Death of a Pacifist
Men do not Weep. By Beverley Nichols: (Jonathan Cape. 78. 6d.)
THIS latest book by Beverley Nichols is a set of nine short stories introduced by a foreword into which the author says he puts the raw matter of a tenth short story which he found himself unable to write. All these stories, including the introduction, are varia- tions on the theme of what Mr. Nichols calls the " Crisis Years " leading up to the war. As stories they are told with the rare but sterile cunning which has brought Mr. Nichols great popu- larity, much money and an uncertain reputation. Nobody would look to Mr. Nichols for the refreshment that good literature gives ; on the other hand, Mr. Nichols writes for educated as well as for ignorant readers ; for the extremely sophisticated as well as for the extremely naïve. In this odd ability he stands supreme among contemporary English writers ; none can rival him as an adroit mixer of the bitter and the sweet—tears and tantrums, for example, make up most of the substance of these stories. They are all told in the first person, and the author is generally on the verge either of being sick or of bursting into tears. Mr. Nichols's sensibility is extreme and genuine. It is this which has given him his larger public, for it is true that no writer can win hearts with his tongue in his cheek. But Mr. Nichols also appeals strongly to the intelligentsia of his time, being fundamentally a clever but not a serious writer. He is their licensed Prince of Fools, but a Prince with a big
heart aching to do good and to reform the world. Much of his liveliness comes from exhibiting his own weaknesses and follies, . and he would be an utterly unimportant writer if they were not also the follies and weaknesses of a great many people here and in America.
This book is in effect an apologia for his having been a pacifist and a description of his "death pangs" as such. As the author of Cry Havoc, a sort of Bible for pacifists (which Mr. Nichols tells us " had a very large sale—was made compulsory in hun- dreds of schools—was squabbled about in the House of Commons, and was issued in a special edition of 7,000 copies for the Depart- ment of Education of Toronto, Canada "), he is surely right in thinking that his present recantation of pacifism has some im- portance ; but the serious reader will search in vain for any convincing reason why Mr. Nichols has changed. All one can discover is that Mr. Nichols does not believe, "and still refuses to believe," that man is bad. " The author," he says, " even when the bombs are falling round him, does not regard the' projectors of these bombs as bad."
It is pathetic that Mr. Nichols seems intellectually incapable of understanding that men are capable of good and evil, and that while they are committing evil we may as well admit that they are bad and have done with it. Vague, tearful sentimentality about the fundamental goodness of human nature leads nowhere, and one would not waste time on it if Mr. Nichols did not represent, unfortunately, the majority of our contemporary intelligentsia whose brains are mere bright will-o'-the-wisps flickering deceitfully in marshes of sensibility, imagining their amiable intentions to be the same as good actions. Pacifist or non-pacifist, such people are equally dangerous ; they led the way to the fall of France, and this country very narrowly escaped being drawn by them into a similar disaster.
W. J. TURNER.
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