The sun., 1919-07-13
CIR Ethrartan' Gnrnrr
CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE.
ARE WAR BOOKS DEAD?
MAGAZINE editor the other day sal

much as possible don t think people are inter-
ested in the war any more"
A young officer, discharged from the service in
March, came back from San Francisco last week
and remarked: "You may think the war is dead
issue here in the East but out West, I'll tell the
world, they mob you if you mention it.
Both gentlemen were right and both wrong IN
the larger implications of their common opinion.
People are tired of reading about the events OF
the war in the same sense that they are not inter-
ested in reading stale reports of the Dempsey
Willard fight or the transatlantic flight of the
NC-4; they no longer thrill to the sound of ''Over
There" or swallow Jumps in their Threats when
they see squad Of boys in khaki march past Jour
nalistically and a topic Of everyday small talk
the war is a dead issue.
But the people of these United States and of the
rest of the world will be reading about the two,
yes three, four, five generations in the future they
cannot escape it any more than the men and women
who earn their living by writing can avoid writing
about it. What they will read, however, will be
the sort of reading matter which the French still
term beHeS-lettreS and which used to term lit
erature' before that word s definition was broad
ened to include everything from patent medicine
pamphlets to political propaganda.
War Books That Live.
There has never been time in the last fifty years
and more when genuine work of literary art deal
ing with the civil war has not won readers by the
scores of thousands and fame and honor for its
author; one need but cite Hay and NicOlays Life
of Lincoln and Miss Tarbell's later work of the
same title, or Winston Churchill The Crisis, or,
in the dramatic field, Bronson Towards Shenan-
d0ah and William Gillettes Secret Serrice, all
written and eagerly welcomed from two to four
decades after the civil war was over. And is not
of the most popular magazines but now starting
a serial Life Of Lincoln9
War books that merely rectals Of fact, IN
illuminated by the imaginative touch, are already
growing stale on library shelves; they are read to
be sure but If is the younger boys and girls who
reading them The grownups arc tired of their
whole class. But in its stead they are reading
WHAT
In front of me as I write lies pile of postcard
reports from libraries all tue country telling
what their patrons read most in June. Let me list
few titles haphazard, just as they come:
Cambridge Mass.-The -Four HOrscmen Whit
lock Belgium, Egan's Ten Years Near the Ger
man Frontier. Danville, Ky.-The -Four Horscmen
(of course), With the Help of God and a Few
Marines. Ogden, Utah-Belgium. Birmingham
Ala-In Flanders Fields Tulsa Okla-The Tin
Soldier, Joyce Kilmer IS Poems, Letters and Essays
From three to ten titles of war books on every post
-card But these are literature of sorts; most of
them will live; all exemplars of the sort of war
books that children and our children s children
will read fifty or hundred years from now
Twelve Good Sellers
One wise book publisher said to me not long ago:
81 had the longest list, probably, of the jour-
nalisc type of war books of any publisher in Amer
lea. When the United States got into the war 1
strapped the whole list, sold out the remanders
and went after the big things. 1 didn t have war
book in the house on May I, 1918. Now have more
than dozen titles, all literature, that are SELL
ing better than they did while the war was still on
and some of them will be selling well twenty years
from now
People are through talking about the war, be-
people talk only about the events of the imme-
date present. Books and literature are the topic
of table conversation in few households Ten years.
perhaps five years, after the civil war that great