequel to Gitanjali called Fruit-Gathering 
(4s. 6d. net), and a volume of short stories,''called //M»^n'- 
Stories and other Stories (5s. net). The stories are slight 
and often picturesque with a simple moral or an obvious 
touch of sentiment. Now and then the translation seems 
to be at fault, and there is a play on words in " The King- 
dom of Cards " that somehow strikes a false note. But 
both here and in the poems, the fact of translation makes 
me chary of criticism. Here, I feel, is an Oriental in 
a frock-coat who may look quite a different creature in 
his own native garment. The Sacred Tales of India 
(Macmiilan and Co., 2s. net), which D.wijendra Nath- 
Neogi has collected are in rather a different position. 
They do not pretend to be literature. They arc the 
stories of the gods which are recited by the women of the 
zenanas oi Bengal at their Vratas, or religious ceremonies. 
It is interesting to note the point of comparison of these 
artless tales with the more sophisticated work of 
Sir Rabindranath. It is valuable and important to learn 
what we can of our Indian fellow-subjects and, as Mr. 
Neogi says, these stories " are extremely, interesting also 
for the light they throw on the recesses of the Indian 
woman's heart." 
***** 
In spite of the obvious diihculty the author has had in 
rendering the slang of the French soldier in satisfactory 
English Rene Benjamin's Gaspard the Poilu (Heinemann, 
5s. net), will ha^■e a considerable appeal in its English 
dress. It is the most successful attempt I have read to 
give a full length portrait of 'the French soldier. This 
study of the debonair snail-dealer of the Rue de la Gaite, 
who marries his mistress in the first leave he gets, keeps 
comrades and officers in good spirits by his own unfailing 
merriment, saves himself when in' trouble wdfh the 
authorities by resourceful quips, and never forgets that 
he is fighting for France, enables us to see without too 
much of the sentimental idealisation natural to fiction 
the sort of man who is brother to our English Tommy. I 
am glad there is an English version of the book, and "hope 
it will be re^d. 
***** 
Two more \-olumes of war verse— Rhymes of a Red 
Cross Man, by Robert W. Service, the " Canadian 
Kipling " (T. Fisher Unwin, 3s. 6d. net), and Fragments, 
by Evan Morgan (Erskine Macdonald, 2s. 6d. net). 
Mr. Service's poems are smooth, virile and effective. They 
are mostly of a ballad type, and should lend themselves 
well to recitation. I liked especially the simple irony of 
" The Coward," the effective surprise of " The Ballad of 
Soulful Sam," and the little tribute to Joffre in " Grand- 
pere." There should be immediate popularity for this 
volume. Mr. Evan Morgan's volume has a" different 
interest. He is ambitious as a poet, and tries to express 
Ins eariy experiences of life in various and complicated 
cadences. He never quite reaches perfection, but no 
one can say, after reading such a lyric as " The Sea's 
Song," that the root of the matter is not in him. 
I-ragmenfs expresses pleasantly enough the spring-tide of 
a life of promise, but it leaves it an open question 
whether that promise will express it.self in verse or in 
