Two More Novels

MUCH tragedy and pathos are embodied in the 135 pages of this little work, and yet presented in so restrained a manner that the emotion aroused by them is equally quiet: a feeling of pity, not active and vigorous, but deep. There is little story, rather a structure of atmosphere and feeling. Two German soldiers, both shot in the throat so that they must breathe through silver tubes, and so whistle with every breath, occupy a room in a rear-line hospital. Another, younger man joins them; some time after this trio has formed its little community, an English prisoner, in the same predicament, is sent to them. The first blind, patriotic hatred of the three slowly turns to tolerance and friendship; a new German-English whisler language is invented. Then, slowly, one of the four grows worse and dies. The others are carried along in the hope of regaining normalcy: one dies after an operation; the Englishman and the younger German finally recover. Word comes that the Englishman has been exchanged; only after a long moment of consideration can the two realize that this means separation, and they cannot reconcile themselves to it.

This is the story, bounded by the four walls of the whistlers' room and the miniature cosmos of the hospital. The echoes of the war sound even there, but only faintly; this is a reflection of the tumult of the front, a single instrument against a symphony. Nothing vast, grandiose in the physical sense, enters the work. It is written with a fine, precise hand that understands how to use the individual as effectively as other writers on the war use the mass. Thoroughly unpretentious, still the book expresses its great thesis of friendship effectively, and in small compass.