Living Bayonets

By CONINGSBY DAWSON. New York: JOHN LANE COMPANY. 1919. 12mo, 221 pp. $1.25.

THE publisher does his author an ill turn when he advertises Living Bayonets as ’Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson’s biggest book — the most complete, burning and prophetic utterance which has been produced by the Judgment Day which is now ended.’ Such nonsense as that embarrasses author, reader, and reviewer.

For Living Bayonets, like its elder brother, Carry On, is simply an unusually interesting budget of personal letters from a gallant officer at the front in France — such letters as thousands of sisters, cousins, and aunts have been laboriously copying out and recopying for private circulation among the family and friends. It is full of the intimate revealing egotisms and heroisms which one indulges only before those who know one better than any book; full of war-descriptions — vivid enough, let us say, but not too vivid, since mother and aunt and sister will read them; and. withal so fine-spirited, so courageous, so generous, that it makes one proud to know the author and the gallant men about him.

The letters cover the period of America’s active participation in the war, beginning with the spring of 1917 — the long preparatory period when, as Lieutenant Dawson writes, ‘Along all the roads of France, in all the trenches, in every gun-pit yon can hear one song being sung by poii is and Tommies. They sing it while they load their guns, they whistle it as they march up the line, they hum it while they munch their bully beef and hard-tack. You hear it on the regimental bands and grinding out from gramophones in hidden dugouts: —

‘Over there. Over there.
Send the word, send the word over there,
That the Yanks are coming — ’

’Men repeat that rag-time promise as if it were a prayer: “The Yanks are coming. We could have won without the Yanks — we’re sure of that. Still we’re glad they’re coming, and we walk jauntily.” ’

Men will differ as to whet her the wa r could have been won without the Yanks, but there will be no difference of opinion as to Lieutenant Dawson’s spirit. The book tells how our allies in the trenches felt when the Yanks actually materialized; and it ends with the Germans in full retreat, when the final victory is only a matter of days.

Even for a public whose imagination is bruised and stunned with daily discussions of Peace, Reconstruction, Bolsheviks, and the League of Nations, time should be found to read these soldier letters. They introduce us to a new galaxy of anonymous heroes: to an ex-dental student, who performed prodigies of valor; to poor ‘Charlie S—, lying somewhere in the mud of Ypres, — Charlie S—, who ‘won a dozen decorations which were not given him. He had a baby whom he had only seen once. He was my pal. Why should I live, while he is dead? I can always hear him singing in the mess in a pleasant tenor voice. . . . It’s odd, the things one remembers about a man. We got the idea on the Somme that oil on the feet would prevent them from becoming frozen. One time when Charlie was going forward we had n’t any oil, so he used brilliantine. It smelt of violets, and we made the highest of game of him. Poor old Charlie, he does n’t feel the cold now!’

And the cartoonist Raemaekers, who ’lookslike a Frans Hals burgher, comfortable, with a high complexion, a small pointed beard, chestnut hair, and searching gray eyes. His charity of appearance belies him, for his eyes and mouth, have a terrific purpose.’ And R— B—, who was half-blind, but ‘in two years he’s a V.C., a D.S.O. and a Lieutenant Commander.’

Best of all, the letters introduce us anew to Dawson, doing his duty proudly and well. Such records as these will never be old-fashioned. They belong to a literature which is eternally new and eternally young. E. E. H.