Hanover Browsing
"Last Train from Berlin" Is Highly Recommended Among Most Informing Recent War Books
THE MOST CHEERING BOOK I have read for some time is Howard K. Smith's Last Train from Berlin, Knopf, 1942. The book has already appeared in England where it was eagerly read. Its importance lies in the fact that Smith got out just about December 7th on the "last train from Berlin" and he gives a picture of Berlin which no other correspondent has given us. That is, a picture of how the Russian war has affected Berlin and the Germans. Smith writes persuasively, honestly, and he is extremely careful in his statement of fact. Though sensational, the facts and not the author makes the book so. I think he clearly shows that the spectre of fear holds the Germans together, and not any particular love for Hitler who got them in the spot they are in. His book is also another proof, if we needed one, that our debt to Russia is enormous. Necessary reading.
Maurice Hindus in his Russia andJapan, Doubleday Doran, 1945, is even more cheerful. He thinks that even if the Japs and Germans push the Russians beyond the Urals and out of Eastern Siberia they still cannot defeat Russia. He also shows clearly why Japan must fight Russia and perhaps by the time this gets into print the battle will be joined, and it will be no pushover for the Japs. A little on the dry side but worth reading.
I found Pierre J. Huss's book The FoeWe Face, Doubleday, 1942, also excellent reading. It gives an intimate close up of Hitler and his gang, by a man, International News Service correspondent, who had eight years' experience in Germany. His interviews with Hitler are the highspots in the book. Distinctly worth your time. ;
Still another: War Has Seven Faces by Frank Gervasi, Doubleday, 194 a. This is an account by another American newspaperman of London, South Africa, Egypt, Libya, the Middle East, India, and the Philippines. The Time: 1941. Not as timely as Last Train from Berlin, which is tops along with Shirer's Berlin Diary, but worth reading nonetheless.
Philip Wheelwright, Department of Philosophy, recommends Helen Mears' TheYear of the Wild Boar, which deals with Japan. Lippincott is the publisher.
I have before me William B. Ziff's TheComing Battle of Germany which was loaned me by a student. I haven't yet read it but it comes highly recommended.
During the summer semester the book which most interested my students, and through them, many others on the campus (I believe at least 50 or 60 copies were sold) was a novel by William Bradford Huie titled Mud on the Stars. It deals with the thoughts and problems of a young southerner from 1929 to 1942. Though written in journalese it got under the skin of my students more than any novel I remember. It is their own story in a way and Huie expressed what they have been and are thinking about. If you want to know what they have been thinking about I advise you to turn to Huie's book. Fischer is the publisher.
Another novel well worth your attention is David Ormsbee's The Sound of anAmerican. Hailed as another Farewell toArms, with which it has in fact little in common, it is nonetheless an intense and sincere novel about a young American who goes through the Battle of France, etc., and eventually ends up in the American army.
However, if you want something to measure contemporary fiction by reread, as I am doing, Tolstoy's magnificent novel War and Peace. The Simon and Schuster edition is worth every penny of the three dollars it costs, and Fadiman's introduction doesn't do any harm. Tolstoy is tremendous, and it will be a long time before as great a novel is written about World War II. Tolstoy's book deals with WAR; War as a Universal; Absolute War. Also it will reveal a great deal about the Russian character which we ought to know. Our thinking about Russia has been so false that we owe it to ourselves, if not to the Russians, to bring a little perspective into the picture.
Mildred Jordan is remembered for her quite lovely story of Baron Stiegel in OneRed Rose Forever which I believe I mentioned in these columns. Her newest book Apple in the Attic deals with a legend, or folk tale, of the Pennsylvania Dutch: the story of a parsimonious farmer and his long-suffering and obedient wife. Mildred Jordan who is the wife of J. Lee Bausher 'Bi, knows her locale, her people, and writes with the facility of a genuinely talented novelist. This is for the distaff side, perhaps, but it is, as the English say, a "jolly good book, and jolly well done."
AUTHOR OF MONTHLY RECOMMENDED READING FOR DARTMOUTH MEN Prof. Herbert F. West '22, contributor of Hanover Browsing in these pages every month,met his summer classes in Comparative Literature 20 (Rebel Thought) on the lawn ofDartmouth Hall.
