Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-10-04
LITERATURE AND VAR
By Bart Haley
no READ the newspapers nowadays is

Two READ the newspapers nowadays Is 10
i feel like one who watches an almost un-
bearable drama in its progress TO the end OF
the third act. when the action quckens
toward final denouement and the ultimate
revelation. The entire background is filled
with the glittering structure of an empire
about to fall. In the intervening spaces all
of civilization Is crowded and grouped for
climax that will shake the world.
Now II was to have been expected that
the lords of letters and the crowned heads
of literature would play in these mighty
hours the part of the Greek chorus and
plain and celebrate fittingly the inner mean
ing of each succeeding crisis and develop
ment II is amazing. therefore. to realize
how little the accepted writers in English
or in any other language, for that matter
have contributed to knowledge of the
war to our conceptions or our understand
ing. Staccato cable dispatches sent along
from the front and crowded into the news
columns tell more than the books of the war
The messages written by unnamed corre-
Spondents from muddy dugouts. simple truth
compact in few sentences. often ade-
quate to touch your heart like sudden music
Meanwhile the men who made art of
literature have failed. The truth, I'm this in
stance, is too wonderful to be adorned
they are accustomed to adorn it.
TT q. WELLS has written books about the
l. L. war yet he has succeeded only in show
ing how the universal agony has touched a
losophy. Wells himself, as he is dscernible
in his recent work. is more tragic than any
figure in his narratives. He is the humane
man, dazed, dissatisfied and disllusoned,
peerng helpiessly in fog in search of goals
and reasons and Qualifications. and a way
ont Bernard Shaw wildly scolded the Brit
ish Government for a while and lapsed into
silence after the yell of defiance that Is the
prcrogative of his race. Rudyard Kipling
went to the North Sea to write about the
British navy But the people in his great
narrative were only Mulvaney and the Brush
wood boy and McPhee in new guise 1t was
a news correspondent somewhere in north
era Russia who could tell of a Russian tor
rcdOboat destroyer that fought a hostile fleet
aud kept her guns going even she sank in
flames
Joseph Conrad. one of the new great mas
tcrs of English. has been silent about the
war. John Masfied went to Gallipoli to write
Of the battles there. But he wrote of the sea
and its striving people instead Much was
expected of Pat MacGll when he went to the
front after writing "A book that convinced
England of his genius. MacCill when he sat
down to write of the great war, was witched
by the humor of the Irish regiment in which
ne serNed-and he wrote of that. And so,
while an inaudbe voice sings the armies
forward and though the soldiers see visions
in the night or in the midst of battle. the
crowned heads of letters do not seem to hear
or see. kipling wrote two stories of the war,
and in each he merely strafed the Germans.
OUR own Henry van Dyke represents ade-
Oquately enough the general failure of
American letters in the war. He appears on
the great stage at intervals. with borrowed
emotions, chanting amid the thunders and
the lightnings things that might be sung in a
moonlit garden to the accompaniment of
ukulele. And there are moments when Doc
tor van Dyke appears TO think himself an in
Spired voice Snreds and patches of verse
written by poets who become soldiers touch
the war more closely. Alan Seeger left some
verse before he died that might have been
sung by any youthful warrior. since it is
| filled with the mystery and the sense of fatal
ism that must descend on every man who
feels himself moved onward to a glorious or
terrible end by forces which ne can neither
see nor understand But the war has baffied
even practiced imaginations. 1t is too big
to grasp. Most of the poetry written around
il merely tinkles Its meanings cannot vet
be clearly seen. For the war has a new
meaning for humanity, 1t waits only on the
Interpreter.
INDEED, when the war has been over for
i a time. when the nations can think calmly
| again, 1t is likely that the general estimate
| Will involve for all the peoples of civilization
some new sense of contrtion--some vague
sense of error that contributed to the causes
| of the disaster and an awareness of faults
not to be excused even by the explicit guilt
| Of Germany Had the world been right had
| IL been properly educated. would il have
| permitted the growth and spread of the ma
| lignant forces of Germanism in Europe?
| Would ii have tolerated the sort Of compro-
| mise that made of one royal family so ter
| ribe menace to peaceful men and peaceful
nations?
| The manner in which the war has been
| fought shows plainly that something deep in
human consciousness is opposed to much
| that has been tolerated and applauded in
the older systems of government. All the
| martyrdom of the past, all the epics have
| been surpassed by the men who have been
| lighting in Europe. What has actuated them?
| what do they want? What light do they see
AT the end of their terrible road? Surely il
| is the function of literature to explain all
| this, Literature may explain it later on 1t
| may explain the war.
| MO ONE has yet tried to explain the war
| ~ fully. Frenchmen have tried and failed
| Romaine ROLAND tried passionately al ,be
| outset To make it appear that only an imagi-
| nary border line divided French and Ger
| mans. He was expelled from France An
| dreas Latzko, who an officer of Hun
| garlah troops for two years. has written the
| most terrible of all the books that the war
| mas produced 1t is passionate. an almost
| hysterical outburst of hatred and rage dl-
! rected against empires and kings and gem
erals. 1t is full of tattered corpses and mer
with faces shot away. The book was sun
pressed in Germany and in Austria
THE army orders of Joffre and Foch will.
l. II Is said, make an epic literature in them
selves when they are printed Meanwhile
news from the front is the best literature of
war produced in a thousand wears Daily
| and hourly, a narrative of stlIpendous