[Gutenberg 46770] • 'Neath Verdun, August-October, 1914

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The author of this work, Mr. Maurice Genevoix, is a second-year student at the Ecole Normale, Paris. Having finished the second year of his course and, incidentally, completed a study "on Maupassant," he was in a position to regard with pleasant anticipation the vacation due to fall in July, 1914—a month later he received his baptism of fire, and of what a fire!

He supplies us with an invaluable picture of the war.

In the first place, the writer is endowed with astonishing powers of observation; he sees all in a glance, he hears everything. The intense power of concentration he possesses enables him instantly to seize upon all essentials of a particular incident or scene, and so to harmonize them as to produce a picture true to life.

Nothing escapes him—the song or hiss of bullets, the diverse notes of hurtling shells, the explosions, the shatterings—every tone of the infernal uproar; the breezes that pass, those that follow the explosions, those that have caressed the bodies of the dead "Whose frightful odour poisons the air;" the faces of men in moments of great crisis, their words, their dialogues; and, finally, the changing appearances of inanimate things, for are not actions for ever associated in the mind with the changing aspects of nature?

The pre-eminent, outstanding merit of the work, however, consists in the never failing sincerity of its author.

Many of those accounts already published—joyous greetings from the trenches, or light-hearted letters most carefully selected from among many thousands—due to many reasons, such as the precautions taken by the Censor; the reluctance among non-combatants to emphasize their own inaction and well-being by contrast with the suffering of others; a natural and universal desire to make the best of things; the very human habit of seeking to explain numerous and diverse manifestations by one simple idea, for example, to attribute every great event to the heroism of every man involved—a heroism without an end; and finally, the tone of the Press, the banality of its optimism—all these things contribute to present a picture of war softened and sweetened, abounding in "good times." Such travesty of the truth at once revolts and fills with indignation those who fight. A war such as this has proved to be merits at least that we should hear and face unflinchingly the truth of it in all its entirety.

The regiment is on the march; towards the close of day it passes through a village:

"The entrance to the village, which is indeed little more than a hamlet, was choked with carriages, with ploughs and horse-rakes, which had been drawn to one side. In silence we pass before the shattered houses. Nothing remains but the mere shells of walls and distorted chimneys still standing above the wrecked hearths. Some charred beams have rolled almost into the middle of the roadway; a large mechanical mowing-machine raises its broken shaft like a stump.

"The regiment defiles through the gloomy evening; our steps resound lugubriously and violate the surrounding desolation. In a short while, when the last section will have disappeared over the summit of the hill, the cold and silent night will descend again on the village, and peace shroud the poor, dead houses."

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