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The sun. [volume], October 13, 1918, Section 5 Books and the Book World, Page 8, Image 50
About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920
Image provided by: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation
Newspaper Page Text
THE SUN. SUNDAY. OCTOBER 1.1. 1918. "The Black Watch" . "The Star in the Window" By GORDON B. MOSS. rpiIE BLACK WATCH, by Scout Joe Cassells, bears the subtitle, A Record in Action. It is more than that; it is a historical work of first im portance one that deserves a "place in any collection of war literature. CasseH's book covers a definite period of the war, the retreat from Hons to the Marne "when the Black Watch and other regiments of the immortal 'contemptible little arrny'marehed into the unknown against the fiercest; most efficient mili- ( tary power the worid up to that time lad known; the months when hidden enemies struck swiftly mystifying blows with strange weapons, the more terrible be cause we did -not understand them and Jiad never imagined their power and riutn Ters." It is the individual record as well of the part one man played in that bloodiest of war's sacrifices, of almost un believable adventures and escapades, told - with complete absence of "swank." Also presented are indisputable evidences of the crudest of German atrocities. It is -probably the most readable, interest com pelling war book since Over the Top and countless times as thrilling. The Black Watch was one of the first Tegular British army regiments in France, and- for days Cassells and his comrades underwent forced marches to meet the on rolling tidal wave of German soldiery. They reached Mons, where tlwy were to hold" the left flank. They intrencbed but were forced to give way. Then began the slow, bloody retreat toward the Hum, when Britain's valiant army, by tremendous sacrifice of lives, helped to impede and finally check the German men ace. "We had no artillery to speak of and few airplanes' writes Cassells. "If we had had more of the latter there might . . .1 M TT 3 VI Jl.. nave oeea anotner storm, uauuumwuj bis own story would not have been so highly entertaining, for the scout was still the eyes of the army, and many of his most exciting adventures came when he had been ordered to crawl on-his belly to the crest of a ridge to sec what lay beyond. The agonies suffered by an army in retreat, when a relentless fee drives them ever oa and on, without opportunity to eat, sleep or even bathe are vividly rc coanted. "We were sear to exhaustion and some of the men dropped from the ranks only to die of the strain." Finally came the fighting on the Aisne, after which the British sad French re sistance grew stubborn and ehecked the invaders. Cassells seemed to bear a charmed life, being ever in the thick of the fighting and participating in a num ber of personal affairs with individual Germans. One incident he relates as follows: "In the general mirup I found myself locked in the arms of a bearlike Prus sian Guardsman who evidently had lost his rifle and bayoneet. His knee was against my knee his chest pressed against my chest. Our faces touched. ""I slid my hands up along the barrel of iny rifle until they were almost under tle hilt of the bayonet Very' slowly I shoved the butt back of mo and to the side. Lower and lower I dropped it. The keen blade was between us. ' All the Hun seemed to know about wrestling was to hug. He dared not let go. Had he known ' a few tricks of the game I should not be writing this to-day. "Instinctively I felt that the point of my bayonet was in line with his throat. -With every ounce. of strength in my body I wrenched my shoulders upward and straightened my knees. The action broke his hold and my bayonet was driven into his greasy throat . . . "The thrust I had used has come to be known as the jab point'; they are teach ing it to the American army to-day. It developed naturally from just such situa tion?: as I have described." The German horde 4-cpulsM at the Marne, the Black Watch went northward by forced marches to help cut off the Ger man thrust at Calais. Both armies became intrenched in the Flanders mud, and then began the long period of trench warfare. There more startling adventures befell our scout, including the affray in which he was wounded and incapacitated for further service. Now he lives in the United States. In referring to atrocities committed by German soldiers in the early days of their devastation of Belgium and France Cas sells makes scant mention of any second hand tales, but confines himself i evi- ..AafSaaV- SXCUTJOE CASSELLS. yirpxjtc or TUB BLACK WrCH' deuces of them that he saw with his owa eyes. At Guise, he says: "I with other members of my own com pany came upon a nail driven into the wall of a barn, from which hung by the month the lifeless form of a baby. The child was dead when we found it, hut it had died hanging from the rusty nail. I know it had, because I saw upon the wall the marks of fingernails where the baby had clawed and scratched. And besides, a dead body would not have bled.". Again at Soissons: "These mutilated children I, -myself, and my comrades saw. Two at least I recollect with bloody stumps where baby hands had been and one whose foot had been severed at the ankle. saw these things. I saw them and I live to say that others with me saw them brawny High landers whose tears of pity flowed with those of the mothers who wept for heart break and with those of the babies who wept for the pain of tbe wounds which maimed them. Aye, there were witnesses enough; and witnesses remain, though many of the Black Watch who that day saw and cursed the cowardly brutality of the Huns were to lie, but too soon, with their voices hushed forever, so that they may not speak of it.' Americans should be devoutlv thankful, he declares, that they can fight abroad and not have to endure tho presence of a single Prussian soldier on American soil. We learn from the author in a brief historical sketch of the Black Watch that tbe regiment was in America in the Revo lution and took part in the battle of Long Island. Later the Highlanders made them selves at home attempting to chase Con tinental troops about the rocky steeps of Harlem. Tlie regiment was organized in 1729 and has seen fighting in every part of the world against foes of nearly every race and color. 3y CONSTANCE MURRAY GREENE OLIVE "HIGGINS PROUTY'S new novel bears the timely title The Star In the Window, but it can hardly be called a -war novel, although toward the end the hero does complete shaping his hitherto nushapen character by becoming a Captain in the American unny. It Is in the main concerned with Keba Jerome, a small town New England girl who was fast fading before she had bloomed in the novelist's oft-pictured New England household of maiden aunts, invalid mother and sullen father, when, snatching circum stances by the forelock, she demanded some-tiling more from life than the drab comfort tliat surrounded her and thereby escaped becoming a maiden aunt of the nest generation. " Tisn't many girls who've had her ad vantages; private tutor since she was seven, hand made clothes, every stitch, right-down to her combinations. Tonsils out and eyes examined I don't know how many times, and teeth straightened to the tunc of $50," Aunt Augusta was fond of boasting. "Reba looked upon Aunt Augusta as the force that had kept her life from fly ing apart, but oh, bhe had wanted it to fly apart." When the dash for freedom was finally decided upon lieba found shelter in the Woman's New England Alliance and under its protection began at twenty five to dance and swim and make friends, in short to do all the things ehe had al ways wanted to do. It was at one of the social evenings which the alliance con . ducted every week that Nathaniel Caw thornc, tbe embryo Captain, entered her life. He was uncouth and of a heavy turn conversationally, but Keba seized upon him nevertheless. Having made up her mind that things must fly to pieces whether for good or iD, she was not let ting ariy chance pass, so she consented to follow the movies with him which led: as it has frequently done before, to mar riage. Keba had found that "She would have to return to her family for a time and the step was taken for the sole purpose of im proving her position in her home. Nat who really loved his wife, was sent off for three years before the wedding day had passed. The three years were eventful ones for both. "After a brief time Beba hurried back to the Alliance and had her heart broken by a young doctor who was about as much married as she and thrn fell ill and pined among her family, reduced by this time to their proper position. Nathaniel gave up seafaring, to which he had supposedly re turned, and devoted b'imsdf to becoming a presentable person. After putting him self through a stiff course- in husband training and joining the army after Amer ica's declaration of war, he made his debut as that unsurpassable combination, a hus band and soldier, and won the once broken heart of his wife. It was hard that he had to leave for France just as he was proving himself the ideal huslmnd, but that's how it was. Still there are more wives than admit it who would prefer a few months of a house broken husband to a lifetime of the other sort, and so far as he was concerned it must have been a satisfaction to rrceive such messages as this from bis wife. "I never glance up night or day as I tnrn the driveway of 89 Chestnut street hut that I see your star shining out at me from the window in the parlor, where the curtains used to be drawn tight. The old house has had its eyes opened, Nathan, and has been given sight." THE STAB IN TILE WINDOW. Br Oura Hicgiss IIoctv. Frederick A. Stokn Company. $1.50. THE BLACK WATCH: A BKCOBD Vi ACTION. Bv Bcovr Joe Cisskj.ls. DonbleJay, Page & Co. $1.50. Honghton Mifflin Company have been pestered with questions about Ernest Goodwin, a new English writer (appar ently) and autlior of a gay novel of gyp sying, The Cararam Hon, which they have just published. The publishers know noth ing about Goodwin, the manuscript of the novel having been submitted through nn agency. They have asked for information about him. All the new 1918 lwoks of the Britlon Publishing Company (New York) are now out. They are (icoryina's Service Stars, by Annie Fellows Johnston; Making Life Worth While, by Douglas Fairbanks; H7iot the SmtU of Men Are Calling, by Credo Harris; Orer the Seas for Uncle Sam, by Elaine Sterne; A Man and a Woman, by Dade Dnimmond; .-tmbu-lanting on the French Front, by Edward Coyle, and Chicken Little Jane, by lily Moasel Ritchie. "Living the Creative Life" A PARTICULAR interest attaches to Living the. Creative Life, by Jo seph H. Appel, because the author is an executive in cliarge of advertising for John Wanamakir; it is natural, there fore, to anticipate a book bristling with secrets of business success. It is not that .kind of a book which Mr. Appel has written. He has no Tcady made formulas for making a living and success in busi ness is entirely subordinated in his book to success in living. By the creative life he means an enlarging existence, a lift growing richer, a life filled with a greater diversity of interests. If you can live right, is his argument, "all these things business health, even happiness shall be added unto yon." And so be discusses the "qualities'' of creative living. They are not new energy, understanding, thoroughness, con centration, memory, imagination (in the sense of the ability to vLiualtsc things) ; all these have been preached by wise men from generation to generation. And about each and every one of them there is always something new to be said. What Mr. Appel has to say will be as new to many readers as if much of it had never been uttered before. He comes at his sub jects freshly and vigorously, and he is not afraid of the apt and pointed anecdote. This is not a book for everybody. It is the kind of a book which will either strike the reader as here too obvious and there too vague, or as a singularly earnest and inspiring peries of preachments. For example: "One worker sees a bolt of goods out of its place, picks it up and puts it away. Another worker looks at a disarranged bolt of goods, only looks at it and lets it lie in disorder. Which worker will suc ceed, which will failT" "In proportion as the sonl truly reflect? the spirit oar intuition will be true. Pure intuition is always true. It is pure spirit speaking. What we call intuition, however, is often only our subconscious thought, or at best the subconscious thought of the world tbe aniraa munili, the soul of the world, cosmic thought, and not the Animus Dei, the Spirit of God." The book will be a real help to a lot of readers. Others, who should avoid it. will wonder what their fellows see in it. Which is absurd of them but perhaps it merely shows how hopeless they are any- A James Joyce Play JAMES JOYCE'S ExiUt is an absorb ing analysis of four human souls. It is a genuine bit of psychology, well writ ten and brilliantly conceived. It is a sonl scarching work, and is therefore limited in its appeal to a small group of readers. Hie publisher's announcement d5 aspersions on the "average reader,'' who win lay down the book, declaring it is "not a play." Well, it isn't or rather, not a good play and only the most over sophisticated will dare maintain that it is. There is no use trying to prove that this is a play, and that is not; the fact remains that Exiles belongs to a category of work whieh is more effective in almost any other form than dramatic form. You cannot escape the fact that a play must be produced before a crowd and that as a rule that crowd is not interested in the psychology of sonl states, except in so far as these are revealed in a moving story and through the agency of interesting characters. The story of Exiles is little or nothing; the characters are interesting not because of what they do, but because of what they think. This is not sufficient to make a good play. Granting this we may say that Mr. Joyce's insight info human mo tives is appallingly clear; the surgeon's knife is so surely wielded that we wince. This study of two men and two men, and the complicated problems of their relations each with the other, and the reactions resulting therefrom, form the entire fabric of the play. To enjoy it you must have thought a good deal about the harassing questions involved in the sex relationship, and thought deeply. If you come to Exiles with a desire to learn more than you thought you knew, you will not be disappointed. Mr. Joyce is wise possibly a lirtJe too wise. EXILES. ruT iu three atts. Bt James Jotce. B. W. Hnebsch. $1. way LIVING THE CREATIVE LIFE. Bt Josxth H. Arru. Robert M. MeBrii 4k Co. $1.56. The Doctors Part, by Col. James R. Church, U. S. A., details every step in the treatment af wounded soldiers. Read DONALD Mcelroy Scotch-Irishman Br W. W. CALDWELL A Thrilling Tale of the Scotch-Irish ia America. mttrate4, with caUred jacket, 1 3S At Your Bookstore emit V. JacAta.rMiWJ