HE WILL SPEAK PEACE

By Frank VanKirk '35 arid Richard Stark, illustrator.Copies may be purchased of the author,c/o Wisconsin General Hospital, 1300 University Ave., Madison, Wis. #2.25.

Frank Van Kirk '35, a Major in the Army Medical Corps, went into Hannover, Germany, in April of 1945. In a kind of celebration of a kind of victory and liberation, there was hysterical dancing in the streets. The bitter knowledge of the essential joylessness of that dancing moved the American officer to write the five sober poems of his book: He WillSpeak' Peace. These poems, entitled: Desolation, Liberation, Retribution, Salvation, Victory, might all have been given the title of the first, since even the last describes a pair of mutilated lovers trying to celebrate spring at the base of a mutilated statue.

The victor's elation at his own victory is missing in these pages. A friend of the author, reading these macabre descriptions in their still unfinished state said: "They express so much of what I feel and haven't said; please finish them and let me have a copy. And perhaps some of the others feel the same and would like to have them too."

The others who feel the same can now have their copies. It was not a pretty war. It is not a pretty peace. And this is not a pretty book. It has far too much integrity for that. In a purely physical sense, however, the book is attractive. The spacious use of good paper gives the reader a stronger illusion of the end of war than do the words or pictures.

The poems are supported by drawings that, like the text, make no concessions to optimism. The broken houses, blasted trees and horror-filled faces in these boldly simple illustrations convey with considerable power the angry pity that the scene itself must have aroused in Richard Stark, who was there, and drew them.