The weekly times-record. (Valley City, N.D.) 1912-1922, 1921-06-02

remarkable knowledge of children.
Their vivid imagery, fleeting ambi-
tons, loyalty amounting almost to a
religion, pleasures and sorrows are all
woven in, and his sympathy is ever
with them. "Childhood's tragedies are
terrible tragedies" he says, because
a child has no sense of time; mo-
ment's dismay is eternal; careless
word from an oelder is lasting judg-
ment, an instant's folly is lifetime's
mistake"
"The Duchess of Wrexe" and "The
Green Mirror" are studies Of differing
phases of English society. Into them
he weaves all those characteristics pc
culiar to the British of the old regime
and heralds the dawn of new day in
the changes taking place in the young
err generation, as they turn from the
old traditional customs to the new.
Of his two later books of import
ance "The Dark Forest" and "The
| Captives" the former is greater dc.
parture from his other writings. 1t
! is the story of Russia seen through the
eyes of an Englishman who has come
to love her for her very weaknesses.
In his description of humiliating re-
treat of her army he says:
Beyond the vague terrors OF our
| uncertainty was the figure, seen quite
| clearly by all Of us without any sentl,
| ment, of Russia. Certainly Trenchard
| and / could feel with less poignancy
the appeal of her presence. and yet !
| swear that to us also on that DAY II
| was she of whom we were thinking.
We had been, until then, her allies;
we were now her servants"
In another place he speaks OF what
| Russia means to the various people In
the company composing the Red Cross
unit. "By Russia every one OF us, SIT
ting in that huge room, meant some
thing different. To COCA she was
| home, white house on the Volga:
tennis, long evenings, early morn
ings, holidays in a tangled wilderness
of happiness. To Sister K she
was "Holy Russia" Russia OF the
Kremlin, of the Lavra of million
ikons in a million little streets, little
rooms, little churches. To Sister soma
she was Petrograd with cafes, novels
hv such writer's as Varbltzkala and
our own Jack London, the cinemato-
graph. and the Islands on q line eve
ming in Nav. To the student like
white fish she was a platform for
frantic speeches, incipient revolutions:
little untidy hysterical meetings IN a
dirtv room in a back street, newspa-
pers, the incapacities OF the Douma:
the robberies and vlllalnles OF the gov
eminent. To Anna Petrovna she was va
comfortable, unspeculative, trlendly
"home." To Nikitin she was the lace
of one woman upon whose eyes ms
own were always fixed. 10 MARIE
Iyanovna she was flaming glorious
wonder, mystical, transplendant, re-
vealed in every blade of grass, every
flash of sun across the sky, every line
of the road, the top of every hill.
And to Trenchard and myself !!
For Trenchard she had, perhaps, TAX
en- to herself some part Of his belove 20
country. He has told me-and ! Wlll
witness in myself to the truth OF TINS
What he never in his life felt more
hurningly his love for England than
at his first moment of his conscious,
ness of Russia. The lanes and sea OF
his remembered vision were not Tar
from that dirty, disordered town IN
Galicia-and for both of them he was
rendering his service"
This book is the story of war lnten-
sified and purified through an atm0s-
nhere of human motives and it is also
The story of the triumph OF sQul
over death. In describing Trenchards
thoughts on the battle field ne says ::
"War is made up, believe, not OF
hell 4%c
feats and victories, Russian trlumphIs
or surrenders, English and frencn
battles by sea and land, not OF smoke
and wounds and bloods, but OF NIL
lion past thoughts, past scenes, streets
of little country towns, lonely NILS:
dark sheltered valleys. the wide space
of the sea, the crowded traffic of New
York. London, Berlin"-and so on
Then again, death too-How clear
now it was to me! During these weeks
! had wondered, pursued the thought
of DeathAI had feared it when / had
seen the dead bodies in the forest. l
had laughed at it as when l had gone
with the sanitars.> I had cursed it as
when Maria Ivanovna had died. l had
sought it as / had done last night
and always as I draw closer and closer
to it, fancied it some fine allego2r1ical
figure, something terrible appalling:
devastating. Now. when was. as
believed, at last face to face with 1t,
l saw that one was simply face to face
with oneself
In his last book ''The Captives" he
returns again to his own country to
take up once more the all absorbing
TOPIC of their lives and manners. The
captives are Maggie Cardinal and
Martin Warlock bound by the myster-
ious consciousness of their religious
natures. The book is the story OF
their struggles to free themselves
from this mysterious force and while
one critic says ut winds thru ,ver1-
table vale of tears" it does no leave
the sense Of depression that some
books do. There are humorous TOUGH
es here and there and perhaps IN TINS
book, more than in any other Walpole's
genius for the Illuminating phrase
and his mastery powers of delineatlon
is most noticeable.
AS to Walpole's permanent place
among English novelists, few opin-