ART is stained with blood. French blood, German blood, it is always the Man of Sorrows. Yesterday we were listening to the sublime and gloomy plaint which breathes from Barbusse's Under Fire. To-day come the yet more heartrending accents of Menschen im Krieg (Men in Battle). Although they hail from the other camp, I will wager that most of our bellicose readers in France and Navarre will flee from them with stopped ears. For these tones would be a shock to their sensibilities.
Under Fire is more tolerable to these carpet-warriors. There reigns over Barbusse's book a specious impersonality. Despite the multitude and the sharp outline of the figures on his stage, not one of them has a commanding role. We see no hero of romance. Consequently, the reader feels less intimately associated with the hardships recounted on every page; and these hardships, like their causes, have an elemental character. The immensity of the fate which crushes, lessens the agony of those who are crushed. This war fresco resembles the vision of a universal deluge. The human masses execrate the scourge, but accept it passively. Under Fire growls forth a threat for the future, but has no menace for the present. Settling-day is postponed until after peace has been signed.
- ↑ Andreas Latzko, Menschen im Krieg, Rascher, Zurich, 1917; English translation, Men in Battle, Cassell, London, 1918.
