in his pocket. He may have a book of poems or of essays or of biographical studies—you do not know what he may have.
Isolated writers are certainly to be discovered in the gap, such as Miss Romer Wilson, whose Martin Schüler was one of the most remarkable books of 1918. But the book she published last year, If All These Young Men, was a considerable disappointment; and one hesitates before prophesying the author's future with any great emphasis. The first book, however, was so exceedingly good and original, and the second contained so much that was reminiscent of the qualities of the first, that it will be most disappointing if Miss Wilson comes to nothing. Another novel which attracted attention and which seemed to me to be a most admirable piece of work was The Mask by Mr. John Cournos, who describes in it with exquisite simplicity the experiences of a Jewish boy in Russia and America.
But this book has all over it the stamp of autobiography and perhaps ought to be associated with two others which reveal no tendencies and will have no consequences and which might have been published at any time. I mean The Journal of a Disappointed Man by "W. N. P. Barbellion" and Impressions that Remained by Dr. Ethel Smyth. Now "Barbellion" (his real name was Frederick Bruce Cummings) died in October last year; and Dr. Smyth is by vocation not a writer but a Composer of music, who, having written her one book, declines to be persuaded to write any more. These two works, both of them, I dare prophesy, destined to become classics, offer us nothing in the way of prospects. Great diarists and great autobiographers crop up unaccountably at irregular intervals, and the books to which these, each in its class, may be likened, would not take long to count.
But, to sum up, the truth is that we are still a long Way from being able to judge of the effect the war has had upon our literature. The absolutely calculable damage it has done is less than might have been expected; that is to say, the number of writers who had done enough for us to predict a certain future for them and who were killed was relatively small. How much potential and unrevealed genius was. destroyed we shall, of course, never know. But one effect of the war is painfully obvious. Five years' crop of young men, in all stages of development and at all levels of ability, is missing. Men who would have been coming down from the
