New-York tribune., 1921-11-20

pany. ~.
Nj his sonvistIons. ms, III In a. prsta- a.
tory note. written in a wh;m-
sical humor worthy of Lamb and an
incisiveness of epigram which Swift
, would have envied, he argues for the
writing of noyels at least touching upon
the war. Then, lest the skeptical
reader may say with shrug, "Oh,
that's all very we'll, but you just can't
make war stories interesting any
more!" He goes ahead and does it.
And if "The Willing Horse" is not an
interesting novel, then neither is any
work Of fiction that has been produced
this century.
We must remember that the war
was not all at the front 1t was in
every home, every heart, every life.
That is the aspect of it for which the
author of "The First Hundred Thou
sand" has regard in this latest book of
his He aims to depict the life of
Britain in war time, the everyday
life, the intimate domestic life of real
men and real women, instinct at once
with passion and with patriotism, now
touched with humor and now exalted
with heroism. In such drama the
war is an incident, or a circumstance
and nothing more. Humanity is the
major theme.
,c Ill, II.
pected in the writings of man of ac-
tion, an abundance of incident, some
times dramatic, sometimes tinged with
pathos or tragedy, but often marked
with a vein of humor which for spon-
taneity, freshness and that indescrib-
able blending Of the subtle and the
obvious which is one Of the rarest
hallmarks of genius is not surpassed
by any writer of our day. Nor does
the author seek the facile resort of in
venting artificial characters and sisua-
tlons just for the sake of humor. The
heroine who serves as motor car driver.
chorus girl and canteen worker, and
the gaunt, eagle-eyed old minister who
answered the tactful hints of his kirk
session with gentlemen, you may
whistle for my resignation" and all
the rest are not only possible, but are
precisely such persons as we certainly
know to have lived, loved, iested, toiled
and suffered in thousands of British
communities through the four years
of Armageddon.
Above all, perhaps, the book has this
surprising and not overcommon excel
lence: that while the blood of every man
and woman is red and hot, with pulses
above rather than below eighty to the
minute, the light in which they live and
move is white and clear and stainless.
There is no "sex problem" save that
greatest of all-the pure, clean love of
e manly man for womanly woman.
There is wealth of humor, a pleni-
tude of witticisms, but there is not
one double entendre of potential
prurience. There is direct contact with
the war at the battle front, with much
of its majesty pathos and terror but
not word of merely clinical horrors
There is strength enough, virility
enough. to satisfy the most robust
taste, with demonstration of the
eternal fact that scene to be strong
need not be salacious. and that man
to be clean need not be mollyc oddle
Yes, the authors initial argument is
viadicated. There has been a war,
and the people now best worth writing
about and reading about are those who
gave body, everything win
that war Readers who are worth
writing for will not in our time object
to frequent succession of war novels,
If only they possess the style and
spirit of "The Willing Horse"