WAR BABY OR INCUNABULA?

Let guns roar, planes zoom, and red blood flow on the battlefields! Civilization is collapsing, but bigger and better books will be written about its sinking. Strangely enough, it appears that most of them will be on one subject, British army life, for that is what publishers seem to crave today. Eleven book concerns in eleven different countries have just awarded a $15,000 prize for a novel on this theme by Major Henriques of His Majesty's Territorials. Now Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners must take a back seat while the doughty Major assumes his place in the forefront of contemporary letters.

No longer can war be called a destroyer of culture. On the contrary, it will be as leaven for the loaf of literature. From the fruitful subject of the British Army, the new belles-letters may range to many other fields. The saga of air warriors, the sombre story of submarine crews--these are just a few examples of the themes that will enrich the literature of the future. It will be a virile literature, spurning the foetid abnormality of recent novels. With war lords as its patrons, and the blood lust of Europe as the well-spring of its existence, a new literature is about to blossom.