Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-06-02
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM

NATIONAL DEFENCE. Kirby Page
Farrar and Rinehart.

Farrar and Rinehart.
War time. Ypres. Trench life
and death. The trench, a ditch backed
with brick rubble, faced with piled
sandbags. Rain, with no hour OF let-up
for weeks. Country roundabout boys Of
slime. Trenches half filled with water,
sinking from scraps of floating human
bodies and clots Of green blood. Here
Tommy and Poilu and Doughboy writhe
under torture blankets Of lice on the
feed. like locust swarms upon a stricken
land. For a shred more Of safety
shovels ply farther back, into q paste
OF human flesh, turning out here q
booted leg, there blackened hand or
an eyeless head.
Trench feet"-ice cold, standing
long In ditch water, then fire hot, then
numb, then dead. The field doctor
hastily cuts away boots and putties,
tearing of sock and skin together from
the putrid flesh beneath.
Shell shock"-raving lunatics, claw
ing eyes and mouth, gibbering in palsies
OF terror over sights and memories too
terrible to serve any end save that of
idiocy or epileptic escape from con-
sciousness.
Thousands went this way. Many mil
lions went by the instant, and blessed,
efnciency OF German guns.
And these were boys, these pieces Of
men. All boys at the beginning. The
youth and health and the Joy of life
for gun fodder, actually requiring
soldiers to pass examinations In fitness
to be killed Only the elders, and the
elder1ng, and the favored are immune.
On, 1t was a great war! The war to
end war. A war to make the world
safe for democracy.
X r
May 30, 1881. A wide field smiling
In the sun. An orderly field, lined with
row upon row of narrow beds, marble
headboard and footboard for each. Blan-
kets, the tender green Of new grass. EN-
broidered, for this high day, with gar
lands Of flowers, with nosegays Of
bright beauty. Over all, great trees
lean In benson and care. A regimented
field. orderly as a military camp. That
Is what 1t Is A camp Of dead soldiers.
Dead boys, the most Of them, by far
the most Of them.
The morning, all roundabout, moves
forward to marching and to music, to
eloquence and elegy. Oratory trumpets
the air, even as the bugles do. Supreme
sacrifice" love Of the home land"
"deathless heroes" defense of the
hearthfires the rest Of that ia
miliar repetitious sonance. But the boys
in the narrow beds do not stir to the
snuggle closer under their lovely blan-
kets of grass and flower Youth is ever
sleepy O. mornings. We forget that these
are all, practically all, just lads. Mars
like Eros. Is avid Of youth. And our
dead soldiery. from Revolution on
through the six wars waged by this
peaceful country in its century and a
quarter Of existence, are young men.
That handful of veterans. marching in
diminished numbers each succeeding
Memorial day. beloved and venerated as
millions of soldier lads lying under
ground. Literally, there are no veterans
under the sod-covering of the soldier.
Just boys, instead, who at the front
caught the enemy's first onset.
The great Memorial day wears on over
thousands Of fields throughout the coun-
try. Perhaps in Washington. our Capt.
tai. the ceremony Is markedly impress
sive. Military music. soldiers on parade,
partaking civic bodies numerous and
earnest, eloquence plentiful and at hand
Eloquence more fervid. more practiced,
than in places remote from this Govern
ment center. where 1t Is so much in de-
mand. or seems to be. A great Memo
rial day! And rightly such. For the war
to end war has been fought. The future
for our country stretches out toward
paths Of
In the afternoon Of that day miracle
takes possession Of the air above Wash
ing;on. DepIoying in the practiced pre-
cision Of military maneuver, 900 planes,
through some wild necromancy. have
turned fha ofI1np iv1SO okoy. Fov
the passage Of a battle fleet Only a
spectacle! Only q demonstration of
science applied to flight, lesson laid out
by the birds for ages Only an aca-
demic gesture by the modern man.
mayvel!!l
An event achieved. a thing concluded,
offers the best time for a general survey
of that event. Of that thing. Therefore
with wars behind civilization. an over
looking of war in its essentials becomes
en- who have turned definitively away
from such relic of savage and barbarous
times. Here is good and an opportune
chance for such final investigation of
an utterly bad phase of mans develop
ment toward-well. certainly toward
something finer than slaughter and the
bestiality of nations seeking to annihi-
late one another.
The present and future provide the
field Of investigation set for us by Kirby
Page. The past serves only for illumi-
nation of high points, for probabilities
of certain situations in their further
opening. So, in effect, this book IS not
a history, though 1t is deeply rooted in
the past. Rather Is 1t looking around,
ard across, and then ahead. In pure
~ partaking sense are we urged here to
look out upon the World War. It's
causes, its results, the present menace
to peace, certain ways to achieve ma
tional security. That's ell. All-save
definite program for every individual
to follow, to seek to follow, If he does
abhor war, If he Is in any sense of the
measure Of a patriot.
From the first, here Is reading that
Is both vivid and vital. Easily within
the seizure of every average man and
woman. Stripped Of any single posture
Of pretense here the causes of the World
War are set out for the common intel
ligence to gather. The point, through
out the study, is that most of 1t Is al
ready known, but that we, as individ-
uals, bar from ourselves, by our own
prejudices and narrownesS, many things
that, at bottom, we know to be the
truth. Here is a frank man and fear
less one: He opens up our provincialism.
our .nationalism even, for the admission
of a truth that Is wider than either Of
these. In this spirit he sums the causes
of the World War. Familiar, all Of
them. And from this he passes to some
Of its most dangerous reSults-economic,
political, moral and spiritual conse-
quences. Kirby Page cites present perils
growing out of war settlements, as the
dangers Of rivalry in nationalism, in
trade, in economic ambitions in dis
putes over territories and racial hatreds.
The war debts come in as a distinct
peril, along with the hostility existing
between communism and capitalism.
According to this outspoken publicist
there are constructive and definitely in
dividual ways of helping toward ma