The New York herald., 1921-09-25
N American "Under Fire.


books--except the plain sol
dier. 1t is only fair that he should
have book of his own. And In
Three Soldiers" (Doran), by John
Dos Passos, he comes pretty near
having it. Here is the actual talk
of camps, transports and French
towns where American soldiers were
quartered. Here are the sounds and
smells of the army.
"Three Soldiers" is useful report
Of fact. the consciousness Of the
American soldier. In the main 1t Is
accurate. A good many views ex-
pressed by characters of the story
are false, because they are based on
insufficient knowledge. But part
of the truth about the soldier is the
fact that he does not and cannot see
everything in it's true proportions
and in its true relationship to the
whole situation.
The story leaves out whole Sec
tion of truth. 1t is unfair to the
French people, it is unfair to a great
body of American army officers, Y. M.
C. A. secretaries and other organiza-
tion types. But that is exactly one
of the worst things about war-that
1t makes men unfair, throws every
thing out of drawing, falsif1es
poisons.
The book has a great theme, not
perfectly realized, but sharply felt
by the reader who has broken
through the picket line of safe and
comfortable thoughts. John Andrews,
the most completely realized person.
age, is composer. He feels the
war in terms Of music. And through
him the reader feels the torturing
discord of war against the dream of
human harmony that sings in the
heart. Yet with the incorrigible i'm
seeks to fuse and bend and build
the very bars of his prison into
beauty
One day he was washing the bar
racks windows. The motion Of his
arm worked kind of rhythm into
the stream of his thought and feel
ing. 1T expressed the vast dusty
dulness, the men waiting in rows
on drill fields, standing at attention,
the monotony Of feet tramping in
unison, of the dust rising from the
battalions going back and forth over
the dusty drill fields. He felt the
his sore hands to his legs, tired from
marching back and forth, from max
ing themselves the same length as
millions Of other legs. His mind
began unconsciously, from habit,
working on it, orchestrating 1t. He
could imagine vast orchestra sway
ing with 1t. His heart was beating
raster. He must make 1t into music;
he must fix it in himself, so that he
could make it into music and write 1t
down, so that orchestras could play
II and make the ears of multitudes
feel 1t, make their flesh tingle with 1t.
He went on working through the
endless afternoon, climbing up and
down his ladder. smearing the bar
racks windows with soapy rag. A
silly phrase took the place of the
yelling of music>in his mind: Arbeit
ind Rhythmas. He kept saying ii
over and over to himself: Arbeit
und RhWhmus. He tried to drive
the phrase out of his mind. to bury
his mind in the music of the rhythm
that had come to him, that expressed
the dusty boredom, the harsh con-
striction OF warm bodies full of ges-
lures and attitudes and aspirations
into moulds, like the moulds toy SOL
diers are cast in. The phrase be-
came some one shouting raucously
in his ears: Arbeit md Rhythmus--
drowning everything else. beating
his mind hard again, parching It.
But suddenly he laughed aloud
Why, II was in German. He was
being got ready to kill men who said
that. II any one said that, he was
going to kill him. They were going
to kill everybody who spoke that
language, he and all the men whose
feet he could hear tramping on the
drill field, whose legs we're all being
made the same length on the drill
fields
The soldiers indictment against
war is that 1t kills not only the men
who die but those who seem to live.