Metropolis weekly gazette. (Metropolis, Ill.) 1???-19??, 1917-08-10

Novelist In Letters Home De-
scribes Emotions Under Fire.
poor, Lonely, People, So Brave
and So Anonymous In Their
Death! Somewhere There Is a
Woman Who Loved Each One
of Them'-Thus the Dead OF
the Battlefield Appeal to Him.
Shy DAWSON, English
novelist, resident in the United
States, was busy trying to fol-
low up the success of his novel, "A
Garden Without Walls when the war
came. He realized that as he was
Briton of military age it was his duty
TO put literature behind him and light
for his country. Delaying only long
enough to finish some work which be
had promised his publishers, he crossed
from this country into Canada ana
there qualified as an officer in the Ca
madam forces. Shipped thence across
the ocean last summer, he found him
self, after only a short stay in England,
plunged without further ado into the
he'll on the Somme.
For months thereafter he dealt and
lodged death from morning 10 night,
with scarcely the time to get really
good wash or change OF clothes. he
saw men killed few feet from him;
saw corpses by the hundred lying in
hideously Hfelike postures amid the
black mud of shell holes, and, faithful
to his profession as a writer, he fought
with the full strength OF his intellect
TO grasp and visualize and set down on
paper the terrific impact of new and
horrible impressions which the war
brought to him. He could not do 1t.
Who can? But Coningsby Dawson,
novelist, has given US something bet
ter than a novel In his latest volume,
Garry On" made up of letters from
the trenches to members Of his family
on this side Of the Atlantic, collected
by his father.
He makes you see the reactions to
the war of a civilian In uniform, man
accustomed to the ease of life who is
abruptly plunged into carnage and
barbarism and stencil.
'This war will be won by tired men
who win never again pass an insurance
examination" Is one of the phrases,
one Of many, that flash the Somme
horror to his readers And through
out the book the novelist remains al
ways a writer. In a candle lit dugout
with shells screaming overhead, be
tries to plan the novel of tomorrow.
Coningsby Dawson sailed for Europe
last July. i've become a little child
again in Gods hands," he wrote to his
family after months of training in a
Canadian camp, with full confidence
in his love and wisdom and growing
trust that whatever he decides for me
will be the best and kindest." short
two months later he was in northern
France. hurled without easy grada-
lions into the midst of the carnage of
the Somme. In one of his first letters
he wrote To- his sister:
Its extraordinary how commonplace
war becomes to a man who is thrust
among others who consider it common
place. Not fifty yards away from me
a dead German lies rotting and uncoy-
cred. | dare say he was buried once
and then blown out by a SHE'LL
Admiration for the GOODNESS of the
men engaged in the deadly work con-
stantly overcame the young novelist as
he grew to know his comrades better.
IF unconscious heroism is the virtue
most TO be desired" he wrote to his
father last September. "and heroism
spiced with strong sense of humor
&C that. then pretty well every man
have met out here has the amazing
CUTS TO wear his crown of thorns as
though 1t were cap and bells" And
in the same letter he gave this descrip-
ton Of being under fire: