Ten Years After: A Reminder
A Reminder, by New York: George H. Doran Company. 1924. 8vo. xi +246 pp, $2.50.
WE all want to forget the war. Nevertheless civilization’s soul-searching after that event is incessant. To some who witnessed its horrors — close enough to catch every detail but aloof enough to reflect on the experience — a sentiment like the conviction of sin of the self-analyzing Puritan has come, a feeling that the spectre of perdition is ever lurking on the threshold of our present world. This fear may be justified. Only the shallow will scoff at the possibility. At least heeding its admonition may make the difference between salvation and damnation.
This is the mood of Philip Gibbs’s last book. The subtitle, ‘A Reminder,’ is a good one. The first portion, devoted to the war and its immediate aftermath, is largely a record of emotions — of the most fugitive of the crowded experiences of that crisis, and those most difficult faithfully to reconstruct. They will be entirely lost with the passing of the present generation, and even in the minds of that generation they are constantly remoulded and recolored in the delusive medium of memory.
But the purpose of the book is not reminiscent, except as the present and future are built upon the past. It is rather an attempt to draw guidance from the world’s error and suffering that may pilot us into safer courses. No precise rule of action is stated, or laid down as a hypothesis; but certain canons of conduct are implied throughout the rapid review of ten years’ history, under the titles ‘The World War’ and ‘The Uncertain Peace,’ which precede the shorter summary of ‘The Present Perils’ and — briefest of all — the forecast of ‘The Hope Ahead.’
Such themes are already worn threadbare by overmuch handling, and only exceptional freshness of treatment can make them appeal longer to our forward-pressing age. The author has attained this by the rapidity with which he develops his argument, by his ease of style, by a certain personal angle of approach, and by his passionate sympathies, which allow no issue with which he deals to lie dead and cold on the dissecting-table. When the Versailles Treaty was made, ‘it was as though the Devil, in jester’s cap and bells, had sat behind Clemenceau in his black gloves and whispered madness into the ear of Wilson, and leered across the table at Lloyd George, and put his mockery into every clause.’ Yet these were good men, loyal to their momentary ideas of right. ‘Something blinded them.’ The reader asks himself: ‘Did the Greek tragedians, then, but symbolize the immutable law of history?’
Suggestive sentences occur, which the thoughtful reader will file away in his memory for future reference. Speaking of Russian recognition the author says: ‘What Russia needs as a moral cure is the fresh air of international intercourse’; and in discussing German militarism he prophesies: ‘If Germany asks for war again she will get revolution first.’ Britain’s future is naturally closest to this English writer’s heart, and he views it with misgiving, How will so highly specialized a nation adapt itself to our rapidly changing world-environment? ‘The next period of history will see a slowing-down in the international exchange of manufactured goods. . . . The nations will become more selfcontained. . . . The English people must get back to agriculture — otherwise they will surely sink into pauperdom.’
And what of our own country? Passing from the world that might have been to the world that actually exists, we should keep free from all alliances and entanglements. ‘It will be better for the world if the United States remains an arbitrator.’
Altogether this is a book to be read by everyone who would catch even a momentary and cloudy glimpse of the Parcæ who are spinning the thread of civilization’s fate to-day.
VICTOR S. CLARK