Evening star., 1924-10-12
PLCMES. BY Laurence Stallings.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.

PLUMES. By Laurence Stallings.
New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
= you saw him. dozen times and
" more, over in Franklin Park
with his wife and baby-the
young soldier on crutches
whose splendid six-feetytwo
had become unbalanced through the
loss OF one OF the long legs. They lived
just up the street, up Twelfth street, in
a two room and bath apartment. He
had tried, and tried 20 get something
to do-for there was the wife, you
see, and the baby. And he did get
job, but crutches are awkward things
and it was by more than one fall that
an already injured leg took him out
to Walter Reed where it was done
for completely. A pitiful-damnably
pitiful-little story, strung along this
line of personal misadventure in the
great and grand and glorious adven-
ture that is called war. AS you read
the simple and poignant thing you
are made to realize that one is an
individual. after all. That it is, much
more than likely, the unscathed SOL
dier who boils over with patriotic
ardor 1t must be that way. For
even the best is only an individual
whose own legs and arms are closer
to him. whose ambitions and dreams
are nearer and dearer than can be
those of some formless greatness,
some abstraction, however lofty this
may be- All the time one is reading
the story the poignancy of the in
dividual hurt is ever before him.
Laurence StallingS here sketches the
story of the Plume family, merely to
provide the background of patriotism,
the inheritance of militant devotion
to country that this young Richard
plume-the six-foot of vir1le man
hood, minus leg and virility gone
with it-tinds to be his frontage upon
life And he turns rebel before it,
rebel against war, against the fearful
losses that gained nothing at ALL
against the hell of his own future
and that of hundreds like him. Oh,
no, I'm not doing anything OF the
kind-Im merely telling you about
this story that will pierce your heart
with its plain realism of an every
day of anguish against which there
can be set up no denial for II makes
no claim. 1t merely pictures, vividly
and bloodily and shamelesSly. Just
watch this young man-this Laurence
Staliings man.
THE TRIUMPH OF GALLO. By W.
l.. George, author of Ursula
Trent" etc. New York: Harper &
Brothers.
The preoccupation of sages through
times past was the quest of the non
Fst man. Had one of that order per-
sisted up to the present day he would
have hied himself to the man of this
story, Holyoake Tarrant. and there ne
would have bided in triumph over the
Ang belated fact of finding one. On
ghe outside Holyoake Tarrant was
like another man-like you or your
Neighbor. On the inside he was ilke
you, too. The only difference being
that Holyoake Tarrant unflinchingly
ipld himself the truth and acted up
to it-a thing no man, outside OF a
hook may dare to do. The career OF
this man ran from poverty to Wealth
and back to poverty again; from rad
ical agitator to conservative citizen;
to disillusioned recipient of whatever
life offers when reduced to its lowest
terms of eXterna1S. These are the
vaymarks And it is along the way
toward these that the bare truth,
often the brutal truth, comes out
That is the point, that it comes out
it is the story, the old and true story,
of each man holding his own objective
in mind without regard to any lesser
thing that may fortuitously attach
itself to this prime objective-famlly,
friends, good faith, business usage
they stand in the way. Yet the man
appears like other men-and is. He
pushes a peddler'S cart. He rises to
world consequence in shipping be-
cause he followed a dream of the sea
and the wild world beyond 1T. He
pushes the peddler'S cart again be-
cause he came a last to the great fu-
tility, because he cared for none OF
these things" Everybody is going to
i-
his own conviction-a hard little ball
that pierces his own vitals. Every
body is going to condemn w. L.
George for writing an honest book. "A
man given to honest books, w. L.
George, but this goes deeper than
them all. What a fine courage to
have-to tell the actual truth about
himself and us. in the face of the
piled-up untruths upon which for
million years we have been nour-
ished
CARGOES FOR CRUsOES. By Grant
Overton, author of American
Nights Entertainment" etc. New
York: d. Appleton & Co, George H.
Doran Co. Boston: Little, Brown
< Co.
Three publishers have combined
again TO launch a ship whose cargo
is the best books of this year and the
next, whose Supercargo is Grant
Overton. deeply waywise not only to
the content and quality of his mer-
chandise, but to the needs and de-
sires, also, of many a hapless Crusoe
stranded upon a shore piled high
with books and dbooks-multitudinou
bewildering, paralyzing. You recall
a similar enterprise of last year,
when american Nights Entertain
ment" rescued you and me and others
and others to sanity and good sense
through its good advice in respect to
books, through its fair and interest
ing summaries and appraisals of the
best of the current work, set off now
and then beside the earlier perma-
nent literature. And this book, pro-
Vided under the same inspiration,
measures up in interest and substan-
tial information to that other one.
Every writer appearing here is one
of Immediate appeal-Phlip Gibbs
and his brother, Cosmo Hamilton. Lu
cas-, Melville Post, Emerson Hough,
Jeffery Farnol and Michael Arlen.
Others, too each with bit of analy-
sis attached to his name, a sketch of
work, d list of his writings. A COM
pletely helpful thing, this - ripe,
pithy, alive and as entertaining as it
, is Immediately useful. Cheap. too, as
n part of it's frank. intent to get the
best books out into the hands of
those who require guidance in this
respect.
THE EDUCATION OF PETER. BY
John Wiley. New York: Frederick
y. Stokes>Co.
"a Novel of the Younger Genera
tion" John Wiley calls this, covering,
as it does, the college course of Peter
Co1o