urs" of death--the death of others.

"Revue mensuelle," Geneva, October, 1917.

XVIII

MEN IN BATTLE[41]

[_THE MAN OF SORROWS_]

Art is stained with blood. French blood, German blood, it is always the
Man of Sorrows. Yesterday we were listening to the sublime and gloomy
plaint which breathes from Barbusse's _Under Fire_. To-day come the yet
more heartrending accents of _Menschen im Krieg_ (Men in Battle).
Although they hail from the other camp, I will wager that most of our
bellicose readers in France and Navarre will flee from them with stopped
ears. For these tones would be a shock to their sensibilities.

_Under Fire_ is more tolerable to these carpet-warriors. There reigns
over Barbusse's book a specious impersonality. Despite the multitude and
the sharp outline of the figures on his stage, not one of them has a
commanding role. We see no hero of romance. Consequently, the reader
feels less intimately associated with the hardships recounted on every
page; and these hardships, like their causes, have an elemental
character. The immensity of the fate which crushes, lessens the agony of
those who are crushed. This war fresco resembles the vision of a
universal deluge. The human masses execrate the scourge, but accept it
passively. _Under Fire_ growls forth a threat for the future, but has no
menace for the present. Settling-day is postponed until after peace has
been signed.

In _Men in Battle_, the court is sitting; mankind is in the witness-box,
giving testimony against the butchers. Mankind? Not so. A few men, a few
chance victims, whose sufferings, since they are individual, appeal to
us more strongly than those of the crowd. We follow the ravages these
sufferings make in tortured body and lacerated heart; we wed these
sufferings; they become our own. Nor does the witness strain after
objectivity. He is the impassioned pleader who, just delivered panting
from the rack, cries for vengeance. The writer of the book now under
review is newly come from hell; he gasps for breath; his visions chase
him; pain's claws have left their mark upon him. Andreas Latzko[42]
will, in future days, keep his place in the first rank among the
witnesses who have left a truthful record of Man's Passion during 1914,
the year of shame.

* * * * *

The work is written in the form of six separate stories, united only by
a common sentiment of suffering and revolt. There is no logical plan in