FICTION.
GRAPES OF WRATH.t
AN eminent publicist and playwright, who enjoys the privilege of being described by the German Press as the one righteous man in England, has recently recorded his impressions of a week's " joy-ride " —the phrase is his own, not ours—along the Western front. From them we gather that the destructive power of modern arms of precision and high explosives, and, as a corollary, the dangers daily encountered by our men in the battle zone, are greatly exaggerated. Mr. Boyd Cable, who is neither a publicist nor a playwright, but has been on the Western front off and on for more than two years, does not share this jaunty optimism. In his new book, the title of which is taken from a phrase in the first stanza of Julia Ward Howe's " Battle Hymn," he has endeavoured to describe " what a Big Push is like from the point of view of an ordinary average infantry private, to show how much he sees and knows and suffers in a great battle, to give a glimpse perhaps of the spirit that animates the New Armies, the endurance that has made them more than a match for the Germans, the acceptance of appalling and impossible horrors as the workaday business and routine of battle, the discipline and training that has fused such a mixture of material into tempered fighting metaL" He makes no claim for his chronicle as history ; it is " merely the sort of story that might and could bo told by thousands of our men to-day." From these preliminaries the reader may know what to expect. Hero is no " joy- ride," though the humours of trench-life are not altogether forgotten, but a series of detailed and realistic episodes in a great advance. It is not pleasant reading, but it is just as well that people who live at home at case should realize the prolonged tension of modern fighting —what is the result of heavy shelling on a trench, and what an advance over the open under machine-gun fire means, to mention only two of the sinister seise-its of scientific warfare. When Mr. Boyd Cable speaks of the " ordinary average infantry private" he is thinking, not of the " old Contemptibles," but of the New Armies, the composition of which allows for a wide variety of standpoint. The principal figures in the narrative are four, and a more curiously assorted quartet it would be hard to imagine than Larry Arundel, a young City man of good family ; Billy Simson, ex-errand boy and suburban shop assistant ; Ben Sneath, alias " Pug," a Cockney street Arab ; and Jefferson Lee, &Kentuckian, whose presence in the fighting ranks of a British regiment was " a personal violation of the neutrality of the United States." These four men, " drawn from classes that in pre-war days would have made any idea of friendship or even intercourse most unlikely, if not impossible, had, after a fashion so common in our democratic New • The Gospel of Consolation : Gnieersity and Cathedral Sermons. By William Dents. London: Locginans and Co. p.a. Cd. net.) t Qrsjes of Wrath. By Boyd Cable. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. [5s. net.] Armies, become fast friends and intimates." The narrative shows bow their comradeship was cemented by a prolonged ordeal, and was only broken by the death of two of the number. Of the four " Kentuck " is the most attractive and interesting figure, but in " Pug " we have a fine picture of the fighting Londoner, and his devotion to his com- rades, his recklessness in collecting " sooveneers," and his unfailing cheerfulness endear him to the reader. Arun del survives, a cripple for life, and " Kentuek," though too badly maimed ever to return to the fighting line, declines a soft job in a City house in order to rejoin in the Red Cross. We should like to quote the moving words which tell how his misgivings as to the ultimate issue were changed into confidence in tho triumph of the Allies, but they are too long to give in full. It was not the achievement of the Big Push; it was " something that just spoke plain and clear in my ear, ' He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,' " that banished all doubt as to the future and prompted him to the final step of naturalization. " I fought foh yoh country because I thought yoh ecuntry was right. But I come at last to fight foh her because I got to be proud of her and of belonging to her. And I want to pay the best bit of respect I can think of to those men I fought along with."
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