i6 
Land & Water 
July 1 8, 191 8 
The Reader's Diary 
Gentlemen at Arms 
THE writer wlio chooses to call himself Centurion 
needs no verv elaborate introduction to the 
readers of these pages. He makes no claims, he 
says, adding that he possesses none, to be con- 
sidered a writer of fiction. His stories are "all 
based on the experiences of the writer when serving in 
France and elsewhere, or on those of fellow-offlcers with 
whom he has been brought fnto contact." And between 
what he has heard and what he has experienced, his 
volume Gentlemen at Anns (Heinemann. 6i. net) presents 
a very comjirehensivc picture of t)ie most varied war in 
history. Centurion tells now stories, hair-raising stories, 
of the great retreat, now describes a day on the Somme, 
spends a night with the "Auxiliaries." looking for sub- 
marines, drifts over London in a balloon, thinking what 
a city it would be to bomb, gibes at the A. P.M. and 
catches him in the act of trapping an imaginary spy on 
the English coast — the enumeration might be continued with 
a separate phrase for each of his twenty-one sketches. Prac- 
tically all that is missing is some description of the soldier's 
life in the "side-shows" in Mesopotamia, Salonica, and so 
forth ; but even Centurion, greedy for every aspect of the 
war, cannot be everywhere at once. The war, after all, 
has not yet lasted quite four years, and there may be plenty 
of time for him yet. What is even more remarkable than 
the variety of settings in which he has captured his experi- 
ences is the variety of incidents and character which he has 
discovered. One sketch explains the precise circumstances 
of nervous strain, indecision, and magnanimity which lead 
a commanding officer to make an unjustifiable surrender. 
Another describes very graphically how a man may get on 
the nerves of his friend under the conditions of trench-life, 
and ends with a study of shell-shock as vivid and as technically 
convincing as Centurion's studies of bombardments and 
attacks. 
And he is not a '"writer of fiction." War makes queer 
changes ; and we are beginning not to be surprised when 
we learn that this daring bomber used to be a barber, this 
airman a bank clerk, this brigadier, perhaps, chairman of a 
wholesale grocery company. I will not speculate on Cen- 
turion's profession before the war. Indeed, he gives no 
basis on which speculation may proceed. But, just as stress 
of war discovers a first-rate bomber in a second-rate barber, 
so, in we know not what, it has discovered, if not "a writer 
of fiction," at all events a writer who possesses many of the 
qualities essential to an imaginative artist. For Centurion 
has done more than report what he has seen and what his 
companions have told him. He has the special talent neces- 
sary for ordering his impressions, for selecting the right 
point of detail ; and he has been able to take the dead fact 
and hand it on to the reader with all the quality of life. 
Not the least of his gifts is the scent for the right word, 
both in his own processes of composition and in the speeches 
of others. I take an example at random : 
" Also this nose-bag. It's the new pattern." I took the 
canvas bag and slung it over my right shoulder. It con- 
tained one of the new gas-masks known colloquially as 
"emus" ; they give the wearer the appearance of a pas- 
sionate attachment for a baby's feeding-bottle. I have 
heard a blunt soldier describe them as "slinging your guts 
outside"; they certainly do suggest that the wearer has 
only remembered at the last moment to take his alimentary 
canal with him. 
ll is the mot juste ; that is the gas-mask. 
It is this combination of precise observation, vivid phrase, 
and lively understanding spirit that give the book its value! 
We. all of us. desire to know as much as possible of what 
happens at the front ; and our appetite is not always for 
mformation on the strategic scale. We want also to be shown 
cleariy and convincingly what at anv average moment 
comes within the range of one man's vision in the front line 
or just behmd it. We want, for example, to learn what 
war IS, just as Private John Yeoman, with his conduct-sheet 
covermg six pages of flimsv. learnt it, little by little one 
point driven home after another, the sugar factory full of 
machine guns where Yeoman lost his pipe, the first experience 
of high exj,losivc, the first wound . . . Centurion has 
found out how to give us this. There are other writers 
with a similar gift, but there are not too many of 
them; and Centnrir.n takes an honourable place among 
the company. ^ 
More War Poets 
.\s with war pictures, so with war poems — we cannot help 
thinking that the future will look at them in a great degree 
as historical .sources.' At the same time, pictures and poetry 
alike clamour to be judged (or their own sake; and this 
dual nature of the art produced by the war is a stumbling- 
block to criticism. Lieutenant E. A. Mackintosh's book. 
War the Lihemtoy (Lane, 5s. net), is a case in point. He 
wrote verses at Oxford before the war — among other things, 
a little play in which the manner of Mr. Yeats is applied 
interestingly enough to a setting in the Western Highlands. 
There is simplicity and sincerity in his verses, and a genuine 
Highland plaintiveness in their rhythms. The future will 
admire the man who could write from an easy job at home : 
Here there is ease and comfort for me, ' 
A warm, soft bed and a good roof o'er me, 
Here maybe there is fame before me. 
Honour and fame for all I know. 
But I am seeing the thick rain falUng, « 
Seeing the tired patrols out crawling. 
The dead men's voices are calling, calling. 
And I must rise and go. 
But it will decide, perhaps, that his war verses and liis 
Oxford verses show equally a temperament of promise and 
an imnaature performance ; and that when he was killed at 
Cambrai he had not yet done the best of which he 
was capable. .In this case, it will prefer, as historical 
evidence, the gaiety of Mr. Mackintosh's songs and parodies. 
In Mr. Sassoon the problem is more difficult. ' He is a pre- 
war poet whom the heat of war has rapidly matured ; and his 
new volume. Counter- Attack (Heinemann, 2s. 6d. net), shows 
an advance in vigour and precision on his last. He has 
produced here a collection in which it is hard to know which 
to admire most — his vivid descriptions of war, his satire on 
elderly and bloodthirsty civilians, his power of loveliness, 
when he chooses that contrast to the ugliness of fighting, 
or the firmness and technical beauty of his verse. It is best, 
perhaps, to leave the question unanswered and to take him 
now for one virtue, now for another, according to the change 
of our own moods. But three of his virtues are combined 
in the following piece : 
Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit. 
He flounders off the duck-boards ; only he knows 
Each flash and spouting crash — each instant lit 
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes 
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders, 
"Could anytliing be worse than this ?"— he wonders. 
Remembering how he saw those Germans fun. 
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees : 
Green-faced, they dodged and darted : There was one 
livid with terror, clutching at his knees . . . 
Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs. . . . "Ohell!" 
He thought — " there's things in war one dare not tell 
Poor father sitting safe at home, who reads 
Of dying heroes and their deathless deeds." 
George Meredith 
It is a relief to turn to a subject so comparatively peaceful 
as a Victorian novelist. But even here Mr. J. H. C. Crees, 
in writing George Meredith : a Study of his Works and Per- 
sonality (Blackwell, bs. net), has no entirely placid theme, 
nor does he treat it in a placid manner. It" is the virtue of 
books like these that, if they are written with sufficient 
enthusiasm and in a sufficiently vivacious manner, they will 
drive the reader, assenting or dissenting, to make or renew 
the acquaintance of the original. Mr. Crees is enthusiastic 
and vivacious enough ; but, like too many writers of critical 
monographs, he is so much absorbed in his subject that for 
him the name of Meredith is like a spell throwing him into 
an ecstasy of appreciation. Critics, writing of one subject 
exhaustively, tend to exaggerate the importance of that in 
their author which is really the glory of the human race ; 
and Mr. Crees appears to be astonished at Meredith's brilliance 
ip writing or thinking at all. No doubt articulate thought is 
an enormous achievement ; and, considered in the abstract 
a newspaper headiine is a miracle in the communication of 
Ideas. But Mr. Crees should have considered more closely 
m what Meredith differed from other writers and thinkers. 
But his volume, which considers Meredith by the various 
aspects of his art. The Comic Spirit, Poetry, Philosophy, and 
so on, has too much vivacity not to be praised. 
Peter Bell. 
