Cassandra-Prophecy*
Cassandra-Prophecy*
THAT NEXT WAR--K. A. Bratt--Harcourt, Brace ($2.50).
Many a soldier has rushed into print, but not often on the side of the angels. Major Karl-Axel Bratt, Swedish staff officer and member of the committee considering Sweden's national defense policy, has written a book about the next war, but against it, not for it. Like many another Cassandra, Major Bratt thinks that unless Something Is Done the next war will be upon us before we know it.
"The white races, the civilized races, cannot survive the next great war, perhaps principally on account of the consequent revolutionary chaos in which the West will be submerged." Major Bratt's prophetic descriptions of future strategy are arresting. The massive infantry armies of the last War are already obsolete, he thinks. Infantry of the future will move in smaller units, made more mobile by rapid motor transport. But the most significant new development was foreshadowed in the Allied campaign of 1919-- planned but never executed: an attack from the air on Germany's industrial centres. Supremacy in the air, says Major Bratt, will decide the issue in the next European war.
Like all professional men, soldiers try to keep up-to-date in their profession; in other words, prepare for fighting. Says Major Bratt gloomily: "The documents relating to the annihilation of the world lie collected in the underground armored cellars of the General Staffs or the Air Staffs. One day they will bear witness." To those who still believe The War To End War really ended it he says: "History only knows longer and shorter intervals between wars. . . . The generation which deludes itself, in an interval between wars, that war is over, should cease to do so." Besides "the situation created by the Peace of Versailles," Major Bratt sees two imminent threats to world peace: 1) Bolshevism, "which will find it consistent with its plans for world revolution to make the conflagration as wide as possible," 2) the air weapon, which he thinks will make the position of neutral states impossible.
No romantic, Major Bratt thinks the dollar is mightier than the pen. He believes the U. S. finally entered the War because U. S. Industry had become allied with the Entente; that "under these circumstances the patriotic associations were moved to induce America to enter the war and thereby guarantee a victory."
Panacea. Like most panaceas for war, Major Bratt's is a little indefinite of outline, is stronger on its negative side. Disarmament he considers impossible. "There cannot be any disarmament, or even reduction of armaments worthy of the name, until the nations have begun, at least in principle, to prepare for some federation, or until some more effective form than the present League of Nations has been found." The next war must be postponed long enough to find some such effective force for peace. What Major Bratt would like to see is an alliance between Labor and Capital; then "we should have at our disposal the strongest active force for the prevention of war."
Likeable Lyrics
HARD LINES--Ogden Nash--Simon & Schuster ($1.75).
I sit in an office at 244 Madison Avenue
And say to myself you have a responsible job, havenue?
Why then do you fritter away your time on this doggerel?
If you have a sore throat you can cure it by using a good goggeral,
If you have a sore foot you can get it fixed by a chiropodist
And you can get your original sin removed by St. John the Bopodist,
Why then should this flocculent lassitude be incurable?
Kansas City, Kansas, proves that even Kansas City needn't always be Missourible.
Up up my soul! This inaction is abominable.
Perhaps it is the result of disturbances abdominable.
"A girl who is bespectacled
Don't even get her nectacled. . .."
The Pilgrims settled Massachusetts in 1620 when they landed on a stone hummock.
Maybe if they were here now they would settle my stomach.
Oh, if I only had the wings of a bird
Instead of being confined on Madison Avenue I could soar in a jiffy to Second or Third.
So pipes in dulcet tones Manhattan's newest sweet singer, Ogden Nash. You will look in vain among these Hard Lines for one that tells of saddest thought; Poet Nash is cheerfully up-to-date. A determined rhymester, he bends words to his will:
A girl who is bespectacled
Don't even get her nectacled,
But safety pins and bassinets
Await the girl who fascinets.
Always pithy, his poetic vein sometimes turns political:
Like an art-lover looking at the Mona Lisa in the Louvre
Is the New York Herald Tribune looking at Mr. Herbert Houvre.
A good Manhattanite (he was born in Rye, N. Y., says he has 10,000 cousins in North Carolina, a great-great-granduncle who gave his name to Nashville, Tenn.), Ogden Nash praises Manhattan in Manhattanish accents:
In New York beautiful girls can become more beautiful by going to Elizabeth Arden
And getting stuff put on their faces and waiting for it to harden
And poor girls with nothing to their names but a letter or two can get rich and joyous
From a brief trip to their loyous.
The Author. Ogden Nash, 29, was a Harvardman for one year, left to teach at St. George's School, Newport, then went to Manhattan to sell bonds, which he found hard to do. Onetime adman for Barren Collier, Doubleday Page, this month he joined the editorial staff of the New Yorker.
Backward Glances
ROADS TO GLORY--Richard Aldington-- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).
Onetime British Soldier Aldington disagrees with the late great French Soldier Foch. Foch was usually wise enough to stick to his horizon-blue muttons, but once hazarded the opinion that the heroic soldier's reward was glory. In these 13 stories Aldington gives various examples of the soldier's reward. In the light of the title, all are bitterly satirical. Some of them:
An infantry column, fed up with years of war, is not impressed by news of the Armistice. Languidly they cry "Oo-ray," go on singing their mournful songs.
Two fellow-soldiers' mutual hatred waits a long time for fulfillment, because one of them is an officer. When the officer is finally reported "killed in action" the other one knows better.
An English officer makes the fatal mistake of keeping a diary in which he puts down what he thinks about the War. When the diary is discovered he is sent to a "sacrifice post."
A very young subaltern, on leave in Paris, takes an amorous adventure seriously. When he returns after the Armistice he finds what you would expect.
A soldier who had shot four Germans in cold blood when they tried to surrender to him is haunted by the memory into madness and suicide.
In an epilog Richard Aldington thus apostrophizes his comrades who have gone to glory: "We pass and leave you lying. No need for rhetoric, for funeral music, for melancholy bugle-calls. No need for tears now, no need for regret. . . . Which of us were the fortunate--who can tell? . . . Lost, terrible, silent comrades, we, who might have died, salute you."
The Author. Richard Aldington, 38, poet, biographer, critic, translator, likes sunshine and has spent little time in Eng land since the War. He lives in a Provengal villa where he is writing a new novel "about love and the sun." Like most English poets who survived the War, Aldington puts his recollections of it in bru tally realistic language. Tall, broad-shouldered, bronzed, pipe-smoking, he is handsome in the supercilious English man ner. Year before last his first novel Death of a Hero, written on typewriters bor rowed from his friends D. H. Lawrence and Ezra Pound, was acclaimed (TIME, Nov. 11, 1929). Other books: Collected Poems, Voltaire, Medallions.
Malignant Endocarditis
SHATTER THE DREAM--Norah C. James --Morrow ($2).*
Some things are incurable: the only way you can deal with them is to let them take their course. One is first love, another is malignant endocarditis (disease of the lining membrane of the heart). If you are unfortunate enough to have both of them together you will not enjoy yourself much. That was the fate of this book's hero.
Robin Downs did not realize for a long time that there was anything the matter with him. His life as a cashier in a small London branch bank was pretty narrowly circumscribed, and perhaps he would have had a better time in his off-hours if he had not been a teetotaler. But he had good reason: his mother was in an inebriates' home; music made up to him for sociability. When pretty Mrs. Banham-Jones came to his bank to cash a check, Robin liked the way she smiled at him, dreamed about getting to know her. Then his dream came true, and suddenly he was in love with her. She was flattered, her husband was sorry, but only Robin took it seriously. She let Robin kiss her, let him spend his little savings on their almost-innocent excursions, kept promising to go off with him for a weekend. One day Robin felt so sick he went to the doctor, who told him he had malignant endocarditis and perhaps three months to live. But Robin told nobody: Mrs. Banham-Jones hated sickness of any kind. When she got tired of him and picked a quarrel he saw through her, but it did him no good; he still loved her. When he got back to his room that night, the endocarditis did the rest.
The Author. Norah James, besides having been advertising manager of a British publishing house, is a onetime sculptor, trade-union organizer, journalist, War worker, designer. Canny, she held on' to her job until she had made a success with two novels; now she banks on royalties. Her hobby: repairing internal-combustion engines. Like many an Irish compatriot she lives in London. She has been once to the U. S. (last year), would like to come again. Other books: Sleeveless Errand (banned and boomed by the British censors), To the Valiant.
Crime Wave
I HAVE KILLED A MAN !--Cecil Freeman Gregg--Dial ($2).
THE RINGER RETURNS--Edgar Wallace --Crime Club ($1).
There is a strong tradition in detective-story fiction that if the villain is a killer or a low person generally he shall come to a satisfactorily bad end; if he is a Raffles he can do just about what he likes, and no permanent harm must come to him. Thriller-Author Gregg adheres to the tradition; Thriller-Author Wallace stretches it a little.
The first part of I Have Killed a Man! is the confession of the murderer himself; so that when the story returns to the third-person your apprehensive interest is not in ''Who did it?" but "Will they get him?" So very human, slow, likeable a creature is the modern Scotland Yard detective of fiction (in this case it is Inspector Higgins) that before they do get him suspense becomes acute. And even the surprising fact that Inspector Higgins turns out to be a Romeo may not compensate you for the untimely cutting-short of his Mercutio rival, the dashing Bobby Baynes.
If you are an Edgar Wallace fan you have doubtless met the Ringer before: that mysterious Robin Hood of the underworld, that past master of disguise whom few have seen without his makeup, who is a Galahad of hijackers, but who is wanted, strangely enough, by the police of an entire continent. Even Inspector Bliss, who should know better, is indefatigable in his attempts to run down the Ringer, though he is openly skeptical of success. The Ringer is no mere gentleman burglar: in this series of his exploits he is forced more than once to play the part of executioner. It is not in keeping with the traditional role of hero-villain; but, like Inspector Bliss, you can only stand by and shake your head admiringly.
*Published Jan. 2.
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