This book review was published in an American magazine shortly after President Wilson and the U.S. Congress declared war on the Germany. The book in question,
The battle of the Somme, was written by Philip Gibbs (1877 - 1962). Highly respected among his peers and the reading public, Gibbs was knighted for his efforts at the war's end but soon he let the world know what he really thought of the war and, in particular, his feelings concerning General Douglas Haig.
Gibbs wrote a number of books that were critical of war, click here to read a review of More That Must Be Told (1921).
A small column from a 1915 issue of
Vanity Fair in which the correspondent praised the virtues of Howard Copeland (an American psychologist and ambulance volunteer working in Frabce), Gertrude Aldrich (author of an
Atlantic Magazine essay titled, "Little House on the Marne"), Cardinal Mercier (author of the
Great Belgian Pastoral) and W.F. Bailey (authored a paper concerning the war in Northeastern Europe). These writers are preferred to the usually celebrated ink-slingers like Hellaire Belloc, Rudyard Kipling, Anatole France, and Arnold Bennett who are all compared to amateur recruiting sergeants in support of the War.
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Reviewed herein is the W.W. memoir of General von Josef Graf Sturgkh (1859 - 1916) memoir recalling his days in Berlin serving as the Austrian Army delegate to the German military's "Great Headquarters" (1915 - 1916):
"Graf Sturgkh drops several hints about the very heavy losses incurred by the Germans in the very first weeks of the war..."
"Soldier poets are the true historians of the war. Unlike the host of professional versifiers who sat up day and night on Parnassus, pouring out their patriotic zeal in allegorical rhymes of battles and batteries with more than Aesopian facility, the soldier poets have given to life and literature a genuine interpretation of warfare stripped bare of artificialty"
When you stop to think of patriotic poetry,
Gertrude Stein
(1874-1946) is not one of the word-smiths whose name comes to mind. Yet she, too, applied her talents to the genre after having labored many moons as an ambulance driver in France on behalf of the American Fund for the French Wounded. She had joined this group in 1916 and in 1922 was awarded the Medaille de la Reconnaissance Française for all her good work. This poem, in praise of the U.S. Army, appeared in a 1918 VANITY FAIR.
Israel Zangwill (1864 - 1926) was a member of the Jewish literary society in Britain; he was an prominent lecturer, journalist, novelist and playwright. Today, however, he is mostly remembered for his efforts on behalf of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish homeland. The following is a luke-warm book review from 1916 covering his collection of essays about World War I,
The War for the World
.
A magazine review of the classic American World War One novel,
Three Soldiers by John Dos Passos.
"This book is vivid, but not sentimental. It does not contain a description of a single battle. What it does describe is the transformation of minds and bodies under the stress of war."
"In Three Soldiers, John Dos Passos exhibited the disillusionment of the soldiers in the field; The Last Mile by Frank Macallister exposes the disillusionment of the soldier come home". The reviewer remarked that both men had been "bamboozled by Woodrow and company".
In the bad-old days of World War I, author Andreas Latzko (1876 - 1943) served as a line officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. While at the front he was affected by the horrors of combat until he found that he had seen enough and chose to desert. Even before the war had ended he managed to create an anti-war novel and get it to press before the Armistice. Digitized here is the 1918 review of his book,
Men In War
"Disillusionment and an almost morbid sympathy with mental and physical suffering are outstanding features of the book."
American journalist Frederick Palmer (1873 - 1958) began his career as a correspondent covering the Greco-Turkish War (1896 - 1897); by the time the First World War flared up his stock was at it's very peak and and was selected by the British Government to serve as the sole American reporter to cover the efforts of the B.E.F.. In the Spring of 1917, when the U.S. entered the war, Palmer was recruited by the American Army to serve as the press liaison officer for General Pershing. A good deal of Palmer's experiences can be gleaned from this article, which was written as a review of his wartime memoirs,
The Folly of Nations (1921).
Another Frederick Palmer article can be read here...
This is a short, pithy review of E.E. Cummings' (1894 – 1962) novel,
The Enormous Room I1922), which was based upon his experience as an American volunteer ambulance driver and his subsequent incarceration in a French jail for having admitted to pacifist sympathies. The reviewer believed that the book provided:
"the last word in realistically detailed horrors."
F. Scott Fitzgerald is said to have remarked:
"Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives - The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings".
Attached, you will find the 1917 review of
Carry On
by Coningsby Dawson (1883 - 1959). The book is a collection of the author's beautifully crafted letters that were written to his family while he served on the Western Front during the First World War. Dawson's ability to convey the urgency of the allied cause was so well received he was assigned to write two additional books by the British Ministry of Information:
The Glory of the Trenches and
Out to Win, both published in 1918 (neither of the two were any where near as moving as the one that is reviewed here).
Click here to read about W.W. I art.
A large part of the American publicity machine has always involved the creation of a memoir; attached herein is
The Literary Digest review of the World War One memoir of American war hero Sergeant Alvin York (1887 - 1964):
Sergeant York and His People.
To read an account of Sergeant York's deification in Gotham, click HERE.
Click here to read about the regrets of the American invalids from W.W. I.
Henry Seidel Canby (1878 - 1961) was one of the founding editors of
The Saturday of Literature
and in this article he put pen to paper and presented his readers with a concise summation of what he liked to call "the five phases" of war literature. Canby sensed that since 1919 there had been five unique types of war books, all produced by veterans, and that Erich Maria Remarque's (1898 – 1970)
All Quiet on the Western Front was typical of the fifth variety that was appearing in 1929:
"The balance hangs true in Remarque. Pacifism is a theory, militarism is a theory, war is a necessity - not in its causes, for who really hates the enemy! - but for this doomed generation it is a fact. War for these men is normal, which does not mean that they like it."
A 1930 article about the movie can be read herecan be read here.
The editors for the August 3, 1929 issue of
The Saturday Review of Literature removed their collective caps in deep solemnity for the disasters that began that week just fifteen years earlier when the opening shots were fired that began the First World War.
It was a fitting tribute coming from a literary magazine in 1929, for that would be the year that introduced some of the finest World War I books to the reading public: Undertones of War (Blunden), The Path of Glory (Blake) and All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque), which are all mentioned herein.
The Saturday Review of Literature discussed a number of World War One books while in the course of reviewing Shoot And Be Damned
by Ed Halyburton and Ralph Goll, a wartime memoir which recalled time spent in a German prisoner of war camp.
Robert Littell reviewed the first New York production of
Journey's End by former infantry officer, R.C. Sherriff (1896 – 1975: 9th East Surrey Regiment, 1915 - 1918). We have also included a paragraph from a British critic named W.A. Darlington who had once fought in the trenches and approaches the drama from the angle of a veteran:
Click here if you would like to read another article about the WW I play Journey's End.
A few years after the Great War reached it's bloody conclusion, literary critic Helen McAfee discovered that a careful reading of the prominent authors and poets writing between 1918 and 1923 revealed that each of them shared a newfound sense of malaise - a despairing, pessimistic voice that was not found in their pre-war predecessors.
"Certainly the most striking dramatization of this depth of confusion and bitterness is Mr. Eliot's The Waste Land. As if by flashes of lightening it reveals the wreck of the storm... The poem is written in the Expressionist manner - a manner peculiarly adapted to the present temper... It is mood more than idea that gives the poem its unity. And the mood is black. It is bitter as gall; not only with a personal bitterness, but also with the bitterness of a man facing a world devastated by a war for a peace without ideals."
If you would like to read another 1920s article about the disillusioned post-war spirit, click here.
Saturday Review's Emerson G. Taylor reviewed two World War I books:
Baron Fritz by Dante scholar Karl Federn, which he liked, and
No Hard Feelings, by Medal of Honor recipient John Lewis Barkley, which he did not:
"In this week's other narrative of soldier's life, John Lewis Barkley, late Corporal, K Company, 4th United States Infantry, tells the world that he and his gang were exceedingly tough 'hombres', that, in the Second Battle of the Marne and in the Meuse Argonne operations, he killed a vast number of bloodthirsty Germans with his trusty rifle, by serving a machine-gun, or with a pistol and a knife, that he was profusely decorated, was always in the fore-front of duty and danger, and spent a furlough in Paris with Marie...Ho-hum."
The New York
Times war correspondent Arthur Ruhl (1876 - 1935) reviewed a book that would later be seen as a classic piece of World War One fiction:
Company K
by William March (born William Edward Campbell 1893 – 1954). Awarded both the French Croix de Guerre and the Distinguished Service Cross, March gained an understanding of war and the frailties of human character as a member of the Fifth Marines fighting at Belleau Wood and participating in the big push during the San-Mihiel Offensive:
"The outstanding virtues of William March's work are those of complete absence of sentimentality and routine romanticism, of a dramatic gift constantly heightened and sharpened by eloquence of understatement."
A look at
What Price Glory? and
Journey's End and the new spirit that created these dramas.
"When R.C. Sheriff, nearly ten years after the Armistice, sat down to write an easy play for the amateurs of his boat club, he seems to have had no fixed notion as to what a play ought to be. The script of Journey's End shows a complete absence of strain..."
Click here to read an additional article concerning Journeys End.
Attached is an account by a learned traveler who journeyed to that one piece of ground on the isle of Skyros that will forever be England - the grave of the English poet Rupert Brooke (1887 - 1915). The literati who wrote the attached article went to great lengths imparting the significance of Skyros throughout all antiquity and it's meaning to the world of letters - credited only as "S. Casson", he informed his readers that he arrived on the island five years after the 1915 internment in order to erect the headstone that is currently in place, describing the shepherds and other assorted rustics in some detail while alluding tirelessly to the works of Homer.
The attached article is a 1926 review of Ford Madox Ford's (1873 - 1939) novel,
No More Parades, his second in a series of four related novels concerning the Great War. Billed as "the most highly praised novel of the year", the reviewer lapses into superlatives and exults:
"Not since Three Soldiers has a novel of the war made such an impression on reviewers as Ford Madox Ford's No More Parades... All our 'intellectuals' are reading it...our young intellectual novelists will be heavily influenced by it or will attempt to imitate a whole-cloth imitation of it."
Ford was a veteran of the war who served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers; the article is illustrated with a black and white photo of the author standing shoulder to shoulder with Ezra Pound and James Joyce.
Dial editor Robert Morss Lovett compared and contrasted two very different First World War memoirs in this article:
America in France, by Frederick Palmer (1873 - 1958) and Floyd Gibbons' (1887 - 1939)
And They Thought We Wouldn't Fight.
A single paragraph review of Sir Philip Gibbs' (1877 - 1962) book,
More That Must Be Told. The book was written as a sequel to his previous volume which cataloged the many blunders and assorted outrages of the Great War,
Now It Can Be Told (1920). The reviewer wrote:
Click here to read about the new rules for warfare that were written as a result of the First World War - none of them pertain to the use of poison gas or submarines.
Fritz Arno Wagner (1894 - 1958) is best remembered as a pioneering cinematographer from the earliest days of the German film industry, however before he could gain the experiences necessary to become the director of photography for such films as "Nosferatu", and "Westfront" he had to first fulfill his obligations to the Kaiser. This article is an account of his brief stint in the Hussars (ie. lancers) that he gave to the editor's of "Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper". Although the article only covers his training period, it does give the reader a sense of what life was like for an enlisted man serving in one of highly prized regiments in the Imperial German Army.
It is believed that this magazine article was written during his days with Pathe News in New York.
Click here to read about the U.S. Navy railroad artillery of W.W. I.
Father Francis P. Duffy (1874 - 1932) was the well-loved regimental chaplain for the illustrious, old New York infantry regiment known as "the Fighting 69th".
Next time you find yourself walking near Times Square in New York City, you'll see a statue erected in his memory situated behind a statue of the popular songster who composed
Over There - George M. Cohan (1878 - 1942). These memorials will be found at Broadway and 7th Avenue (between 46th & 47th streets). Both men knew the neighborhood well - to Cohan it was known as the "Theater District" while Duffy knew it as "Hell's Kitchen", and it was his parish.
The Bookman reviewed Duffy's memoir
as "a book which carries A.E.F. readers back to lousy, old French barns, to chilly, soupy Argonne mud and, at last, to a wintry Rhineland...".
You can can read more about Father Duffy's war here...
Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.
"Under the French Flag" is a W.W. I memoir by M. Macdonald in which the author tells the story of an Englishman who chose to sign up for the French Army due to their lax recruiting regulations which provided for the enlistment of men as old as fifty years of age. The reviewer believed the author recounted some interesting scenes of early-war France and French barracks life.
Click here to read articles about W.W. I poetry.
A book review from Britain's controlled press of "Friends of France". Printed in 1917, the book was a collection of memoirs by the members of the Field Service of the American Ambulance.
Click here to read about the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps.
A second and far more thorough book review of
My Story, by German General Erich von Ludendorff (1865 - 1937).
"When the bitterness of these days has passed, historians will very likely classify Ludendorff as first among the military geniuses of his time. But his 'own story' will have importance principally because of certain sidelights it casts upon his motives and psychology."
A shorter review of Ludendorff's memoir can be read here.
Click here to read about Ludendorff's association with Hitler.
Attached is a review of Von Ludendorff's memoir entitled
My Own Story" as it appeared in a much admired journal of the arts.
"'Ludendorff's Own Story' by Erich Friedrich Von Ludendorff gives a G.H.Q. view of the war from August 1914 to November 1918. It has a certain quality of forthrightness which makes its fallacies and mistakes apparent to the reader even when they escape the author. Ludendorff's thesis is that the war was lost because the the army at home had not another Ludendorff to direct it..."
In 1920 the representatives from the victorious nations who convened at Versailles demanded that Kaiser Wilhelm, General Ludendorff and an assortment of various other big shots be handed over for trial - click here to read about it.
A longer review of Ludendorff's memoir from The Nation can be read here.
Click here to read about Ludendorff's association with Hitler.
The well respected arts journal, THE DIAL, published a very brief notice reviewing the post-war memoir,
My Memoirs, by Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz (1849-1930). The Dial reviewer found the Von Tirpitz' memoir interesting as a psychological study:
"My Memoirs, by Grand Admiral von Tirpitz is one of those elaborate vindications which carry the authentic conviction of guilt...If Germany was really, as the Grand Admiral estimates, a sheep in wolf's clothing, a few more memoirs like this will leave no regret about her fate."
Read an article about the many faults of the German Navy during the Second World War...
Surprisingly, a British magazine published a terribly dry and unsympathetic review of
My Memoirs by Kaiser Welhelm II (1859 - 1941).
Click here to read what the Kaiser thought of Adolf Hitler.
The book reviewer for
The New Republic, by Sidney B. Fay, summed-up his reading of the dethroned Crown Prince's (1882 - 1951) post-war memoir in this way:
"This is a remarkable book in at least three respects: it's literary cleverness, it's revelation of a new Crown Prince chastened by adversity, and it's vivid pictures of men and events."
Added to the growing pile of reviews that attempted to sort out all the various explanations as to why the war went so badly for practically all the nations involved was this 1920 article that presented a clear description of the 1914 drive on Paris as well as the disaster that was the Gallipoli campaign.
The books reviewed were penned by two of the war's principal players: The March on Paris by General Alexander Von Kluck (1846-1934) and Gallipoli Diary by General Sir Ian Hamilton (1853-1957).
"The story of the German onrush and it's memorable check can now be pieced together with accuracy. It tallies with the account of General Sir Frederick Maurice. We now know that the Germans failed through want of General Staff control, through inadequate "intelligence", above all, through striking at two fronts at the same time."
Writer Paul Gerard Smith (1894 – 1968) was a U.S. Marine in World War I and in 1938, when he saw that another war with Germany was simmering on the the front burner he put a Fresh ribbon of ink in the typewriter and wrote this editorial which he titled,
An Open Letter to Boys of Military Age. His column is a cautionary tale advising the young men of his day to make their decisions thoughtfully before committing themselves to such a dangerous undertaking as war. Smith advised youth to examine the causes for the war, verify whose commercial interests will be served in victory and only if -
"you find that America and the future of America is threatened - then go and kick Hell of the enemy, and God be with you."
Click here to read an article about the German veterans of W.W. I.
CLICK HERE... to read one man's account of his struggle with shell shock...
War poet Robert Graves was assigned the task of reviewing the W.W. I memoir
A Brass Hat in No Man's Land
by the English General F.P. Crozier and came away liking it very much: "It is the only account of fighting on the Western Front that I have been able to read with sustained interest and respect." Crozier's memoir did not spare the reader any details involving the nastier side of the war; he reported on "trench suicides", self-inflicted wounds and mutinies:
"My experience of war, which is a prolonged one, is that anything may happen in it from the highest kinds of chivalry and sacrifice to the very lowest forms of barbaric debasement."
Click here to read the 1918 interview with General Hindenburg in which he declared that the Germans lost the war as a result of the American Army.
The following five page article was written by the World War I poet, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), in an
"attempt to give a rough outline of what the British poets did in the Great War, making every allowance for the fact that they were writing under great difficulty...".
Sassoon gave a thorough going-over of every war poet that he admired, naming at least twenty. It is a wonderful and revealing read for all those who have come to admire the poets of the First World War and Sigfried Sassoon in particular.
Click here to read additional articles about W.W. I poetry.
Heartlessly torn from the brittle pages of a 1929 issue of
The Bookman was this summary and review of
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man by Sigfried Sassoon:
"During the war something was lost to Englishmen which they can recapture in nostalgic memories but never recover in fact. This strange novel of Sassoon's reminds one of the faintly faded colors and old-fashioned security of English sporting prints."
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque topped the U.S. bestseller list for all of 1929 and it was due in no small part to enthusiastic book reviews like the one we've posted here that must have numbered in the thousands throughout all of North America:
"Here is a book about the war of such extraordinary purity and force that, reading it, one seems actually never to have read of the wear before. Numberless books have been written that present the stark, physical horrors of the war in quite as full detail as "All Quiet on the Western Front, but their effects have been nullified by one's perception of the intent to shock. Many others have given us a more complete, more literary rendition of war as it strikes full upon the nerves of sensitive and intelligent men. Nothing could be less academic than Herr Remarque's book; but nothing could be more vivid."
Is your name Anderson?
W.W. II: Where were the war poets?
In this article, the famous chaplain of the 165th Infantry (formerly the NY
Fighting 69th) Father Francis Duffy (1874 - 1932) describes how the regiment was ripped to shreds in two offensives - hinting all the while that "somebody blundered":
"Since 1915 no commanders in the older armies would dream of opposing too strongly wired and entrenched positions [with] the naked breast of their infantry. They take care that the wire, or part of it at least, is knocked down by artillery or laid flat by tanks before they ask unprotected riflemen to [breach the line]. When the wire is deep and still intact and strongly defended, the infantry can do little but hang their bodies upon it."
More about Father Duffy can be read here...
Kaiser Wilhelm's recollections of his part in the First World War (
reviewed above) was released in the Winter of 1922. Former French president Rene Viviani (1863 - 1925; leadership, 13 June 1914 – 29 October 1915) quickly responded with his own book that appeared the following spring - it was titled
As We See It:
"M. Viviani's book is a direct answer to that puerile and invidious work known as the ex-Kaiser's War Memoirs. It is impossible to escape from the logic of Viviani's scathing denunciation of the ex-Kaiser's tacit inculpation in the events which preceded the world-wide cataclysm."
