Evening star., 1935-11-24
PENGUIN PARADE.
THE STORY BEHIND A STORY
Rev. Edmund A. Walsh Describes Saddening
Experience Behind "Woodcarver of Tyrol."

mother and two little girls came
into the ossuary. AS they entered
the terrible place the children began
to cry; but the mother did not shed
tears. The picture was unforgettable.
Subsequent travels took the author
into many lands and everywhere he
saw the disruption of families and
suffering of simple people wrought by
war. From this experience the story
of The Woodcarver of Tyrol," slowly
grew and developed.
AS to the actual story, Dr. Walsh
says that it is entirely true. Every
thing in it has happened. He has
simply used an authors right to re-
arrange events to make harmonious
whole. The climax of his tale is the
moment when the mother receives her
dead sons letter, written her on the
eve of attack and consigned to the
company chaplain, to be sent her in
the event that the boy fell This
letter-the originals now in DR..
Walsh's possession. Only one SEN
tence of it has been changed for the
purpose Of the story. The rest OF it,
as it appears in the tale, is as it
was written by a young Austrian
soldier-one who, like the boy of the
story, may have given up his carving
of a Pieta to fight III the war against
Russia.
Other factors than the sorrow of
the mothers. however, entered into the
oIf-hnrsc nf cf ~
the years in which he was considering
( it. One of these was the waste of
human genius brought about by war.
This was emphasized to him by his
search for the grave of the young
poet, Kilmer. He has made the
youth of his story an artist, and the
son of an artist
Another factor was brought to DR..
Walsh by personal loss. He was him.
self on the high seas in the midst
Of the war, at time when submarine
warfare was at its most dangerous.
When he finally arrived in Boston he
learned that his father had died,
from a stroke brought on by his
anxiety over his sons safety. The
father Of the young woodcarver dies
| a like death in the story. 1t is indeed,
as DR.. Walsh says, "a distillation of
20 years" observation and experience
| in war-ridden lands.
THE effect of this long meditation
has been to produce a tale that
is beautifully simple and profoundly
sad. 1t was finally written last Win
ter and was first presented to the
public when its author read it in lieu
OF lecture at the university. He
was, he says, inundated with re-
quests for copies, SO that he arranged
for publication of the popular edition
with Harper g. Bros. Then came the
flood OF inquiries as to the truth or
fiction of the story, and so the limited
edition was undertaken, in which are
included the prologue and epilogue of
explanation.
DR.. Walsh was lecturing on interna-
tlonal relations at the Academy of
International Law at the Hague last
Summer while this second edition was
being prepared, so that proofs and
the artists sketches had to be shipped
to him across the ocean. Some re-
vision, he says, was actually done by
cable while he was on shipboard, and
one set of proofs. mailed him at South
ampton, was completely lost. But now
the story appears and it would seem
that at no time during the 20 years
of its "distillation" could such a work
on war have come more fttingly.