The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-03-10
Latest Of Good Literature.
NOVEL ON A RECENT WAR.

NOVEL ON A RECENT WAR.
Decidedly distinct in style is Henry Noe
BraiIsford's romance Of the recent
Graeco-Turkish war, 1.-THE Broom Of the
| War Cod The queer title of this novel
| (Appleton) is explained by the quotation:
! "All the fioatsam and jetsam of humanity,
the ragged edges of society swept up by
the broom of the War God" The author.
a Skotchman, educated in Dundee, and q
Fellow of Glasgow University, fought in
the war as volunteer in the Foreign Le-
| gion, and his chief motive in this novel
seems to have been to give a graphic and
| undisguised picture Of the disorganized
! and leaderless assemblage which const-
! tuted the Greek army. This he has done
| in delightfully."- up-to-date style, which
! holds the reader from start to finish, not
| by any particular literary ability but by
| its acute and humerously appreciative in
| sight into human nature. This pyscho-
| logy of war as displayed in a hopeless
campaign is deeply interesting in itself,
| but it also enables the American reader
TO get a new light upon the disasters of
that inglorious episode of latter-day his
tory
uotset Of his story to a realistic picture Of
LAMA, recruited by that famous Phil
hellinic Legion-"'the bravebrothers from
| asross the sea, the first Of the promised
two hundred thousand who were to join
in the crusade against the Turk" Says
he Of the busting cafe scene:
Already affairs marched. They were
aiding victory here in Lamia. For there
on the walls of the cafe Marco Botsau
waved his sword and Colonel Mancos and
Hero Vassos and Smolenski fanked him,
all from the Athenian prints, and all
crowned with laurel. Beside them hung
a map Of Crete, and already it was labeled
THE great Hellenic Island. And yonder
on the roof the stork plumed her wings in
safety and the swallows few in and out
Of their mud nest in the correr of thecof-
fee house over the counter. The
little shrine on the AcropoIs had remem-
bered st. George, ami his lampwick sput-
tered fitfully across the dusk. His name
is writ in oil all over Greece.
The artillery came to this one-storied bar
rack for training for it is pleasant town,
LAMA, near to the sea and the vineyards
of Posts; it has good cafes, too, and lit
tie theater of Orpheus. A merry place for
the lads to train in The guns are all in
Athens; but they are safer there
Then we are treated to the curious life
in the Philhellenic barracks, TO a view Of
the Indicating human foatsam from the
wreck Of Larissa- The very name Of
Turk had sufficed TO empty Thessally.
They knew from what terror they fed,
these peasants. Sixteen years ago the
very soil on which he stood had belonged
to the Moslem, and the Muezzins call had
come with the dawn from that minaret
That woman yonder had heard it in her
maiden days, and now, bent with toll and
motherhood, she had turned to flee from
it in the regiment ofthe disinherited."
When the green uniformed company of
cosmopolitan volunteers starts out on its
march at last, jerking it's way over the
moors like a caterpillar on a leaf, the
Frenchmen start up the Marseilaise,
Berliner retorts with Die Wacht am
Rhein, and a SweitzeT begins with WHAT
Academia and Els Zogen drie Burschen.
The Italians brag. All the various ma
tionalities indulge in repartee and debate.
There are strange pictures of peasant life
met on the road, now pastoral and now al
most Alpine.
AT length the legion arrives at the plain
OF Parsalia, and the warlike scene here
presented is vividly reproduced. Mr..
Bailsford depicts everything in a realis-
tic manner, full of odd color. Here we
met with Captain Varatasia, commander
of the Philhellenic Legion, who with Cap
tain Burch, is mentioned under his real
name. The author pays tribute to his
gallantry a soldier and capacity as an
officer. Yet Varatasi is "a mere shadow
of a man, standing scarcely five feet
three" but a determined, melancholy
leader; whereas the crown prince sits i'm
INJURED in his headquarters, conscious of
failure, knowing that defeat awaits him,
and longing for a telegram from Athens
which shall bring news of an armistice
and relieve him of a task for which he is
unfit
The author deliberately stigmatizes the
war as having been a game of bluff"
on the part of the king and Delyanni, as
in 1873 and in 1856. THE war; he declares,
was an appeal not to arms, but to the
nerves of an overdrilled Europe. In this
light the half-hearted defence Of the from
tier and the withdrawal form Larissa and
then from Pharsala became applicable It
is now known that it was only after a
protest from the Thessalan deputies that
any force was sent to Velestino. y SER
ious resistance was not in the program
of the king and his prime minister, how
ever much in earnest the nation as a
whole may have been"
Mr. Brailsford's own reflections on his
Grecian campaign are thus given to his
fire, thinking of the war. How beautiful
it was, that rosy splendor in the cold blue
air Liberty and freedom were there. \
bonfire of vanities, i held all that men
loved, home, faith and fatherland. The
war was over. an infinite bitter sadness
shrouded all his memories. Patriotism
and devotion. all the bright aims of Hell
lenism - the words came lightly TO his
ears. mixed with a clatter of frivolity. 1t
seemed better 20 watch the triumph Of
stern and serious barbarism than 10
dream of the lost ideals Of a people too
futile to guard them. He sat up and
stared at the glare Of the sky. He di-
vined the scene around 1t in the Turkish
camp. He saw the white captured tents
pitched in the illuminated plain. And
yonder were the Krupps abandoned in the
Acropolis. He pictured their black
mouths till they feared at him with the
grin Of 4 disillusioned sargoyle."
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