The representation of the first world war in the American novel

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Authors Doehler, James Harold, 1910-

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553556 THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL

■ . ■ v '

James Harold Doehler

A Thesis

aotsdited to the faculty of the

Department of English

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

in the Graduate Co U e g e

University of Arisom

1941

Director of Thesis e & a i m c > m

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

I. INTRODUCTION ...... < 1

II. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE WAR. . . 9

III. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE 1920*8 . 32

IV. DOS PASSOS, HEMINGWAY, AND CUMMINGS 60

V. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE 1930*8 . 85

VI. CONCLUSION ...... 103

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 106

l a y 4 7 7 CHAPIER I

niiRODUcnoa

The purpose of this work is to discover the attitudes toward the first World War which were revealed in the American novel from

1914 to 1941. Books not strictly novels, if of sufficient import­ ance, have been included. The Spanish Civil War and the present world struggle' have been mentioned only if they were part of the work of a novelist who had also treated the first World War.

The novels have conveniently fallen into three well-defined periods* (1) those written during the war; (2) those written during the 1920,s; (3) those written during the 1930*8. Novels that have con­ tinued the tendencies of an earlier period have been placed in that for­ mer period. For example, Willa Gather*s One of Ours, although published la the 1920*#, has been included in the chapter on books written during the war because it reflected so completely the war-time psychology.

Similarly, Humphry Cobb* a Paths of Glory, published in the 1930* s, has been discussed under the novels written during the 1920* a, because it continued into a socially conscious age the attitudes of a previous period. A decade is a brief moment in literature, and one period nat­ urally melts into another. A book conceived, or actually written, in one period may not be published until the next# The number of ex­ ceptions in this division of the war novels is surprisingly few. The altered opinions of such writers as John Dos Passes, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Boyd, who wrote in two periods, reflect distinctly the 2

literary clicata of each period and prove conclusively tho validity of this division of the war novels, v i •

The work of-Dos Petssos and Heningway, two Anericati war novelists of the first importance, has covered two periods, but in this thesis

and E. E* Cusaings. ■ '• >

, econonic, and intellectual back-

enphasized. Ho writer can escape working with the naterial that exists in his world* An intimate knowledge of the life of a period as well as the writings, important and unimportant, reveals best what forces caused an author to tell his story as he did, or in the case of this

thesis, to adopt a certain attitude toward war. The historical method explains a work as a rounded whole, and the work* a dependence upon the ,

events of the day. In "Warning to Pre-War Novellatsn Robert Cantwell writes* v . ; • ; " ---:y-c

- tiio [the noveliot* a] general picture must square with Uie literal living history of his tine, and his drams - the motives he ascribes to people, - the potentialities he sees in then - nuat line up with tiie actual conduct of the m s a e s as it be- coaes known in tines of crisisA

The clianges in the "actual conduct of tho Basses" and the reflection

of these changes 1m toe war novels provide not only the divisions of

this work but also tho writers* very attitudes toward war.

The purpose of this introductory chapter is to give a brief his­

tory of the treatment of war in literature and to trace the growth of 1

1 fiobert Cantwell, "Warning to Pre-War Novelists," New Republic. 91 (June 23. 1937). 179. 3

the present-day attitude, toward war.

Before the twentieth century war in .literature- was- invari&Wy surrounded by an aura of ronance and sentiment* The heroic Beowulf,

Chaucer* s Knight, Malory* s King Arthur, and Scott* s colorful heroes mowed ia-e pageant that served as a background for acts of . high cour­ age. As in Tennyson* s The Charge of the Light Brigade« men rode to death and glory without the slightest question. The conduct of war

the heavy artillery. S. K. linther explains the treatment of warfare

in literature* - v

From the days of Homer to the time of Halter Scott war was a theme that lent itself to heroic treat- , sent. The hero went forth to battle for a noble cause and he returned victorious, o r ' if he failed v \ to return he did the next best thing,.he gave his life for freedom, liberty, love, religion, or some ideal that was furthered by bis sacrifice.1

Criticism of war was scattered, and sporadic at best. No great

body.-of-jeeteBt appeared' before .the first World War. But as Edmund

Wilson points out, many writers might be listed as. opposing war.1 2 To

name, a few* Homer described the ignominies as well as the glories of

battles Aristophanes bitterly satirized war*a absurdities?.men of

letters from Dante to gant give considerable thought to peace in Europe j

Shakespeare loathed the groans of the dying and the harsh noises in

what he called in Tlmon of Athens "contumelious, beastly, mad-brain* d

war;" Erasmus, depicted the follies of religious conflicts; Voltaire

1 S.. K. Wlather. The Realistic War Hovel, n. 7.

2 Edmund’Wilson, "The Anatomy of War," The Dial. 75 (July, 1923), 4

despised the vx-uisxuj VJL u v ^uvu. u > euiu JLAitcu^Ljf,

even the famous victory of Blenheim. To

between these writers* methods and that of a

onlsr tb imagine how the modern novelist might

.. v n u m u 1

•'•Vv-v , The seeds of the realistic mst-mmmX' the

• French Revolution.

i-

that traveled Europe and

bargained with various

thing aa pateriotiea. In

'W

To retaia the gains of the Revolution, the French middle class

formed a national army. Deliberate propaganda

pbrtani of all, compulsory military service was . enforced for all

citizens during peace a m ar. This was the system upon which Napoleon r- c * , • ■';>*- ■ : : . - - ~ . -■ ' ■ '• • - ^ ^ --v..,*7. . ' . .'.-•••v ; depended to invade Spain an it

world doctrine that a nation has the right to conscript its men, its

money, and its private resources for war. Instead of a few isolated

bands-fighting wlth? crossbows, the feelings and lives of multitudes

were affected. The results of war were magnified and made as clear to

all as a Goya- etching.

1 J. A. T. (March 6 5

A strange disenchantment struck men of letters, slowly at first but irrevocably and completely after the first World War, , Important

in the early reflection of this changed attitude were-the following writerat ; Stendhal, who stripped war of .much of. its glamourj Tolstoy, , who concentrated on the insignificant detail of battlej Zola, who pic­

tured the intense suffering caused by war; and the American, Stephen

Cram#, who described the unheroic thoughts of a sensitive soldier in

the Civil War* . These men, however, were the exceptions♦ . The great body

of literature that followed the Civil War, for example, was drenched in

sentimentality and melodrama*

Thucydides once warned that any war in which men were fighting was

thought to be the world1 s greatest and most important* He then went on

to show why the Peloponnesian was just that* Nevertheless, the first

World War, which completed the disillusionment begun after the French

Revolution, reached new heights in several respects. In the. first place,

it continued the tendency of affecting the whole of society as no war ever

had* Rugene Lohrke writes*

But the Great War had this W distinguish it from other conflicts in history - that it mobilized not only more men and natural resources than any before , it", but that it crjpu^aMti e i W F p w i M b e currant of thought and feeling as well*1. ;

Next, the bloodshed of tiie war was unprecedented* .Before criticis­

ing the omnipresence of mere horrer in the realistic war novel, one

should remember the actual facts*. S. K. Winther explains*

Eugene Lohrke, ed., Arms 6

The total casualties of the World War were over 37,000,000. If the literature of this conflict is to interpret what such a struggle meant in the lives of the individuals who fought the battles it must use strong langugage. It is natural that the world of the war novel should emphasize moat of all such colors as crimson, red, and black, that the atmos­ phere should always be dark and oppressive, that , olfactory images, should be common...and that every­ where an attempt should be made to create the impression of suffering through the use of kines­ thetic imagery.1

Among implements used for the first time in war were the aero­ plane, submarine, armored tank, machine gun, liquid fire, hand grenade, and poison gas. let with all tils scientific equipment, the modern

soldier resembled a warrior from the atone ages, crawling from trench

to trench and carrying a hand grenade instead of a rock. In modern warfare death could spring from all sides. Chances of personal survival were sometimes slim. Often a large percentage of an entire division was annihilated. Losses were seldom as high in previous wars. Also,

there were few occasional engagements $ battles lasted for weeks and

were waged for the most part from opposing lines of trenches. Personal

combat was rare. Rats, mud, filth, and disease made the preserving of

any romantic Ideals about fighting impossible.

No •’sensitive soul" could possibly stand the full vision of war, at the front, in the trenches and dug-outs, without revolting from it. Even if the spirit were strong enough, the flesh was bound, sooner or later, to rebel or break down.2

1 S. K. Winther. The Realistic War Novel. , 0.25.

^ Eugene Lohrke, ed., Armageddon, p.7. * participated; in tha and all Gods' dead. -- shiny new attitude* Writers aligned themselves with society and liar*. Instead of explaining the world they tried to perfect it. The new world struggle threw into confusion those authors who leaned too

The determination of the American novelists1 attitudes toward war has required the reading of many of their books. Roughly, I have read fifty novels* twenty of the first period, those written during the war; twenty of the second period, those written during the 1920*s; and ten of the third period, those written during the 19)0* e.

The greatest number of war novels were published during the war.

Of the hundreds available in this period, I have chosen books by the better known writers, such as Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Upton

Sinclair, and more obscure works typical of certain tendencies. So novel of first importance appeared in this period.

The novels of the second period, those written in the 1920* s, made up in significance what they lacked in number. There were at least seven novels of the first importance in this group, including work by John Dos Passes, Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, Thomas Boyd, and Laurence Stallings. Very few novels in this period had to be omitted from the discussion. , ,

In the third period, as the war grew more remote, there was a 8

noticeable falling off In the u m b e r of novels. The present world

' - ' • ' " ‘ struggle increased the interest in war fiction. X read practically all the significant war books of this period. Of course, Dos Passes and Hemingway continued to do important work', while William March and

Upton Sinclair made notable contributions to the war novels. , . V.. , , CHAPTER II . .

HOVELS iRITTUI IMRIMG THE IAR

the first World War hit America with the force of a double brandy.

At first, the nows of it burst upon this country in large black head­ lines with pictures of advancing troops* Unlike the present struggle it stunned with its suddenness. The Civil War was a sentimental memory, * while ttie brief Spanish conquest remained a glorious victory. A violent­ ly critical attitude toward war did not exist even among the liberals.

With Europe in flaws most people felt as the editor of tiie Wabash Plain

Dealer did who wrote half humorously: "We never appreciated so keenly as now the foresight exercised by our forefathers in emigrating from

Euro^."1 '. :

At the time a feeling of spring filled the literature of tills coun­

try. Mew voices were singing of American subjects as never before. This

period has been called the American renaissance bysons critics* The

magazine Poetry was founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912. Soon after Edna

St.Vincent Millay, Elinor Wylie, and Robert Frost published books of verse.

SiiKsIair Lewis completed his first novel in 1913, while somewhat later

Eugene 0*Heill made vital the work of tho Province town Players. Gi%du-

ally the binding influence of Victorian literature was sloughed off•

The pre-war years saw the owlJdnftti

of the country* Cities obntinued to grow like smshroons * Agriculture

1 The Wabash Plain Dealer* as quoted in Mark Sullivan, Our Times. ■ 5 t 32. ■ 10

was finally supplanted by industry as the'leading source of income. The

United States enj byed a moderate prosperity. Such disturbing individuals

as Emma Goldman were rare. Except for the growth of unions all was

quiet

clubs expandedvhy leaps and bounds; Ironically, one of the host sellers

of 1914 was Pollvanna. - 'v'-? ' '- / y ■ ■ • • - :

Mberalism was a part of the new generation. In 1912 Debs, the

Socialist candidate for President, polled nearly a million votes. A

thick vada of liberal thought fan through, much of the new writing but it

proved hot as rich as expected. At the beginning of the war it became

apparent that few of these reformers had a consistent philosophy. In 1917

their essential weakness was made more obvious. Such movements as social­

ism, pacifism,; and women1s righia were crippled, in like’manner the present

holocaust has scattered the liberals as a swooping plane might a column

of confused aoldlaars* / /".. .• . -: : - . ■ • - •

During the years of neutrality the United States became the all-

important purveyor of munitions and food for the Allies. It was a posi­

tion not much different from the present one of providing all aid short

of war for Britain. Naturally, all who prospered, the major industrialists

and financiers, favored the defeat of Germany. When the position of the

Allies became dangerous, this fact was important in plunging this nation

into the conflict. However, at that time the economic factors behind the ' ’ struggle were completely ignored. In addition, the propaganda of pngland

proved vastly more effective than that of Germany. Atrocity stories, al­

though false, caused many to howl for the extermination of the enemy. Until 1917 the liberals followed President Wilson along the, path : :: ! v M ‘ ■- ;■ ■ . f :-: . ,= : Xv.. ' : of a dangerous neutrality. Wilson was reelected largely because, in the . " v; ’■ ' ■ 1 ‘ ' ‘ - \ ■' " ' - > -■ ‘"t/ » popular phrase of that day, “he kept us out of Later he claimed

that the United States was "too proud to fight."

war clouds were gathering in the distance. ’ ' ' ■ ■ ' " - : ~ - V ■ ■- ’ , :> ■ * Si^ldenly an loricate m w M m t i o n of economic factors, British I.:'";-.' pro^ganda, and unrestricted German resulted in this •r~:v' - . • i- v.;t country* a declaration of war against Germany« This occurred a v -v -e. President who "had managed to rationalize an struggle so that it 1 iiar-r appeared to be a humanitarian crusad 1 Wilson1 s

urged a strong defense of democracy. The president spoke in idealistic V : - -:• ■ '-V v: -v al v':: 1 % • generalities. . • ' . ‘ . , : : , ' - - ' ' - ' iis-'? . - But the right is more precious than peace$ and we shall fight

. , democracy, for the right of those who .submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, fmr a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and _ safety to all nations and make the wor-ld itself at last free.* 2

. With, the i n c w ^ p w m # .oW^bmtion of the spending of blood and the help

of God, Wilson thought this could be accomplished. The Stars and Stripes

became the firs* foreign flag to fly above tho British House of. Parliament.

.: As has been Indicated, there was little expressed antagonism to

war as war. la the United States there was s o m question "as T tp .tiie Wisdom

°C in .but that was .largely argued op the basis of expediency."3 .

v r. r .': 1 Anderson, Eda Lou Walton, eda., Ihla22SSZ4U2B,p.286.

21W-#'321. ■

^ M. Imeoook^ Contemporary American literature and ^e^^plon^ p.ioi 12 *

That statement has a

United State# to

either fled to Mexico or joined in jail the same Debs who received a

million votes la a Presidential election. V '

• The declaration of war released many emotions. Such feelings

, were prominent as pleasure at the thought of freedom from routine,

hope that the struggle would be brief and of supreme historical Im­

portance, and a desire to crush the enemy. War hysteria continued to

" ' • •... - , ■ ... ' ' • * ' ■ • • • • >. • • -• • - f ‘ ■ ; • " > ' 1 . - 1 ‘ " disguise the gravity of the situation and to hide the economic facts

behind tiie fighting. Harlan Hatcher describes the enthusiasm with

which Americans greeted their entrance into the war*

War enjoyed stupendous prestige in 1914 xa& I W ? » i It was a religious ecstasy in which cleric and - layman alike could revel. It swept the world into hysteria.i*and when America plunged in 1917, it was not because of tixe jeo$»r

A feverish patriotism swept over the1 land with the speed of a

deadly epidemicw It was a period of hectic flag-waving. An exciting

community spirit enrolled all in a vast effort to defeat Germany. This

included anything from knitting to various forms, of mob cruelty toward

those who opposed war. George Creel, Director of the Committee bn

Public Information^ did an effective job in impressing the military 13

psychology upon the entire

In sai in her kitchen.

the present time are too painful to point out

S e l / ^ c o U e ^ Blotter s&ddhThad'littla^to^**^* . offer against the excitement of enlisting to the American ambulance service.w.For youth wanted ad­ venture, and in its ardor accepted it the more eagerly when it came wrapped to the mantle of idealism.2 ; : , .. ;

The poet Alan Seeger typified the her of youths, clearly for th» flret M jbmi*

nothing but good can befall the soldier, so he plays his part woll-. Cone out of the ordeal safe and sound, he hia on experience to the light of which all life thereafter will be three times richer and more beautifulj •• .killed, more than any other man, he can face the unknown without misgiving - that is, so

and enthusiasm** : 1

1 Willard Waller, “War and Social Institutions,” War to the Twentieth Century, p.528. 2 toe Arts,” Igr la Twentieth

017-08. u

No one -had to cry out against moral unpreparedness in 191?»

Eagerly millions joined the marching men, some to engage in a thrill- ing adventure, some to end war, some to save democracy, all to fight for the "good" against the "evil." v :

With very few exceptions, the authorial either yelled with the multitude or sought to escape in the past. To some of the older gener­ ation the struggle became «the greatest public horror of our age, or of all preceding.”1 It shook to the foundation the values of civili­ sation and tradition# For the most part, however, the great novels of the nineteenth century, critical of war, were forgotten. ' Hope was frequently expressed that a twentieth-century JQronhoe might appear;

Although this wish was never realized, war did become a pattern of life that fascinated the reading public. Novels and personal narratives poured from the presses. As in a burnished mirror, they reflected the sympathies and desires of the mass of people. - ' -

Many works of permanent literary value, published from 1914 to

1918, had nothing to do with war. No American novel of first import- ance with a war background appeared before 1921. * The early novels now seem as soggy as loaves of bread that did not rise. Their sentimental­ ism strikes one as overdone, their patriotism as false, their humor as forced,and their questioning as indecisive. It is surprising to read this criticism by one of the first war novelists, Robert Herrick;

But such books and articles about the war hardly pretend to be more than journalism, ephemeral record.

x Henry James. Within the Rim. P.3.9. James tried to shut out the ^r^f^hing^hls^book^The Ivorv^Tower. However^aa a pro-

British subject. war has not yet got; under the akin of our writers so that it has become of their blood and bone. It is still »newsM to them,, with the sensation value of daily news.1 , \ : /.W

' Meet books treated the war sentimentally or humorously; a few, questioningly., The writers were members of a generation that knew little about actual fighting., At best they were hardly prepared, to deal „thoroughly with their subject.. Consequently, much of their work was hastily done to satisfy the demand of a great market. Most of

it was either frank or unintentional propaganda.. It served to heighten the war fever which has been described, . The war provided other authors with numerous plots, and an excellent means of proving their heroes

heroic and their villains villainous..

Of the many hundreds of novels available in this period. T r e a d roughly twenty, .chosen because they were by well-known writers, or be­

cause they had enjoyed a momentary success, or because, if obscure,

they were typical of a certain tendency. .. As has been indicated, ho

American war novel of the first importance was published during the war.

Of the twenty novels chosen, .approximately ten were sentimental, five

humorous, and five questioning. . Actually, many more humorous books

and many less questioning books appeared than these figures would

indicate. I considered the questioning novels at greater length be­

cause of their importance.and their relation to the protest of the

1920f*.

1 Robert Herrick, "War and American Literature,” The Dial. (January 3, 19!8), 7. 26 -

»y Country (1917) by George Brown, notable only because It was

toe first American novel about toe war between toe United States a n d "

Germany, was typical of countless adventure utoriea that have since fallen into oblivion. In addition to melodrama, some authors such as

Goningsby Dawson in The Glory of toe Trenches (1918), stressed toe

spiritual development that resulted from toe war, especially the great

satisfaction in killing. Such books will not be discussed,

-■ To return to more serious works, consideration shall be given,

first to the sentimental, then to toe humorous, and finally to. the

•few questioning novels. What strikes one iraediately is toe fact that

•although sentimental war fiction was voluminous, orittcima of it ex­

isted along with the feeling toat the great imr novels were not yet

written. In 1918 Katherine Fullerton Gerould wrotet ,

The tear-aongarG, naturally, sake their meat of : war, £ do not think this particular product needs . ^ c:;.:- to be dealt with in detail. Tine revenges itself on toe sentimentalist, after all... .Ho cannot sub- . - sit to having toe war used raerely as a physical . assault on our eaotidnsA

Most of these sentimental novels came from the pens of woman. In

fact toe only fairly realistie war book by an American woman was Mary

Lee*s It* s SL Great Karl (1929) • In 1914 a Fram$e and England that

America loved had been attacked. The duty of this country was clear.

Old ties between the warring nations and toe United states were

strengthened, as certain writers would have the people believe today.

These early women novelists viewed toe war with tearful eyes and an

1 Katherine Fullerton Goroiild, *The War Novels.* The Yale Review, 8 (October, 1918), 172-73. audiblesob. ■■ ; : V'" - : ' - i-v

Afc the outbreak of the ear Edith Tiharton was la her beloved Paris.

At an ear)^ aga she had become disgusted "with the Asterican scene. She fervently admired the old castles and historic past of Europew In her novels she described a class whose Incomes came from businesses as remote as1 sheep-herding in'Latin pastorals and Whose problems “would never arise outside of a drawing room.”1: From the first she protested against this country«s neutrality, threw herself into Red Cross work, and raised funds for the Allies* “Edith Rharton* committees were or-

•enlsed in American cities. - She even made trips to the front as part of her indefatigable effort to stop the horde of savages intent .upon-

destroying France* She wrote two volumes of non-fiction. -Fighting

France (1915) and French Wavs and Their Meanings (1919). * / ■ ^ * i

The Marne (1918). a mediocre novel, was the brief story of Troy

Belknap who since he was a boy had sailed for Europe every: summer oa <

one of the most expensive: steamers * - An overpowering impulse swept him

to the battlefields. He realised that civilization itself was bound ■ -

up in the rich past of France^

Franoei his France, attacked, invaded, outraged - . and he, a poor helpless American boy who adored her, and could do nothing for her - not even cry, as a girl nightl It.was bitter*^

War was a bloody business, of course, but this was forgotten in the

^ Harry Hartwick, The Foreground of American Fictiop. P-387• - ; ' 'r

18

great crusade, fhe air iras full of the Marseillaise when the boy arrived in Paris, His first battle occurred in the harmless fields where wild strawberries grew. It was almost a musical comedy setting for war. At the front, according to Edith Wharton, men glanced honestly and Inno­ cently at women, fearfully Troy strewed roses on his former tutor's grave, and the latter's spirit obligingly rescued him at a crucial moment la a battle, the hero floated away.

A Son at the Front (19231. also by Edith Wharton, has been char­ acterized by Harlan Hatcher as a book "which tried to preserve into a disillusioned age the sentimentalism which the war generation so .. ' - / ■' ' ' X ] ; ' - : ' ' ' - "" ' successfully debunked." Chronologically, it belonged with the novels of the 1920's, but in spirit,' it was truly a novel of war-time America*

It appeared five years after the Armistice and pictured with the writer* s usual delicacy that former period when people began speaking of their sons at the front. An American painter, in Paris, John Compton, was torn by his sense of duty to preserve France and his desire to prevent his son from being blown to bits* In the end he made the supreme sacrifice.

The son died, A richness remained in Compton's life, moments when his son was in the sunset. In the voices of other youths, or in any trivial joke that the two would have shared. : - .

Edith Wharton heavily underlined the importance of refinement in life. Her war novels proved that her fastidious characters could wave a flag as vigorously as the rest.

Harlan Hatcher, Creating the 11 a aazsi, p.93. If -

Like Edith Wharton,' 1122*. Gather mourned the vanishing of a- cultural heritage* . Ah elegiac' tone- pervaded her-later work in which • she glanced back longingly upon a nobler and finer' life. Her reminds-. cenhes depended largely upon a cm-taln sentiment a M nostalgia* -She ■ • 2 >' • - has been called "the most talented of our escapists**'^;She^ too, •- traveled widely in France hut was more familiar with- Western pioneer life; Harry Hartwick writes:

- As the - leitmotiv* •*Miss Gather hhs chosen the paas^ - ; ing away of romance and adventure from the West, . ; ^ the liquidation of our pioimer era^ the decay of m e

• ‘ One of Ours: (1922)« another- of the books that gave a romantic account of war before the cement of disillusionment completely hardened, was mot one-of Willa Gather* s more impressive: novels. It won, however,

the Fulitser Prize for "whblefiMtm# ^literature; It was published in the - 1 • - - /' - "" -- . ■ earlyrl920» s but belonged in spirit with this group of novels* In it

she stated eloquently the case for the American hero.: Thousands of * f

m i a w d ai^l M t W soldiers i had already renamed hoeMi witii a different .

story to tell. In One of Ours Claude Wheeler hungered for b m u ^ r and

truth in a bigoted town in Nebraska. The war provided a convenient

means of escape for him*r He covered himself with glory before dying in

battle." Tbe-proULeBS;.raised in the first half of the book were thus

forgotten. : To critics who had already read Dos Passes the war scenes

seemed strM^ily eld-fashidned*■ •" • '

1 Ibid.. 0.71. v:;..: - ” - :

2 Harry Hartwick* The FOi^grouhd of American Fiction, p.400. 30

: v : toe sensitive,r.idealist^ C3Aude ,waa .disappointed in nazgr things

but never, curiously enough, in imr» fbe roar of c a m w n told him only

that men could, st U l die for an idea and would .destroy everything .t*

keep their dreams* ;£E& o£ S m U : # Ar. A®®4.A®-that

dramatized^the.European struggle,: contained some rea^tie-detoil and

s ^ ..in#p^,witing. Silla Gather, however, wore . sentimentality-as

the;best gem in her crown*; . ; j . . ; , L v

; - , Dorothy Canfield Fisher, stressed the dignity of simple living in

her: competent Imt uninspired t^ks. If .certain aodera Africans led

jihe revolt a^.lnst the village, she "may be regarded as probably the

most effectiw attorney, for the defense*"^ . ^ e n in 1916 her husteiui

drove an ambulance in France, she did relief work there.' A book of

8iiort BtoTi.es, m e fixeB in l^miee (1918), revealed, the same, admiration

for the French village as her novels did for rural .Vermont. In it were

p W a m B # , o f admirable.French soldiers, brave, untroubled, and.sin&Le-

hearted. One in pain thought that the chaotic conditio* of the universe

could be explained by the fact that the world was trying to give birth

to a new idea.hever felt before." ; He was typical of- the glorified

soldiers who marched throu^i the pages of early war fictldB#

: ; Shs. ls m (1916): by m r ^ r e t Sherwood strikes on even more

familiar note today than the books that wept for France. In it the ...

pacifist hero fought for England because the "old heroic fingers were

tugging from their.graves.*2... He knew that England* a best were dying’

H. B. Lucooek. Contemporary American Lit l and Hell irion j >: 8Q.

M a r k e t Sherwood, f e l2m^22Elj&§£,P*28. 21

rushing:to tfcta danger places, grandly brave* .

A World to Mend (1920) by the same writer illustrated a tendency tiiat was chatacteriatic of so many of the authors of this sentimental ftetion: the peacefulness of being at war. In it after many sermons for entering, the war to aid the A m e s , Margaret Sherwood brought a young American into the struggle* fhe reasons for his fighting; were vague but a» important as those which the entire country felt at # # time* He wished to make honor respected and. right triumphant. Ho man could attain hie full stature of manhood until he suffered for these < .. principles. That was the writer* s final message* ' v . : ! ^

M i m a Glasgow once remarked* ”lhat. the South needs now is blood and irony.” In a definitely minor work^ The Buildera (1919), she pic­

tured in her usual manner war-time Virginia. The leading character j

David Blackburn, a fuzzy idmlist, spouted banal generalizations about

democracy.• He saw the war as a challenge to the principles of Western

civilization.

They [people like David] saw the ideals assailed ^ . were the basis of American institutions and that if they should be overthrown the American Republic could not endure w, .The cause was the cause of humanity, there- • w ■ fore, it was Americans war.* - ' :

David realized that cruelty and injustice existed in France,' but he knew,

too, that at tho front were performed deeds of incohoeivable beauty. The 12

1 ' - " - - - . .... ' v ■ B* 'E. Lucctick, Coatemoorarv American Literature and Tt»n tH o» r p#

2 men Glasgow^-j^^ujMerg,^.^ . . 22

audience in 192.7 than a similar plea would today.

In «y Bov in Khaki (1918) Della Thompson Lutes turned over sorrow in her mind as a miser might handle a gold coin, fhis story showed to what depths the sentimental writers could descend; Randolph Bourne must have had such uncomfortable books in mind when be pleaded during the war* "There must be...some to ear at those who buy the cheap 1 emotion of eeerifiee.* A mother at giving up her only son consoled herself by handling his clothes. She stiffened her upper lip because with boys like her son in it the army wad "the noblest and finest and grandest institutions on the face of the earth." The criticism of the war generation made such sentimental outbursts as this impossible.

In this period books that treated the war lightly or even frivo- lously enjoyed almost as great a popularity as the sentimental novels.

The mixed reception of Chaplin* s motion picture The Great Dictator proves that what certain military leaders are doing today must be viewed with more alarm than laughter. In the first World War, however, there was much time for comedy. Arthur Guy Empey* s popular Over the To p (1917) was broadly characteristic of a class of books that found both amusement and exhilaration at the front. It was supposedly an account of trench warfare by an American who was convinced of the nobility and justice of

the Allies* cause. The humor, based on such obvious situations as

"cootie* hunting, is not funny today* lhat is amazing is the fact that 1

1 Randolph Bourne* Untimely Papers. P‘45*

2 Della Thompson Lutes, Bov in Khaki. P*45* Qihe soldlerj has nerve for hardships} the ... : interest of the work grips him; he finds relief . ;ia the fun and rcomradeship of the trenches and ; . ^ wins that best sort of happiness that cornea with 'u--'. :' . • duty - done e^- ■ . \'i-.y::

is forced to

They [such hooks] are of they ever valuable

was written in the form of love letters from a rookie* It less amusing than Over the Top* The book* s popularity perately people in America tried to laugh at the war. n.. .-/O": . ■' -..r :X';> i Mary Roberts Rinehart went to the front in 1915 as a :'V. V ;. ^ i.LV; vr:. j rT pomient* nevertheless, her books, written for avoided any suggestion of reality as on

I & m A apur».s. &eave, C1918) told in an of a Sergeant who wagered that within a oonth he would eat bran muffin with his General. He won the bet and the General*s niece, too. The

Amazing Interlude (1918) was a sentimental novel with the stock char-

actors and situations found in almost any of the melodramatic L ^ v X " . : ...A-.'. X:- v;/_ • ■ ;:U. : v ; . -X: v

xn.':

ArthurChqr

2 S. K. Winther, 24

Like Mary Roberta Rinehart, Booth larkington has enjoyed an inmense following. His work has followed the curve of fashion from costume novels to semi-realistic Midwestern studies. During the war he wrote a humorous novel Ramsey Milholland (1919). Ramsey suggested b6th Penrod and the hero of Seventeen. He finally convinced a young girl of the rightfulness of the world struggle. In reality he had to do little persuading for their University was deeply shocked by certain

acts of the Germans. ' . ' ' v -' : '

Rhen the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the ' . great merchant ship, with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and pro­ fessors.1 ' . • . -

Even the moat humorous novels bad serious moments in the hectic war days.

The third important class of books, the questioning novels, was

the least numerous. After the first burst of enthusiasm, the subsequent

disruption of family life and the first casualty lists had a sobering

effect. Flag-waving was forgotten temporarily. A need for new patriotic

songs was felt* Some people began to wonder about the war. The ques­

tioning novels were sometimes even more sentimental and melodramatic

than the others, but in spite of their fantastic trimmings, they wore

critical of warm ‘ ^ ^ ' ' V'' V-:;' :

Children of Fate (191?) by Marice Rutledge viewed emotionally the

devastation of war. Some of the ideas expressed in this little known

and badly written novel became the burning beliefs of the writers of

the 1920's* The pacifist heroine discovered that men were fighting

1 Booth T&rkington, Ramsey Milholland. . p.123. to enrich capitalists and munition makers, that the truth about the maimed soldiers at. the front was not being told, and most important of

The result w m

Graves instead of homes, crepe instead of orange- blossoms, , maimed, men. instead: of \matea, and devastated . • :. countries crushed by debt - all this was the price tlwqr would pay for their heroes.J laturally, such a novel received unfavorable reviews. Critics maintained that tiie faet tttai France was fighting for her life should have discour­ aged the publication of the book. Today the same argument is hurled at isolationists*

, Whereas Children of Fato was dedicated flo the wiser women of all countries, - Fore-Runners of Universal Peace,” Gertrude Atherton addressed

Shs. IM A & Maiates (1918) W m e womeh: of Germany. : This writer was eon- sidered %^a«fted” in. these days, and as one critic remarks, it was note­ worthy "that. the world ^ t i n n e d .to'survive the publication of:her- - „ r ' . ■' ' . • , •- - • " • • '. 2'- ' ' r nearly two score novels.”: ..In The White Morning the war was put to a n >

end am armW uprising of the women of Germany. This made th# book less oblectionahle than Children of Fate. V Alsoj in spite of its anti-* war sentiments, the novel was really clever and violent propaganda fee:

the Allies* The autoor nalvely implied that America knew every detail of t W lastly story, while Germny roa fed strategic lies, and that

this country avoided war .until its honor became too deeply involved* the German Army was pictwed as a combination of the worst features of

the Vandals and Huns. . ' . V

v - ilarice.Rutledge, fihil^en of fate, p.72.

Harlan Batcher, Creating the American Hovel. P«87* 26

• A far xaore important figure than Gertrude Atherton was Upton

Sinclair. During the war he acted as a weather vane for liberal thought. For many years hia realistic novels, criticj^ed various aspects of eapitalistic society. Although his aim was an emotional sort of socialism, he really addressed the middle class in his work. A vision- ' ary in some respects* he was also an able organizer. Robert Gantwell

. w « ; . ' " :' v •.y-■ : v

His -books were more concerned with his attack upon some social evil

lihile the United States was at war Sinclair resigned from the So­

cialist party because it had voted for American neutrality. In 1918 be

. : : ■' ■ ' pubUahed hia own magazine fiptP.n to support Wilson* s poll-

ciw: (1919) a fine example of his bonfused and

vacillating thought. It showed the confusion into which liberalism was

titoown by the crisis* The novel crumbled into two parte. In the first*

1 lobert Cantwell, "Upton Sinclair,” pp. ■ 3 8 ^ ; -:r' - : - the Siberian railroads from the Bolsheviks, K-.\ written. ,Granville Hicks, writes*:

And the superiority of the first part of Higgins to the second may be explained by S3 . knowledge;of the affairs o f a socialist local, on * . the one hand* and his ignorance, to say nothing of ; . his false conception, of the war, on the other: •

The treatment of . socialism in the Bhited States was well done* ;

The descriptions of Jiraaiets losing nmerous jobs because of his anti­ war sentiments and the tearing apart of the Socialist party by racial sympathies were convincing. But the hero' s holding up n good part of • the German army and winning the battle of Chateau-Thierry was ludicrous.

The novel,was confused because- although the anthwL-reaiiaed/theye^aomle causes and the futility of war, he apparently hoped to win Socialist : support for the Allies, r In the end Sinclair was convinced of the success of the Russian Revolution. The unintelligent, plodding hero, who also believed in the Soviet, described as "social justice struggling for the life of toe world. ..tiumanihy, setting its face to the: light, strid­ ing-to reach a new goal."^ . ■■vv'?' ^ r

In 100^ (1920) Sinclair denounced certain war-time civilians* His latest novels World' s End (19AQ) and Between Two Worlds (1911) will be considered in another chapter." % : ■-

L:-

Gmiville Hicks, The Great Tradition, p, 201.

Upton Sinclair, p. 269. Simeon Strunakr* a Profeasog totlgeyta Proaroea (1918) , unlike

Jimmie Higgins, eaa the attempt to give the reaction of an intelligent

American mind to the world catastrophe • Professor Latimer was a walking tour because the war had laid hold of his soul* s peace and put it to the rack* His heart was continuously in the trenches. Out­ wardly, the story was a picaresque tale, filled with twentieth century wandering maidens, philosophic tinkers, and wayside bullies. The char­ acters, however, often spoke in brief editorials in discussing important questions raised by the war. In comparison with the sentimental novels, this book was thoughtful and not emotional. Latimer's conclusions doubtless represented the ideas of a small, minority during these years*

Finally, he thought of the war not as romance, duty, or sacrifice but simply as work to be done, work that no one. especially relished. As for God, Latimer believed that He would emerge from the war in much better shape then the German General Staff. The author acknowledged the evils of war, but accepted them in a spirit of philosophic resignation. He expressed an attitude that, many find difficult to accept today. The fact that war cannot last forever and that ultimately a world of peace will prevail provides little consolation for present-day intellectuals.

Ernest Poole, the author of another questioning novels was a

Berlin war correspondent, and later a reporter is Russia. His long nowsl

Blind (1920) told the story of Larry Hart, who as a young Progressive in Mew York went to Europe first to report the war and then to fight with the American airy. His condition as he reviewed his life was

symbolic of the age. Ho was blind, but no blinder than the mind of the world. 39

— ;--c la this year of deep confusion - elutohlng, erahblag, spending, wasting, and In Europe plague and famine, : : : desperation and revolt - mankind is reeling in the

Poole painted on a vast canvas the scene in this country during and

immediately following the war. He contrasted the pageant of decorations

and uniforms at home with vision of soldiers gasping away their, lives 7- ' T : ‘ ",."1:*- / 1 at the front. He saw through the splendid elements that hid the reality

of war. He foretold the disillusionment of the 1920*s. He c V M :; - " r : : yJ:: ,.'.v ;;y; . v;- eribed the difficulty that to be in the writing of

books.

But the blinding .wst tornado with the deep changes ^ / that it wrought, will really not be seen at all till - & ^ m r a t l m or two have gone and the other turbulent tod pity the poor devils who have to write.its history

m Ml S E U W ) w wri

1-Ernest Poole, Blind. P-1*

2 Ibid.. P.195. JO

saw clearly the economic and Inperialiafclc forces upon which war-time rafcionaliaationa of Americans floated like bubbles. He looked into the future and predicted accurately what war would do to this nation.

Papers (1919)* Although not a novel, this book contained,significant

trained a powerful light upon the sinister forces of war. He was •.cer­

tainly one of those who, in the phrase of William Janes,: did not *yelp with the pack.* There are more like him today. . A»-wr3y:.a»;lS8l.-|»l;;

envisioned a disillusioned generation. : i ;

its wealth of life and resources into the work of

a stain, over the younger American generation. If the enterprise goes on endlessly, the work so blithely undertaken for the defense of democracy, will have " r crushed out the only genuinely precious thing la the nation, the hope and ardent idealism of its youth.1

Bourne sympathised with those young men who had to put their

names on a wheel of fate and submit themselves to a * brief sharp

ef military training before being shipped across the sea to kill

1 Randolph Bourne, m & W A Z EMWEl* p.60. n

Germans or be killed by then.*1 He meant the youth of 1917, 1940, or

I960. ;■ ■ . :.

To STOoariaet tiie World War occurred at a tiae when America m e

coming of ago. The country was enjoying a nild prosperity, and writers

were describing the native scene as never before; Tbe unexpected world

struggle was a severe chock. Liberalism died a natural death. Largely

because of economic reasons, which were clothed at the time with vague

the way in this country* s declaration of war against Germany. To the

, youth of the land the m r was a call to a holy crusade. Many hastened

to the battlefields only to find something quite different from the

colorful pageant they expected. The struggle provided a new and excit­

ing subject for novelists, .who reflected in countless hastily written

books the sympathies.of;the mass of people. Three distinct types of

novel flowed from the presses. The sentimental novels, written mostly

ty women, wept for France - and England and glorified the American hear©,

who rushed to defend these nations. The humorous novels tried desperately

to find something..to laugh at la war. ^ questiontog mvels, few is.

nmber, voiced a thin but inconclusive protest.. Hot one of the books

. was a great war novel. ;

1 IMd.,p.47. CHAPTER III . •

HOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE 1920'S

Harry Crosby, a tragic symbol of the "lost generation* made thia entry in his diary shortly after the wars

Above all, we who have known war must never forget war, and that is why I have the picture of a . soldier's corpse nailed to the door of my library.x

la the 1920's for those stiio had participated in it, the war re­ mained.a haunting picture of a soldier* s corpse. '

let long before the guns were silenced, a terrible weariness bad set in. The nations of Europe were bled white, but they managed to stumble together at Versailles to drive a stake into Germany* a heart; Starred in­ to defeat, she was treated like a Dracula among nations who had roamed over Europe. After the statesmen had bickered selfishly, they dictated an armed peace, a peace that made future conflicts inevitable by foster- ing the growth of economic nationalism. The present hostilities really began on that historic occasion. Germany res forced to admit her responsi­ bility for the war and to agree to pay for the vast destruction. Some years later Senator Borah denounced the Versailles treaty in these words*

t?e have our dead and crippled, our maimed and insane.

retains her bitterness, her dissension, her old balance of power*. .The Versailles treaty res a result

mmmmm

Harry Crosby, Poems, as quoted in Malcolm Cowley, Exile*3 Return.* 266. Crosby res a young Bostonian who had a horrified fascina­ tion of the war. His suicide was one of the futile gestures of the "lost generation.* 33

of the war we helped to fight war and vindictiveness and dictatorship and re­ pudiation seems to be the of our entrance into European affairs,"1

In the United States, as in the rest of the world, a violent re­ action was to be expected, Wilson's dream of a federation of the world was rudely shattered when this country refused to join his League of

Rations. Most people distrusted everything foreign, especially the new

Russian government. Liberals whispered behind closed doors. Attorney

General Palmer carried on a notorious campaign against so-called *reds.*

In 1920 all Socialist Assemblymen were expelled from the Mew York State

Legislature, The trial of Sacco and Vamsetti was a travesty upon justice.

It was difficult to restore those civil rights that had disappeared during

the world struggle.

Economic disturbances followed the return of industry to a peace

time basis. After a minor depression in 1921, however, the national in­

come in the United States climbed to diszy heights until 1929^ Prices rose correspondingly. Timid investors were urged to purchase stocks at

outrageous quotations * A new economic gospel was spread: a country was

happiest when it spent rather than when it saved,. It was the era in which

almost every laborer had his silk shirt and automobile. Harding returned

the nation to a normalcy that included shocking political corruption.

Coolidge basked in the sun of unprecedented prosperity. Through both

administrations economic power remained in the hands of a few. The United

States could well afford to take the initiative in condemning war, calling

Yfilliam Borah in a as quoted in #. E, Woodward, A. SSE coveiy in Europe was not so rapid. Germany could not pay the victorious nations $ consequently# they were unable to make payment to this country

■ .» , . ' ■ - ' ' on thoir war obligations.

. A changed morality followed upon the heels of. the war. The post­ war period# termed the "Jazz Age" by the late Scott Fitzgerald# was an

' « ' ' • ■ • ■ - 1 ‘ - era of flaming youth, sex emancipation, short skirts, the hip-pocket flask, and Elinor Glyn novels. It was characterized, too, by the crime waves, enforcement of propriety ty legislation, religious skepticism, and scorn for everything bourgeois. As each belief of the past crumpled like gold leaf squeezed in one* s hand, it was replaced by nothing. This was a decade of no faith. V. F. Calyerton writest ,

. _ In this latter period |toe l920tsj thej st r e M .was , , not upon values but upon the folly of then. The spirit of the age was destructive and not .con- ' , stewtive. Its contributions, were, negative and . - . . not positive. In #oWier form, it represented the debacle of individualism as at its last debauch*

The disillusionment caused by the war infected the entire nation.

This decade had its enthusiasms, however. Babo Ruth, Jack Dempsey, and Bill Tilden were fabulous figures in these golden years of sport. The people of Hew York City showered nearly two thousand tons of waatepaper upon the returning Lindberg. , .

The appearance of spring, which brightened. the literary scene immediately preceding the war, was gone when the smoke of battle cleared

V. F. Calverton, "The Decade of Convictions," UngMt, 1930) i 490. . : . ; . 35

writers* who had shared the political hopes of Wilson* @ first adnisistra-

tioau*3' Literature joined the revolt agaiaat the older conventiona. fhs.first 4 j Mercury appeared on the newstands in 1923* Ihe writ­ ings of such nen m Kenckcn, Lewis, and Dreiser exposed Jtonricaa life aa a high explosive shell night rip away the aide of an apartment. These ■ . v - ' ■. "■ ' writers described the American scene In naturalistic novels, but unlike y'M-'-'X. :-'Vv v : " ■■■'■ ' v' . ' the novelists of the IS!^**, they did not believe they were required to

■■ ' ' . ' • ' ' ■ - show any social responsibility* In their work was none of the optimism

that one night espoct from the prevalent econoaic- prosperity* A reveal­

ing study of the 1920* s. Civilisation in the United States, contended

that teerican life was characterised,, in the first peace, by & dichotomy

between preaching and practice, and, secozdly, ty an emotional end • >- . a " . y - ’ ' ' ' " aeotoebic starvation* Dullness was everywhere.

pic bed an aristocratic or fantastic life that had little relation to

reality. Sose of them, including Wilder and Eliot, decided that If

society did not conform to their desires, "they would ignore society and

make the most of the advantages with which they were blessed.” George

Jean Bafchan expressed the attitude of those writers who were content to 1

1 Malcolm Cowley, "Tendencies of Twenty Tears of American Literature,* p.225> '

2 HardldJE. Stems, ed*. Civilisation in the United stafcee.pp

3 Granville Hicks, %&e fimfe p.259. bask in the dazzling light ,of post-war prosperity:

.If all the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow v and if half the Russians were to starve to death . the day after, it would not natter to me in the • v least*, .ny sole interest lies in writing,*

Hen who had actually tramped in the mud of France and held a

bayonet firmly in their hands also hated a. society that could perpetrate

such cruelly. Like Harry Crostyts picture of a soldier* s corpse,

carried with then many painful reminders of nan* a inhumanity to these men were more,than indifferent or cynical. They were intellectually shell-shocked* They had endured similar experiences, and they wrote uniformly bitter war novels.- - • r v

Disilluoionment was felt at the front.before shad exhausted their vocabulary on the grandeur and: glory of death on the field of Harlen Hatther writes: " '■

As the lists of the slain continued to mount and the . profits on steel reached new all-time high levels, and the selfish purposes in the skulls of the states- men began to trickle out, thoughtful men began to suspect that aray officers were not apostles of lov»i . and that concealed machine guns mowed down the youth of all nations not in the interest of ah ideal but — for the safety of the rubber monopoly and the : threatened investments of business men not on the ' battlefields*’ - • ' . - ' '

X George Jean Hathan, "The Code of a Critic," as quoted in Malcolm Cowley, “Tendencies of Twenty Tears of American Literature,* . msr. the .( W a s l - l r n m i s a * v

2 Frances Hinwar, "The World War and the Arts.* for in the Twentieth Century, p.206.

Harlan Hatcher, M m P.223* 57

' . • The ugly truth of the war, especially the eoonoalc facta that patriotic lies sought to hide, became clearer with the burst of each star shell* Any lingering doubts were scattered by the dismal, failure of the peace of Versailles, The new generation shouted to the world*

There is your dirty carnival, you fine-souled.bat absentee idealists; smell it, rub your noses vicariously in its filth and see what it Is like

holes with rotting dead man/in the death-shrieking emergency hospitals behind the lines.1 . : Z - • -v- ■ : . ^ . 0You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein remarked to Ernest - - - - - ' ' . % - : " ' r- of the 1920*s. Malcolm Cowley explains what Gertrude Stein meant*

It Bhe geh^tion) was lost...because it was up­ rooted, schooled away, almost wrenched away, from . - its attachment to any region or tradition. It was

another world than existed after the War (and the War prepared it for nothing)It was lost because it chose to live in exile.2 . _

Many of the “lost generation" wandered over Europe, haunted by a war that

still seemed a horrible nightmare. They believed that they had fought for an empty cause; that the Germans were no worse than the Allies; that

the world was ruled by scoundrels; and that everyone could be bought for

a price. They dipped their pens in vitriol and wrote of the world as

they found it. They could not write with classic serenity while the

blood, pain, and vermin were still fresh in their minds. They looked

- - .. ' : . felt that the earth was but a sterile promontory.

l £ b a - , pp.224-25. ■

2 Malcolm Cowley, Exile* s Return. ; pJtt* n

all values in a at the wax the wrong end of a >-v and terrifying.

With the :00 t b e part of publishers to accept made to return to normalcy. One critic told of

to write as though «there had been no war.”1, A

conflict had subsided, the

The end cane} and then it [the reading public] felt as did the nan after the night before} H would not look at the bottiLe.2 ■ : ■' - ■ . ■. ■ - " - V - ■ ; - , . - :■ ' Iba i-Pcrtant Anerican mvol, IS m S S t i i S * (1921) ^

John Dos Passos, was a very minor success. As late as 1928; several

it later sold more

they had to.

literature filled : miraculously multiply at this time, although

cleared with the passing of years. As far m ■ . ■ " . . r " •' ' - . r was concerned, Eugene Lohrke finds two reasei *2 for the

IB T 126, (August, 1920), 177.

2 H. M. Tomlinson, "War Books,* # (March,1930), A50. 39

„ ;■ ^ fbe roar had beoroe-MMomry, and mmcarles are 1 * j^overbially ocxre gnxteful than aotuaXiUes, and y:..-y ia tbe second place G e m m y ms' "having her w » * '--. « Shs had not been hoard froa so far - except in

so, I neglected none that m s at all significant* Hovels of the first n : i: y v v. r.-y. :: - - y y y'. inporfcunce eere written by Dos Pas so a, Hoainssay, Cuoaings, Boyd, " yy-y.:- vy- .v'-y..':.; 1 -1, y . :. ‘/y " • FauUmer, Stallings, and Cobb. Humphrey Cobb published Paths of Qlorr y y y " ' y - - - . v , ' ■ . y . . . . y : y - «■ :..y.- - : ' y , . ■ '.'-y.": ■ in the 19 3 # s, but in spirit it continued the tendencies of the 192# s*

Of the twenty novels, ten described primarily actual combat in France;

five pictured the returned soldier in the United States; and five. In

spite of their realism and disenchantment, presented war from & military

point of vice, this last and least important group expressed the atti­

tude of the professional soldier toward war* : i y : *

The work of the three great American war novelists, Dos Passes,

S m M m B 3m & (1926) and 4 b e e s

of these

infix: it be

I ts,, ' The novels to be considered now are those written in the 1920«»,

exclusive of the work of Dos Passes, Hemingway, and Gunnings. As has

been indicated, the novels fall into three groups* . (1) those concerned

with actual combat; (2) those about the returned soldier in the United

States; (3) those written from the professional soldier* e point of view. . . : *• They will be discussed in that order.

Of the different types of novel those concerned with actual war-

fare or with the European background at the front were the most numerous. ■ ’ ; - 1 . . . . The best of these had a certain unreality about them. William Bean , i - ' ' 4 - Howells had writtmi many years rarlier*. * .

Of all things of the past a battle is the least conceivable. I have heard men who fought in many battles sa y : that the. recollection was like a dream to them.* y.. -

To the men who had participated in it the very heart of war was •

in combat; and, as one of the earliest of the realistic war writers,

Thomas Boyd believed, "it must be the hot contagious breath of war which - - g ' - is personified and. shown." These haunting recollections, which dealt

with concrete things that one could feel, smell, and touchy contrasted

strangely with the patriotic effusions of those who urged the United

States to enter the war. : ^ : i .: ;

The reading of this group of novels gives .taw .an excellent

understanding of the artsy, at least from the soldier* s point of view. : 12

1 William Dean Howells, Their Wedding Journey, as quoted in ' Van Wvck Brooks; Hew Enelandt Indian Summer, p.205.

2 Thomas Boyd, as quoted in U H. Tittertoa, "War Gomes Back to Fiction." The Independent. 116 (March 27, 1926), 35f. 41

la an

of that*

It [the army] the Individual will} it

L'. ' But no

of will, is in

In general, then. - x.i and its practices* A as the soldier not with

of the war, but with

toilet* At tines the novels alnost forgot the psychological studies* In was little self-pity, and little hate for the eneny. Ttomy characterized by a fearful

which offers the

Willard Waller, Im SU. for these soldiers to return to the parade-ground state of mind. The outstanding books about the front were written ty Thomas Boyd, Hervey

Allen, Humphrey Cobb, and Mary Lee. ^ -

In addition to short stories Thomas Boyd published two war norels. s& M& mm k (1923) and ja iM sf -Esasa. (1935) . la 24m j£ JE«Sl

will he considered in Chapter ?• The author, an Ohioan, serred over-,.

purpose in writing, which was to make the reader feel "the hot contagious breath of war." This he did by describing vividly disgusting, bayonet . ■■ <-■’ / ■: ' ' .-vi-.: practice, stressed to cultivate hate in the soldierJ the odor of the stinking canned meat that the men were forced to eat; the appearance of black, dead bodies, made alive again by the heat of day; the fear of men clawing at the ground to lower their bodies beneath the sweep of : : ---v ' . ' Z * : : ; - / . / , \ ^ ' •

t - The yellow wheat fields fUzmished a peaceful and serene back- -- ' • ■' " ■ ■ r.; r" . V . ‘: - , is .. :‘>i- ground for this d r a m of fear and death. This book avoided the charge of "special pleading" by seeming to be no worse or,no better . vV:;. . v v-- :::V: v r ' itself. The style was simple, restrained, and at times even poetic.

The hero was an average American soldier. Private William Hicks,

suggested the

Certain observations of Boyd about Hicks showed a rare psychological, insight and a fresh approach to the time-worn subject of war. Before

1 in America. p*385* a charge, for example, Hicks thought only of how heavy his feet felt

tragic to him as it

with aooy soldiers# :r}

f*.«t « 5 L;,W obedience la deeply tinctured with bitterness.

noas beyond horror and beyond pain,*

In the end nothing Battered to Hicks, neither bullets, nor the dead,

- ** -* -■* ■ ,r . ■ ■ • . ** - * - - -V ■* „ the living. His ooul was znmb. He would be the ^v 'S\. ^.IZU. ;-;o X": -^ny-x: - -'i . 1 ' .V. Hervey Allen* s first war book Toward the Plane (19261 was a per-

s o m l narrative rattier than a novel, Allen, one of the older sea of V i i- --rv '"> ;.-v X ; . X ;. 0 ;i ..Vt** ytvilX

gravely wounded a few months before the Armistice. Besides his war books

be published poetry and criticism. During the troutded 1930* a, he

f i ' . . V - i ' ' i::'';:v.V.. r ;,:: X;. X- X- X--- ;ux- avoided the pressing economic problems of the day by catering to a ; v'x; :: :. ■/ . : iX-X. i -Xi .Xr.: X' v-xr- X ix;;- '. :«- X, ^Xx' '-.;v«r-. Xx audden demand for romantic fiction* Anthony Adverse (19131 was the v X v 1::- •: - 'iX;-:, xxX 'r-xr.' . x . - L > i- \ ' X'-x ‘ " x.'.x" result* -;X.rri . X X X:.-x: I VV;r, v-.; • .,X -X X ' X ; : XX-Xsur--"f toward the Flame was an almost photographic record of the author* s

■ n ** ■ X > X :.:".'VV.X XX .,

% 6m s Boyd, through the me a t , p.224- < ; :: . :.c .. ^ .) ' ^ X - ' : f.X, Bdwnd Bllwn, Ihe toatoay at mu-„» 75 1923), 9 h ■ . . ■.. ■ 44

"war experiences* In it he showed without such comment, or self-pity

how soldiers lived, died, ate, and thought* The confusion of military

life was no t ; glossed over. Orders were countermanded, troops stupidly

misplaced or asked to hold untenable positions. The narrative suddenly

ended when-the author was wounded.

- . This book, as well as others like it, was filled with what

Allen explained as the truth that men perceived under adversity as at

no other time. Allen w&a preoccupied with death. He learned that wea

who had faced it of ten found it hard to W enthusiastic again about ...

little things j that soldiers under fire would almost rather he. killed

than leave a beaten paths: and that in t o t the incorporation of the dead

with the mineral kingdom was often a visible one* In Xk Wah Like This -

Two. Stories of _tM Great Bar* written earlier, but printed in book fora

in 1940, Allen was aware of the present danger of renewed combat and

made his position clear: - . , ;

It is" ny hope, that the United States will not . again be forced to aimed conflict. It: is more ... than a hopes it is a prayer*! , - V-,. '

Tito two stories Included in Ik like This were "Blood Lust,"

which rade clear the> result, of killing ran in war, a M "Report to Major

^Roberts," which revealed the effect of war upon a typical officer. In,

these stories Allen underscored the unreality of battle, the feeling

during combat of blind force operating by pure chance, and the manner

la. which the virtues of military training led to shambles.

; •1

1 Hefvey Allen, %t m m m e I W & ~ ^ m flEttA *

ized tgr a certain literary. exploslveneaa«

: A truly memorable first novel, one packed with the excitement and. intensity of a closely knit play, was Paths of Glory (1935) ty

Humphrey Cobb. In spirit C o W s novel belonged with these books written

in the Canadian forces. He was gassed twice and suffered painful shrapnel wounds. His letters from the front were published in a New Xork

toe confused narratives, something more dramatic and, if possible, more

bitter. The actual facts upon which toe book was based came to light

in America on the inside pages of newspapers. Cobb also cited French

authorities for his work. Although toe characters were fictitious, the

author insisted that such things really happened.

Briefly, in toe novel a few innocent Frerato soldiers were executed

for cowardice as an example, after a hopeless attack ordered by a

sadistic general failed.. All of Cobb* a hatred of war was focused in

this one glaring example. of official. brutality. However, all sur­

plusage, even the writer* a own sentiments, were cut away. This story denanded that justice take its course;' Bui* as one character remarked of "Thereis ho such thing* But lajastiee is as much a part, of life'as toe weather**^ The aray was a strafe instrument to depend upon for the preservation of democracy. r 4 y :

Paths of Glory brought to light not only the crass injustice, hut also toe nauseating waste of mllltary institutions. Somehow everything remained toe same at toe front, even though man were killed at the rate of four a minute. Uniformslines, and equipment looked alike* the : talk of the men had a quality of self-perpetratlcm. Collar numbers * changed, but that meant nothing to the generals - or rats.

• Strange things happened at toe fronts a priest in uniform heard confession, picked up a rifle and went ©ag a soldier c l l m W oa a para-

• Mister on his heel, toen fell headless into him own trench. vThs ) %■ gentle Langlois, about to be executed for no sane reason, eloquently condemned the whole institution of war in a letter to his wifeti V *

Somebody suddenly steps in, m t caring, m t r: > - even knowing who we are, and in an instant has ■■ ::v : "i" redmsed our.utterly.private relationship to-..a-4 terrible ruin, mangled and bleeding and aching ' " '4 wlto''psin&2 :/ ;. - ..-S -4: '4 - ^-4 *4-4-k- . ,

wage war a W a B^inet Germery* : . - -

; - ' '4 : 4-4 , ,r44-. 4 - y,;,' - , ‘

^ temtorey Cobb. Patos of Glory* — *

'JW^236r37. _• - ■ • ' " . 41

Women writers played a prominent part in the writing of senti­ mental war fiction, tout the single realistic novel of any Importance by an American woman was n $£§&& MM l (1929) by Kary Lee< The question arises whether spy w c m n can write a great war novel. lt«a a

S m l t e i »as a still-born book. It was long, uninspired, and repetitious, perhaps purposely so in order to create the impression of warts interminable length* Hot all of the time between 1914 and 1 9 # was spent at battle, and for every man at the front, seven>r eight vorlced behind the lines. In this took, through the e ^ =f a Ne. England college girl, the reader perceived the bewilderment and disillusionment spreading in the hospitals and offices behind the front. The book often wavered between the sentimental and the realistic in its viewpoint.

Three minor novels, characterised by the same literary explosive­ ness but without the same excellence as Paths of; Glory and It* s a Great - - ' ' ' . - . ' ' 7 ."; ' *. . .. . 2S£t were the following* (1928) by James Bw ltoarttm, who left

the University of Pennsylvania to enlist) Generals Pie in Bed (1930) by

Ohsrles Tale Harrison, who served with the Canadian arayj and l^yE. SSL

M v -Peet (1929) by Howard W. Odum, who as a sociologist studied the negro race. Squad was the realistic acooimt of eight men who were killed in France. Generals pie in Bed was a brutal story about the

"shock troops of the British arayv It was sensationally written. The

author mixed sex, horror, and criticism of war with the skill of am

expert scenario writer. I t e a mi S t f i E i stored the'reader the war

through the eyes of a negro. Its attempt to duplicate the language

and imagination of the colored race was more striking than its

picture of war. The second group of wax novels written in the 1920* s depicted

the returned soldier. In 1919 H, S* Caaby wrote* r <

• : Johnny comes marching home then with a fine now sense that life can be mobilised and made simple if he wishes it, and a new consciousness of kinship with his fellow men,1

Johnny found none of these things* Reference has been made to

the desperate attempt that was made to forget the war even while Johnny

fed too much lying propaganda to be concerned with the distasteful

actualities of war. The day after the parade the soldier Was as out of

place on Main Street as the bunting that was lying in the gutter. The

him; the abnormal was now Main Street end its false ideas about Europe*

Bugene 3&hrke explains* ^ Y' '%YY ' ■ - Y-"YY''Y"':"/ >#:'

They [the soldiers] would now be asked to forget this in turn, to return to their little box-holes :• and offices, their streets that were no longer the same, their friends who had not changed with them,2

Outstanding novels primarily about the returned soldier were

written by laurence Stallings, William Faulkner, and Larry Barretto,

Mentixm should be made here, also, of Ernest Hemingway* a The Sun-llao

Rises.(1926), which pictured some of the soldiers who never did

but drifted aimlessly over Europo, members of the "lost

generati

^ H, S* Canby. Education by Violence, P«197* 49

ache that hurt U k c a dcntlctH drUl == .

Novels of the f< .0141® h o M ln AecriQ. 'ter. morc numcrou..

(1W4)

.... //% ./f. V-j.'0 v- v :';.: iv:

: • - .- ■ the world struggle,

article on by.nli.tlegandfln^r i: /»

V .3 ^ . 1 -; ■»-; . »•»: ’ s > , x% V^r-'-> ■: addition to the single

(1924) With Maxeell 4=a=r,,cn, bed . p ^ t in

2 6 a (1925), ^ ...... : ...... t e m a i E B M I l S r (1935). M==t cf hi. .... / was. more suited to popular

too fall of painto raoclya U,. .Ucntioa ltd r--

hut intensely felt painting,

realized, and the

who suffered mutilation in war, it

of brass to .the .tongue.

futility of war. . ■ ■ .:i V;v.« r - orifcicism. The hero of the book o&iaa frraa a Horth CarcOina feaiiy iriab

'had sent oeabers for generations to battle for different causes, although

*not one of toem.»,h£ui anything wortii 'going to *&r abbut.*"*" The mrrlor#

had returned to their homes to lick their sounds and to adjust' their

maimed bodies to less violent peace; Richard Flirae eobght the xmahee

of warfare in Prance; but unlike others of him family, he was dia~

illiMibnedw the amputation of his leg, the wmaring of a painful brace;

and the general wrecking of his liie gave him ample opportmitgr to

think, to try to discover why this thing bappmed to him*

Strange**.that one grandfather in a moment of misguided romanticiro should have become riddled in some muddy field, screamed and bled a while, spit cotton and died# Savage s_u so totem poles and scalps and piles of v,«. :.-uV" / ;; skulla.2

Richard lashed out furiously ag&inat all who supported the

system that victimized him. Like so m a y of his generation, he l e a r a M

no war ever did anything but lead to another* He that his son

,oul4 keep M a taeecapa intact through Ilf. He m e h e d toe f o e of

a man singing % SmtSO, ' m & M BS ® - the final 'message of the

author was not encouraging*

. • • - * . . * : War is economic - political#,.The suckers who * die are the least of considerations##.and there*il

a : . r -

, a-. Laurence Stallings, Plumes. p.l. - V - - . ^ p p#82e

3 m m . , p.342. 51

An author diametrically opposed to Stallings was William Faulkner,

the former told his story in a plain, unvarnished style, while Faulkner

was infinitely more concerned with how .he said a thing than with what

he said. He attempted to shock the reader as violently as possible. He

rn tJmfcld facta from the reader until thev vrauM nroduce the moat

• effect} he portrayed extreme and useless suffering in a peculiarly

tortured style, Granville Hicks mentioned the danger of. Faulkner* s be­

coming a ”5ax Hohmer for the sofhisticated^*1 As early a novel as

Soldiers1 £§2: (1926) revealed a much simpler style than Faulkner* s later - ' ''' ' - ' -- - . ' . " .'7 : ' '' ' ' - / : work but all of the author's literary peculiarities.

Faulkner was descended frcm a family of Southern govermrs and

statesmen. He left the University of Mississippi to join the Canadian

H y i n g Corps. Later he served with the British Royal Air Force. He i..■.;- :.;■■■ . . ■ , ... ■ crashed in France# At the end of the war be had attained the rank of

lieutenant# Two of his books had as their subject the soldier just

^ ; / ' ; ■ ■' : ■ ' ■: . .. " ; ' ■ ' ■ ' " ' . home from the wary They were Soldiers* Pay (19263 and Sartoris (1929).

’ Since then Faulkner has found a richer field for his talent in the lower

. • . ; ■■ ■:.■. . . ' . • ■ • ■ - range of life in the deep South.

His art was primarily the art of egression. He treated the

aftermath of the war because of its horror and then sought other sub­

jects. Although ho was a more important literary figure than such a

man as Stallings, his work was of less value as mere protest. let his

novels showed the terrible effect of the war on the poetic temperament

of one individual.- Harlan Hatcher writes:

1 Granville Hicks, The Groat Tradition,. p«267. 52

It would be literature would be like nos had the poetic impulse released in 1912 been penaltted to un­ fold in an atmosphere of peace. But it was thrown into the hysteria of hate and its hope was blighted. One priceless if fragile portion

love, friendship, mercy, charity, peace, and good will was crush*' ' ' - our literature. 1

In Soldiers* Pav the war generation moved tragically back into a sleepy Southern village. The cmtral figure of the group, Donald tob0a' ’»• * ” ‘”Slod aviator, a t a . t bllnd aad near!, out of hi. .tod.

The trouble With him was that be probably would not die soon enough*

One of the other characters in the book discovered that “being wounded ain't only not stylish no more, but it is troublesome,** 2 Business men wore more interested in the boom caused by the war % liabilities ns Mahon; girls he had once danced with came to his scarred face and then left nauseated? little boys ran away from him in disappointment because th^r heard no war stories. Even Mahon's sweetheart was unfaithful* Meanwhile he remained a hopeless figure. living in a crepuscular irorld, knowing time only as robbing him of a world he wanted to lose. This book left one no

illusions about the place of the disabled soldier in M s old world.

The hearts of the patriots at home suddenly turned hard. Sartorls

(1929) told the story of another returned aviator and the disintegra­

tion: of a Soutiierafhsily completed by the war.

Larry Barretto served with the United States Army Ambulance

Harlan Hatcher,, dr e a ^ g # e m m MfFlsm tt l M t

2 William Faulkner, 53

Corps attached to the

Two of his novels, JJJ

(1929) utilized this <

stories of the returned soldier. The hero was pictured as restless, dissatisfied, and completely indifferent to the things he once esteemed.

The third and least important group of war novels consisted of those which expressed the official military point of view of the World

War. These books voiced some of the sentiments of pre-war literature veneered with several layers of realism. This gave them a certain authenticity. They were definitely outside the main stream of the beat realistic war fiction. For one thing, they lacked the burning sincerity of the major novels. Perhaps they were written to meet the demand of a certain typo of work. They were poor novels but good journalism. „

counted the adventures of the popular Sergeant Eadie. The Sergeant

» s a swaggering type of soldier, whose eecapados denanded a Stfam t o

Evening Poet eattlng. He and the other. Berimes In the hooka were happy-

go-lucky rowdies who grumbled occasionally but had an enjoyable time

doing such things as beating off an attack of three times their number.

action by Pershing. Strangely, war remained for him a humorous.

Rabelaisian spectacle.

Jteiissk (1927) hy Janes Stevens was another novel which ov,

flowed with "the spirit of the American Legion."1 S. K. Slather

------—— 1 s. t. einther, Sba totiatia ^a a s O . p;9. This is a the too obvious ■whlln of ys ouUook^toe^o^V^^tyle.Jh. ^

.be "L%%.. v ':•...- c---..'- ' r. •.■.•- ; :. •: > .. . Others of these ,, suoh a. £to Bazoaaial .(1925) ty John 17.

, : ' ' ; ":*v. l U U u d e profeaaionol soldier. War ... horrible, to bo sure, 9.:' tat endurable, and neoessary-. Ihooason e » l a i » d in hi. introduction,

■- VitaiWten^ywrninga^^i^e* u ■ ■: V •.••;.:

' - - ' °f ^ lu>d ■' '

r:; wasremarkable.

Mriie, .as also a book representing the nilitary point of Tiew of the ' axw^'':vB* " W ‘LumibW skytti' "c*^ :v r’:' •■'y .

let its unadomed direct statenent in.orpor.ting - :

- -a ■: 1-: ^ ^ s t ^ ^ M T ^ ’ C° ^ ,' ^ - eelS ; 1 r, ;

Heroia., for exanple, " * ' - - j/': on a battlefield looked alike

everywhere.-' the

t • • ■- ■'

v'- ; ■v". v.- <1:1;- a '1:-...% i:a;:'

i))' '. ' L\ 2 John W. Thomas, th :•• - ' '» 5*t- •*».■'• • . .• > ■■ -*•>-.'• \ . J H. E. Luccock, p * m . *

W t left one with tfae impression that he enjoyed doisg his duty* He tos what might be a-gcH^ soldier* t ^

. , . ..From a discussion of the books depicting actual combat, describ­ ing the plight of the returned soldier, and representing the pro­ fessional soldier* s point of view, one sees the realistic war novel had little in common with the sentimental and humorous war fiction* Many

of its r characteristics have been suggested* Certain features were •

coamm to all of the work* Mention will be made in this conclusion, of

the following points* the war novels were inevitable; they were eritten fcy actual participants in the conflict and pictured the soldier

and war, differently, from past, fiction; the war itself did not give

birth to any truly tragic novels and on the whole had a debilitating

effect upon literature* .

f ; - In the first place, much has been said of the inevitability of.

the war novels. - The fact that authors had to write books and the strong

emotion that colored their work were caused by the stress under which

men lived* The books considered give strong evidence of that. During

the war years the feelings and^ imaginations of b o b t of toe civilised .

- - ' • _ - ~ ‘ ' world were tora aa never before in history* :

• Secondly, this great body of jarotest came firoa.the. pens of those

who actually fought in the trenches* Among toe most important, John

Dos Passes, Ernest Hemingway, E. E. Cummings, William Faulkner, and

Laurence Stallings all served overseas* A selective draft obligingly

provided even the most gifted youths with either a harrowing subject

or an early grave. The appraisal of war by a large group of writers

with military experience was something new* Some of the books by former toldiers were not Utecr&turei m.fOT were frankly ooaaerelallMd

ttallleraf practically ell were critical of war. Ben were not "trana-

»”grified.into a kind of recording angel ty tiie;war,« but retadned a U

tbe otiUgations of the artist.1 let timae botics tgr stOdiera were one

la tho novels writtaa dTffing tbe.war the traditional hero was brave, v

Intelligent, patriotic, and losfal. He marched home confident that

aig&t made right, hia virtue vindicated. In ,the . realistic war novels

there was little talk of .vi p t ^ a n d defeat, but there was much talk of

* uaelesa struggle. Such figures as Winiam^Hicka

and Richard Plume were a different ^ p e -of war hero.. , . . , ^ i

. > . Surely it w w not any easier to die at Grecy tban at Chateau-

®derxy. : Row the change in ^ tidier oaa be traced to.a differ-

e ^ e in literary treatment and how much to an alteratlon in human

mature will .not be discussed. Briefly, # e earlier authors, edited .. .

tlieir '.(diief characters) the realistic novelists analysed them. Then

too, the huaanitarianisa of the modern soidier inhihited the. Joy of;

« 1

1 WiHiaa Mciee, "Ihe. Return,# JEtalSstoaBs 49 (June, .1919), :3^8S ^ Fourthly, not only wore the authors* background and their treat- aont of the heroic different froa those of pareirious wars; but,' as has bemflrequentiy suggested, war itself was pictured not as a splendid pageant but most often as dull^ monotonous murder. The books often.

■ iVS glorious incidents*

All that was left was impersonal extinction by poison gas or machine gun* After the charge, an endless repetition of eeary marches, poor food, and dixty billets, as in Through the Wheat, numbed the combatants until the incomprehensible shock of the next attack* All occurrences, including commands from high quarters and death, came with unusual arbitrariness in the army*

'■‘V : ' L ; % -i.V’? a .-v i.n& v ^ ^ iv.* ■ Fifthly, the war novels did not achieve the truly tragic any , ■ ..c :•. . " '" * . iv.j. - -.v. y • ; •, r 'yy -c:v y . y * more than they did the truly heroic* . Joseph Wood Krutch explains in ffe? .lagsr that tragedy arose when people, although mindful of

^ - y ■' i-: y;.. • • yr.-' '-.y oV ; yf ,y„; •: ;• , V'- y . ^ AV the calamities of life, were still confident of the greatness of man .1

The mightiest tragedies were created in the Periolean and Elisabethan

Ages. In those periods a belief in some justice and reason in the universe filled men* s hearts; Because of factors man*b faith -;r; y y ~:r- y^ry; ^.y - y ^ . -r .• ; y ’ - : > ; : . : • ' . is such matters has been shattered as completely as a fine mirror that has had a machine gun trained upon it* Tragedy must not be confused ::v . ' v ryyvy; -..l ;, .y; y: ;--7. ‘ " . ,<■ : with the merely miserable or pathetic; When true tragedies were written, man had splendors of his own, and love, honor, and glory not merely words but realities; on proclamations teat ■pesters time, and I had things that were saerifices were like the if nothing was done with it.1 v .-:7 The mood of tee ago was hostile

- ' '• . : ' • . . ■ Soldiers* Pay, for example, certainly

Finally, although tee protest of tee novelists wasras inevitable and healthy, the war itself had a

Consider what happened to such a ring to the great periods of the past, a critic ary thing about tee relationship of war and art. The "'A' )' ' - ' - r ",1 how fighting stunned a few

million of man was not made any clearer in a field of

The health of a nation*a liters

It is no wonder teat the war remained for many in the 1920* a a picture of a soldier* s corpse.

To summarises a terrible weariness struck tee nations of Europe

1 P# 196. 59

even before the Aratstice. In the resulted from the war, but on the i ' ' • light of this prosperity, but the

of the decade. In e

cause and so quesii<

It was a period of no faith.

ra .y:

all to be

tual combat; (2)

(3) a few written from the

differently from pest war fiction. Bone of the

# i>oya> j?atULKner^ sta JLLingSy This chapter contains a

War, John Dos f.-'-T- Ernest Hemingway, and E# E. men were leas

ti m . let this chapter will r ; LA. , which were reflect indubitably the perils* Their altered attitudes prove the validity of the division of ■. ■ ' V % tiie war novels into the three periods* (1) war; (2) those written during the 1920* s; (3) those written

1930*s. Cummings, to be one thin

which classify as a ■b fw.. of its excellence, it

ambitious writings of

b . : • b - : : -V. - V.-- .- . . A man who wrote the first completely realistic war novel and later depicted ambitiously the

States was John Dos Passes. Refe ‘A: of th# in this country. Three Soldiers (1921). utmost Isportsnce. about H. E. a

headquarters, walked across the.stage of literature, and marked neht of war.J

D. S. A»« cme of the truly significant mv e l s of toe last twenty years,

fulfilled the author* s promise,

John Dos Passes was born in Chicago in 1B96. H18 father was a

contributed with E, E, Cummings to an

Poets. He graduated cum laude frcaa toe University in 1916. At first

he had planned to study architecture in Spain but joined the Horton-

Harjes Ambulance Service instead. Later he drove an ambulance for the - - v , '• / ■'.*'•7^ . ; . Red Cross in Italy, where he met Hemingway. He also served as a private .•> ■ ■'. ^ 'v-v-: in toe Medical Corps of toe American Army, from which he was honorably

A, ; , •;v . : ' A - “i . . ; 7 V 7 discharged in 1919. Since then Dos Passes has traveled in Spain and K - . " V. ' . ■ ' ... ' 1 " toe Hear East and taken an active part in numerous radical movements. v - , -y 7'- .7,7.':.= X:.,. He criticized the unfair Treaty of Versailles, campaigned for toe ...'I:',1 " v ; L 7 . f : r . ’.-; release of Sacco and Vansetti, reported the Harlan strikes, and visitwi ■i.;. -7,'• ' - V- •• -.VI* -.7 ' &a 1937 the Madrid battlefront with Hemingway.

John Chamberlain heavily underscored the two

aized by bthef critics, to&t run through all of Dos Passes* work* In A ^ ' _•:. toe first place, he is am aestoete, living in an ivory tower, "traveling

around toe world in search ^f beauty, scornfuL of toe values of the

bourgeois, writing poetic prose. Secondly, he is an historian of

H. E. 193. tSe’ olaaa staruggle, a oollecfcivist to A p a t h y with the aasseeV

criticizing capitalistic society, writing strongly realistic noveto,1

:; Mo one cou34 read Dos passOB Withoot feeling at once hia eenaiUve

awareness to beauty, Sinclair Lewis recognized thiet ‘ ' '

IS ia his passion for the beauty and stir of • - • : of people, of rivers and little hills and tall . ... towers by dawn and Keats himself had a ; " reaction to

But Lewis quickly added; "There is no

strength; : There is the strong savor of very life."^ i This Strength

Dos Passes expended to e < ^ 6 i i % war, s t a ^ toe ease for the working

class, plaming a more perfect world. The w filihd hto^with n desire

to change the capitalistic system that made such sickening waste : :

D. 3« At i "a challenge to a igenemtKm timt considered itself shfily

T He anticipSW the juroiethrian novels of the 1930to with toe plan

o f g. 3. A. He male tod upon faclegeociiilr.eliUee *en BO.tK-iterii

sought escape from eny ouch reepbneihLUty ln toe prosperoua decade

after the war* He predicted toe eventual success of soma form of

' ■ 'hA', It ^

S-z»;: ! \ ; 'lit t- ■ r, .j- r. =;*}' : ' John Chamberlain, —tivuu wuo r«*eauo,- Iiltof^tore,.^0 (June 3, 1939)',’ 5 '-m.-'- f l-- T"--

^ s S t o ^ t D e o e a b e r 5, 1925), 361.

^ < T. 1 :r ^ ,LT; ^ % 4 Granville Hicks. The Great Tradition, p.292. ^ colleqtivlsBi* bat his novels tower# above eoap&mble oms, of his ^ genoration like a colossus, - His .sympathies were only implied. •Unlike

Upton Sinclair, he proposed no direct reforms. He treated life not a s . - facts to support an .economic thesis bat as the spectacle that it was.

Hia work was of more than momentary value, let . these two tendeneiee - the love of beauty and the desire for. social reformwere uppermost

in his novels. r---':;-/.!vr M.:.,f

: . In M e mderstanding of wart s causes and the injustices Lof. the

present economic system Dos Passes derived m m h from Marx, but he .

defiaitejy: is not a Communist.: m answer to the oharge of his being a

in Liberty, Equality and Fratornity.A ; .: ; , „

engaged la the radical movement. He criticised especially the Communist

Party and the methods it used in the' Spanish Civii War. Unlike "vv..:V’ " vr- ■ ::u-: c Hemingway he did not see any valid excuse for i 'in' ' t o ' '*%'

His radical views, toen, although not sharply defined, have given * ' ^ V'-■ ■ 7 'ia;I'.v: ...j- i r spire of meaning to" his work. 7

7 1 ..: launched a man on such a notable It was

Hosiers, and like a design printed upon a piece of do t h it contained

"bci' Passes, as quoted in John Cluuaberlain, Dos many Ideas that were to bo' enbroldered later by Dos Pasaoa. Briefly, the book recorded tho experiences of liartin Howe, an ambulance driver la Firaitoe, who listened to radical brltlclmm of mud spent his leisure

social theorist was tiie hero of the authors first novel. War was con­ demned for a variety of reasons. The Socialist friend of Howe believed that It was a gigantic battle f o i # t over the plmader of the worlds

The duty of all radicals Was to r t i m i M the ruined edifice. Lully*

Oh, if people would

- is^ sS^irthW %o^ty, and the diaedae of the desire for it, the desire to^grasp and have, aiti y o d m need no govermeat > to protect you.1 -

As has been indicated in the discussion of his political views, in

D08 P&$808 a

humanity by phrases, and toe cautery of battle with its t o m bodies.

In toe description of the initiation of one man into the horrors of . - . ' ■ ; r . : - r •' : '.:r : 1: : i": •/ . ^ .. tipcm John Dos Passes and crystallised the faintly mumbling distrust ef ear into the caustic condemnation of it by the 1920*a. Here was the very quarry from which the first book displayed only a few specimens.

8e publisher would accept the novel for a year.; m u m it first appeared. it was only a minor success.- The false gospels of the war years and the altars raised to a belief in rabid nationaUsB did not crash to , earth with the signing of the Armistice. ' Z - ; vr; ,

were disgustingly sentimental and false.. .so much sb""" • M ^ g o t j e c e i v e d a He* fork j%aas& review con­ cluding with the remark that it was easy to understand why the dust jacket was yeilow.l , ,

inw«it.^ Men took, out of the war, be continued, exactly what they

Similarly, a f i r s W a t e novel of the Civil War, H. Da Forest*#

BamPlLf. (IB#)* proved a failure ahem it was pub­

lished a few years after hostilities had ceased. .

position and expressed a well-founded fear for the future.

Today...we cleared of i'-'t'

>r—

^ Irene and Allen Cleaton, "The Vogue for Vogues," The Saturday Mkaatotta#' 15 (March 6, 1937), 13.

2 AmmtimfvmXvy nawamm 66

r have lived tiirougb hare seen these years strip » ,. tho bunting off the great illusions of our time, we must deal with the raw structure of history now, we must deal with it quick, before it stamps ' : US OUte"1 . L .. ; • • ..r,• < r. .X.L." • _

:':.r 1-:'::

In

so he m ■r- iPflX* writing his music., The war M V-;:- '' " ' , r' '

Andrews, then, was the apostle of the author*s liberty, equality, uid fraternity who m a httitam on the reek of Ha.:; He could not adjust

waiting for someone to tell him what to do. - „ - ;

, : The armies would go cm grinding mat lives with : r . lives} crushing flesh with flesh. Would he ever again stand,free and edLitaiy to live out joyous ; ; hours which would make up for all the boredom of i,/ " the. treadmill)! v-r v

off

three la the

T. W. - Higginson* s book of the Civil War, Array Life In a Black Roglraent.

4 ^ ' *:

John Dos Passes, i "SsSSsoU P*?4'5« «s

He [toe author] books that reca as toe

j U J U - A

M& (1930) , fiineteen Jjineteen

ttf'this gigantic book was society Itself#' Twenty or

; The novel showed what war did *:^For ’■ *

an Interior

lances, worked for the Red cross, and went to jail for resisting toe

went' their separate ways* In reality, P* S. A* was toe history of toe

war and Its effects cm /Amerioa.^ - - ■ e-:':': #

how the young nei s wise and talked about how it las the fate of

an early.deathj how Theodore Roosevelt

feared righteous

oatoh in the throat; how coneclentioua objeetors were jailed '• :;v..Vr

^ AL #*'' arVAn*T™" :

bundled ,in khaki, shipped to America, and,buried amid silence,

end waffled drums. In the t x ^ the idealima of college youth was eon*

trasted with the motives of w profiteers; the c o n c a m o$ the United

the grim reality of being blown to bits in the .trenches,

dollar loan. Dos Passos was •

s W In the broad social indications of war*

. War brought the eight hour day, women* s votes, prohibition, compulsory arbitration, high wages.

t-- >w iv ^ . John Dos Passes ¥ * ■ ,lydtruh„=h = „ through lly«d K, •r..

laf,''. Tx, I xu ■-■•V ## % 'x. x:xvx 1 ...... :XX - rhaito did war *• fV'X C ,X' '■ X-CX-.X-:X.: ‘.VteX > X":',y .i J .C ■•■ ;x ; . W S ' l ' v i u '■■•:■ ' , ' . ' l - v V r x '; '•-* vr'x'x;> me 11 ■ ■ 70 ." V * V-.': i ..X"• 'V. > • •■v;:xx^X'^''M;;" ; ; M ' ' ^ ' X ^ x x : ; ->-• v ■ • u x-, : mv . . - f 1 ;v -:'..v -'G - 7 :* : ■WOMk '} \ p.ioou *'. ‘ 'V. * ■ % -; , . L J A U j f o ...... ■ 71

the chroniclers of

Of all Aroricsii writers -influenced by the " war ami arfcictil&te in varying degrees, the : ; one who was moat acdaimed as tiie historian of toe generation that reached Baturity dur- j v . ing toe war, the one who BUmaed up with final autoority and greatest effectiveness toe 1: jud^ient of the nost sensitive of that ./ ^ ^ ^ generation, was Ernest Hemingway.2- r'v;;'v i .'vv'.-;- "• ; " . i. ’:. 'v-: v Hemingway, b o m in 1898, was the son of an Oak Park, Illinois,

doctor* As a boy he spent his summers in northern Michigan. In his

• early short stories written in war-tom Europe he looked longingly

back upon that country. Unlike most war novelists he had little

academic training. He left a reporter* s job on toe Kansas City Star

to enlist with mi American ambulance unit. Later he drove an ambu­

lance on toe Italian front but was transferred to the infantry with

a lieutenant* s commission. He did not, as is generally believed, ■'* ••• — "• * ‘ r Z • - -1 * > »; .• r " •— ' . - — • > . t • .. * . ■- - . - *; take part in toe retreat at Caporetto which he described in A Farewell

to Arms. As a result of his being severely wounded in battle,

Hemingway was twice decorated by the Italian government.

After, Versailles he learned more of *ar reporting for

American syndicate toe Graeco-Turkish struggle. In Paris he net and 1

1 Mark Sullivan. Our fiats. 6*373. T2

*as lufluenoed by Gertrude Stein and her groupIn the late 1920*»v; he joined the Catholia Church. He traveled extensively until the out­ break of the spaniel,Civil bar# Empathizing with the Loyalist cause, . :

Franco fire in Madrid* •- :; .-x"

the most brilliant of the ear novelists gave birth to a purely

legendary ngmre, the Hemingway hero* That character nourished in r

the 1920*8 vhea people tried to be outwardly brutal and candid and to

pattern their conversation after the clipped phrases from the author* e

books. Hemingway pictured1 himself frankly as a representative of the

"lost generations* The actual number of the "lost generation" mas '

small, but the influence of the group in determining nation-wide =-.?

attitudes was great. Edmund Wilson writes t \ ^

. C ' ^ * This Heoirigway of the middle twenties...expressed the romantic disillusion and set the favorite i pose for the period* It m s the moment of_ ■ ; y gallantry in heartbreak, grim and nonchalant : Vr- banter, and heroic dissipation.2 ’ '

1 Gertrude Stein wroi^f "So HemiaNP»ay was taenty-three, rather foreign looking, with passionately interested, .rather than interesting eyes. He sat in front-of Gertrude Stein and listened and looked." The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklaa. p. 261. ‘ . . .. •- ■■ - ' - v ‘i • ' ■- ‘ ■ ; • - ; :

(July, 1919), Jt* n

fishing off Koy West, skiing in Sun Volley, He became the living hero of-his oroi work. :V:; • :\ f ■ " \

;; the nyth that grew up about Hemingway produced a hero who. scorned heroism end a prophet who preached to thode without faith. Briefly, this composite figure had drifted into the war, had done his work merely competently, had coac.out of the struggle, embittered, without devotion to any class or nation, and distrustful of anything that suggested morality or meta$6iysics* He valued action for its own sake, all bodily activity, and the most violent sports* Be tmjoyed the raputatim of being lost, the curse of being damned.. He preferred rozaantic localities, drank .to excess, and fell in and out of love with an alarming frequency#

He was always ready to fill the moment - but never with thinking# On- like matyr of Dos paeaos* characters, he did not care to study the forces

that made him what he was, at least until he engaged in the Spanish eivll War.' v: ■ r.;.v- \ .

let underneath the manly exterior of the Hemingway hero beat a .

sympathetic heart* In spite of his hard-boiled appearance and hi#

sentimental* It was easy to: be tough about everything in the day time

but at night it was another thing#1 John Peale Bishop says:

times, up his sleeve and not it. It was

5 * 2 ?

p.35.

m m a r n , ¥ .191. n

... After viewing the war and its fraudulent idealism, the Hemingway

• . X ' hero' fell back upon those emotims he felt would not hetray him* He saw the world without its traditional values*'' He ■ wished to reduce ; things to their simplest, to avoid the surplusage of most social activities* He left the war willing to sacrifice much that the older ^ generation valued. ' .. v.. ; v.s ^ r-v -.'v-

which seemed actually obscene beside the concrete of villages and riveVfl-^"

; • I was hot Jmde for thinking. I was made W eat. : c My G M , yes. 'Eat and drink and sleep with : v Catherine.2

His philosophy, if one m i # t call it teat, was simple to tee

point of absurdity.' v ;:? u • _k : /:%?:- - J

' ' • • ■ .. I know only teat what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel ■r , ' ■ bad after.) \ r ^

Biring tee 1920‘a this attitude 'was' comma. The Hemingway hero

admired courage, but there was little consolation eiren in idmt b^auss

finally tee world "broke everyone and killed tee good and the brave

impartially. The young men of this era had reason to be sad.

>. . */ .

Pel^6w for which he could fight sad die*. The 1930* a radically changed, the

■ book of short, stories by Hezaingway, ! ^ I M (1?25),

of the author* a boyhood eaq^eriemes ia Michigan. Itrevaaled the m g i e of Bemingwayts style* , It was a style whidhi. a mere copying of its

Xto S m t o Ri^bP (1926) became the bible of the generation "that

* -* rfe’-: drawing roa»*«A It crystallized, im am, umforgetta^ story, the anguish of a group mutilated by the t o t and set adrift, in Europe. - The title

to be cynical, for, as one of characters said, (Jod never

It,.*.*. . \ war, was tortured by his love affair with Brett Ashley* Brett was a

previous evening* The day: .ahead iaromisM only fishing, bull-fighting,

suffering ia. others. The only a W r a b l e act in the novel was Brett*# renouncing a young matador who had fallen in love with her. The Sun

Also Rises presented, as did no other novel of the period, the futility .3.'-'... of post-war life.

6!ft°rlc,m Byron>* m a n n a . u 6 76

I

; A Farewell to Araa (1929) was

it described to present teem under an idyllic aspect.'

Story, printed years before, contained, the bare outline of this

without any of its romantic ioplic&tiomi; ? the love affair of Frederic

Henry, an American ambulance driver in Italy, axsaL Catherine Barkley,

an English nurse; succeeded in triumphing over the hot cruelty of war.

Henry was a typical Hemingway hero, "like a ball-player that bats two

hundred and thirty and knows he* a no better;*1 Catherine was filled

with a selfless faith in him.

that was. Henry consoled Catherine with the thought that nothing ever

happened to the brave. The horrors of war clashed sharply with the

drean>like quality of the love seenea# The joys of the lovers in ah ~

Italian hospital, their mad flight over an Italian lake, and their fine

days in Switaerland had a certain umeality about Wien. Catherine '

said: ■Everything we do seems so innocent and simple. I oan*t believe "'2 - - " we do anything wrong.* . " . .

M d a tragic conclusion. Catherine died in childbirth in tiie most '

/sentimental scene- in the novel. Reference has been madt to the s#&&. ;

pity characteristio of the Hmalngway hmpo. He realised death stru^c

Indiscriminately in a war-mad world. The very good and the very trave

1

2 p .164. n

;c-> r... . rJft

5 ,

So

:-■■>.-* d

on forever. i»-War*1 -

p.l26« which attempted to enlist all writers under the banner of Marx* His point of view was conditioned largely , ty his participation 4n the

Spanish Civil War.,, Spain iris the country he loved and understood beat.

that there are the welter* s purpose

Fascists in Madrid. Hemingway hated the Fascists, but. he was not -

strongly pro-Conmuniat. Unlike Dos Passos, however, he was not dis­ appointed la the Loyalists* fight for freedom. k - '

4 m r e finished prodttot of. the author* s new attitude was the

• part of the human race death as sesaething to be avoided. In For Whoa the Boll Tolls Robert wwMswwaaa# #wv*#,,e,. e# *&* "****#&***# swms#.w w* is* *# ssvw sms*

#" • - r'r J 79

fought because war.bad started in a country he loved* The Republic of

Spain was struggling for its very existence*

You learned the dry-mouthed fear-purged, purging ecstasy of battle and you fought that summer and thiit fall for all the poor in the world against . all tyranny, for all the things that you believed and for the world you had been, educated into.* 1

In his latest book Hemingway found a real value in such things as

heroism and the military virtues* Unlike A Farewell to Arms, love was

only of secondary importance in the huge job of saving the world. : ’ V . . .. ' ' . ' ' ' - The oru^ties of war Bemingmy still revealed with all the power

of Goya. Such word pictures as his description of the Fascists’ wiping

out a mountain troop and leaving as bloody evidence of the battle the

beheaded dead showed that the author still abhorred certain aspects of

war. Jordan was willing to sacrifice his life to make such things

impossible. He battled so that the girl Maria would not have to carry

• a razor blade ready to cut her throat. She had been raped in a Fascist

attack. That was one of the things worse than war .that Hemingway .

desired to abolish. In the end Jordan died, satisfied that he did his

part in doing away with tyranny.

, Hemingway spoke for an era. As a permanent reminder of war, he

beyond repair. In his first novels he was bitterly disillusioned. In

his moat recent book he found some excuse for war la the fight against

Faseima. A H of his work, ho matter what his position, glowed with

s burning sincerity. As John Peale Bishop writes: *His was that

_ - ■i:; ■■ :V-v-:. \ ' - ■ - : 1 Ernest Hemingway. .For Whom the Bell Tolls. P.236. his prose works, The Enormous Roon (1922) and Eiol (1933) wore protests: the first against war, the second against the ezcesses of Soviet .

* John Peale Bishop, anMMJttfflU p.189.

Maicola Cowley, S 2&Lsl& . p.37.

P.539. 81

copy, he was the natural heir: of the Her England tradition with its aridity and its sterility, but also with its individuality.* 3- - . .

„ Han who drovc ambulances in the war - and among them were John

Dos ‘ Passes, Ernest Hemingway, William Seabrook, Sidney Howard, Louis

Broinfield, Larry Barreto, :and Harry Crosty, .in addition to Cummings - acquired a distinctive attitude toward combat.. They were usually university men but not the gallant type Henry James spoke of in war,

"with energies and resources on hand that plead with... [theiaj for the beauty of the vivid and palpable social result,”^ In addition to the disenchantment suffered by others, the ambulance drivers had an un- * paralleled opportunity to look upon the war ns a spectacle. Malcolm

CoTfley> himself engaged in this work, describes this different feeling*

: < : They taught us to regard as vices idie oiviliaa - . virtues of thrift, caution and sobriety; they made us fear boredom more than death. " All these - lessons might have been learned in any branch of the arogr, but ambulance service:had a lesson of > f ^ its own: it instilled into us what might be called

Ho book was more filled with this speotatorial attitude than The ' ■ • ^

V«

The "war experience of Cummings was unfortiumte. Beeause he had

* friend who wrote letters to Emma Goldman, he was confined in & French concentration camp in La Ferte-HacL although no real evidence against

% Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice ToVlwp- p.268.

^ Henry James. Withlp the Rim. :p.68.

3 Malcolm Cowley, "Ambulance Service," The Hew Republic. 72 (Hoveaber 2, 1932), 326. , / 82

him m a produced, he was to be held;fw-the duration of the imr what

fraacala*n Thle was not the ohlvalroua France that was portrayed by such writers as Edith Whartcm, Cummings was released as suddenly: as;

1-:: •

. His adventures in a French p r i s m provided this writer , with material for one of

Faesoai S t e a M a i S i a * At first it was completely misunderstood. lt was d B m m d as a pro-German, a Bolshevist, and a cowardly book. It was none of these things* It was the reaction of a sensitive, poetic Mew

England mind to the stupidity of war* / Strangely, it took place: miles

from the front lines and pictured not a single battle. Although it

was only Indirectly an arraignment of war. 2 M j

completely the debasement of the individual during war. / : : ^

: fhe concentration camp;at La Fertemaol contained some fantastie

treatment of the#* individuals had the quality of a freshly minted

i\T, ■" »-•- •' Van Wyck Brooke, yew England: indiap sum^j. p.539. the writer, who etched e e # one with imueuml clarity. trifle aasimea great importance in Mi-ateiaphere filled with the qniet # a t often precedes an electric etorm.

atuaM.ed m e dark night hec&ie at once hn^ii and alive with weird miee,

oaths, -and laughter* The noise pulled the room sideways and backward,

extending it to an iriedhoeivabl# depths This room was really the moat

W o r t a n t eharaoter In the book. In its filth Cwmings disoovered the fomdatiohs "upon ^ o h w e M W i l d M with infinite care suoh at

•at best

the book made visible what John Dos Passes termed "a bit of the under­

side of History.*2 But after finishing it, the reader knows well this

tiny section of France and the experiences of a handful of derelicts

in the war. • ...... ; .

The reader learns, too, how the french to protect little martyred

Belgium put machine guns at the back of the same Belgians to make them

advance in battle. He learns how French soldiers did their best to

infect themselves with venereal disease, which they preferred to the

glory of going over the top. The "underside of History* stripped

several layers from the romance of making the world safe for democracy,

Cummings rivaled Dos Passes in his effective use of biting irony.

E* E. Cummings, The , Room, p.239'

John Dos Passes, "Off the Shoals,* The Dial. 73 (July, 1922), M O . ■ ' • ■ -.... • .V - • 84

The author was at once detached, amused, and shocked by the

spectacle of the Enormous Room. He pictured it with an unforgettable ‘ :-r' v accuracy. • 1 • . .

The same conclusions could be given about

and hauled them out dead, when Heomingway lay wounded ln an Italian s ;

-> rrx.-yfe. -..: ^ .: Mt - CHAPTER V y > i-r;':, -'.li- *£'■'■.■:•■ : .''fivy. HOVELS WRITTEN. DORING THE 1930*8 O l i : : . d -y i-rc :.^ : -r:-.ut Ac.," y.-t ..y-v** y :^ .

The s;; sketch of a t, his idle hands i %'■ ■•Lr in V.v' -^. v '.'r - m m b , his head awiming becauee of hnhgerJ Be *as & familiar figure la • _ v-:' v ' - , :y'.y y-y r r /.r the 1930*s, a symbol of the severe depression and a frequently depicted character in laerican literature.1 :• , i .;; ^ 1..T . : : • ;

largely as a result of the first World War, finally struck the United:

States. A false prosperity* bolstered by an extensive lending program

With paralysing'

* .'f

to fall*

low levels. The was over. The

collapse. Millions were forced to depend upon public and private charities for their food and shelter. Bread lines were a familiar

sight in all largeTcitles* ‘ Men.who had previously handled fabulous amounts of money actually sold a^les on street corners. The standard

of living sank to a new low level; unemployment figures neared astronomical proportions. skirts of Washington* They were demanding payment of their bonus.

“successfully1’ without killing anybody the list of injured was long. over* But it had left a bitter taste #

possessed - was this the best that could offer hungry citizens?1 >

Disillusioned democracy that they were asked to save in 1917* A proletarian hovel about an ex-soldier*s being shot down in a.demand for work was Thomas

B o y d * s (1935). - - - : " r ^ -

When Roosevelt was elected, he faced an alsroet insuraomtable

task in ccaabating unemployment and the financial difficulties prevalent

in this country. A growing confidence greeted each of his new efforts,

such as the H. R. A., the P. W. A., and the W. P. A. . Intense activity

depression continued. Linea of unemployed, although smaller, stood at

government windows for checks instead of at less dependable soup

kitchens. Although years later than Europe, the United States learned

that the black horse of famine rode with the red horse of war.

close relation between the economic .and social health of a country.

1 m

;> ' - ' - . , - For men of letiiers, "In place of the dullneso which had been the pre­

vailing villain there was a new enemy: poverty.*1 The younger genera­

tion studied economics and tried to explain its own problems in terms

of what was wrong with society. Many turned to Moscow and Marx as the

one hope for the world,

with the belief in the failure of capitalism in Anerica. Books like

L t e i a a r t e B m a r t i W

L , '1*

versation. In the

choose sides. Mary intellectuals decided to fight with the proletariat*

Edmund Wilson writes* ,y. : : . V .;' ';

In the moment of seizure each one saw a scroll

Lenin and Stalin# the BolshevLoks of ;1917, the ^ Soviets of the Five-Year plan, and the G P U of the Moscow trials# were all a part of the same ' : great purpose*2

Ibis new movement differed from the middle class reform of the pre-war

period in that, in theory at least, it advocated genuinely revolutionary

principles*

Many of the "lost generation" were forced to return to America

when the world-wide depression decreased their incomes. Malcolm »■ #■*'*■ ■ ; 1 -■ ■ . . ' - ■' * , y •• - . . - . , ■ • ' Cowley explains*

^Carl Van Doren. The American Novel. P-349.

i«9h,43vne8t i6* 88

i :. , : v they found that sooiety was not a. dull abstraction, a gray fog in which they could lose themselves or v . from which they could run away - it was real, > t tangible and full of contradictions that were daily ¥ -A becoming more self-evident.* 1 : .-x"

their interests depended upon the

: . the members of. the war their new interest in society. They had found something in which they could believe. Mark Sullivan writes of the early manifestations of this changes ^

they.had recovered from the immediate war mood of Dos Passes* soldier, *1 don*t give a damn what happens to me.* They cared very much, what happened; > r, > to them; they cared very much what happened to the worum, ana w ita compjLBt# sajio w w y wiaaea w wuc# X'-' * - the world over according to what they conceived to be a better pattern.^ ' k x -.. --:

masses. However, in .the days when such works as Anthony Adverse (1939) headed the best seller lists,. only a few;novels of real social

criticism achieved nation-wide popularity. They were It Can»t Happen

(1939) by

1 Malcolm Cowley, Exile* a Return. p;241.

1 Mark Sullivan, fi2E times. 6*396. John Steinbeck, and U. 8. A. (1937) by John Doa Passes#

the Ivory tower# then, was abandoned for the picket line. Art assumed a social function. Even & lyric: poet like Edna St. Vincent .

Millay discussed political themes. A leading proletarian playwright was Clifford Odets. In the field of the novel many mediocre stories describing strikes and the lives of workers were published, in which a

John Dos Passes, Erskine Caldwell, James T* Farrell, Albert Helper, and

scene. The criticism of Edmund Wilson, Malcolm Cowley, V. F. Calverton, and Granville Hicks was influenced by a careful reading of Marx. The

In contrast to the .carefree, gilded 1920*s, then, the 1930*s were

# touch of grim humor, formed an

over the radio war-like moves in Europe; the officials of the World’s

Fair in New fork naively named the central enclosure there "Court of peace"; in the fall of 1939 Hitler’s armies marched into Poland. The period between wars was at an end.

In the days of black depression and world-jarring marches by

Hitler much thought was given to war. Writers had a different outlook -»: -.'/‘ y.: 1 -: rrs ■ 'r-i'S-/ ■:>■•*„ g»~*±vr-

*f of the , l; / 0% 'i-- , MtArntthwir w e olear to fa* *. and destroyed by the in both r; i KLC tot&B

■. :•' -. *"•/:::: : . :• -;

toit treaty* As in the first World War, the *

all connections with the Communist Party* Granville Hicks, for example, realised that communism, was growing more like Fascism. Certain war-minded

critics, headed! by. the; once'liberal Archilmld Ma

entrance of the United States into the new conflict* The first World War was still s sharp stone in the shoe of others. _ They could not forget.

. Maoleish found the post-war generation of writers guilty of a grave

offense* fhese authors, including himselfi had hot only, described war

as loathsome, but had also branded all moral issues as fraudulent* Such

cynicism, according.to MacLeish, provided a ruinous education for a

generation that was required to: face the threat of Fascism. If a demo­

cratic people did not believe with all its heart "that freedom is worth

keeping, it cannot keep its freedom long.*1 Many of MacLeish* s general­

isations sounded like the patriotic effusions of 1917*

'-.Some of the:war writers sided with MacLeish* Others still believed

with Benjamin Franklin that there never was a good war or a bad peace*

They pointed out that the war. novelists did not, create war or disr- u

illusionment but merely told the truth about them; and that Germany

learned how to fight in spite of an equal number of war books. They

wondered if the battle of "good" and "evil" wmald result in toother

This literary controversy occurred at the end of the decade. On

the whole, the 1930* s were characterised by strong anti-war sentiments

and a belief in the salvaticm of society through economic refom, ;

Archibald MacLeish^ I b t J|gE MK H & i S , 1C2 (June. 10, 1940), 789. 92

As the first Borld War had groan m r o remote, a falling off la the number of books about it w m aoticeahlei Hear the m d of the 1930*8, the present wo r M oonfllet inoreasetl the interest in war fiction* I read ten novels, which induded all the is^rfcant worhs^ m the-subjeot in the last ten years. Of course. John Dos Passes* U. S* A *. in reality

of as the fight against tyranny in Spain, were published in this decade, fhese two writers, discussed in ChaptM- I?, revealed a social faith that was lacking in their work in the 1920* s. - ;

the novels about actual coabat, about “the hot contagious breath of wari* "wre few. the #neral tendency of the period was to' interpret war in the light of the new interest in eoononie reform. There was a surgical probing into what went on behind the scenes. Writers desired

to explain what caused war & A great interest in munition manufacturer# end the part they played in war culminated in Upton Sinclair* g World* a

End (1940). Concern was expressed for the ex-soldier as oneof victims of the capitalistic system in Thomas Boyd* a I& Tine of Ponce

(1935)* In the true tradition of the period William March wrote ,

(1933), in which he attempted to give a collective portrait of a w life. Aside from,the work of Dos Passes and Beaiagvay, not as maiy iapmrtant war novels appeared in this period.

After the initial shock of the first world struggle had worn off, one of the first tendencies was to investigate thoroughly the causes of war. Such works as SL D m A (1934) by Engelbrecht and

Hanlghcn, altitoogh not fiction, uncovered a convenient, but previously ?1

neglected, villain - the ounltiona manufacturer. According to these investigators, he worked silently and deliberately to foster war by making out the strongest possible case for preparedness and by encouraging suicidal armament races. In addition to other startling facts Engelbrecht and Hanighen disclosed that a cannon in a London park captured from the Germans carried the trade-mark of a British firm; that Krupp received a royalty from the British

soldiers j that the Morgan group of corporation clients dominated the attitude of the United States toward tot; and finally, that after the Armistice there

Hot much is being written about such facts today. The investiga­ tions of the last decade undoubtedly contained many inaccuracies, but certainly the facts are as true today as they were five years

' . ' - '' ; - , : ;■ ' . . • - ' ' \ ••

It was not surprising that in the novel The Eagles Gather ' . ' . *•*..*.*• - : »* ✓ .. . •: „ ’ ■ ■ - - , * • - f Janet Taylor Caldwell bad one of the Bouchard family, manufacturers of munitions, exclaim, when war seemed inevitable*

*1 can already smell the oarribn.*? The armament makers were painted in darkest colors and made responsible not only for war 1

1 H. C. Engelbrecht and F. C. Hanighen, Merchants of Death, p. 140 passim.

2 Janet Taylor Caldwell, The Ragles Gather, p.498. %

1 $tit also for maqy other social ills. These novels, as did pro- . letarian fiction in general, suffered accordingly^ but they did strengthen

'the case against war* .v^, _ ' '

SM j W m .Oftte. (1940) continued the theme of the author's -

ir.

liars> like any other businesa, are run for profit* : They're no longer conflicts between ideologies* r • i .• v. v : And we're realistic enough .-.these; days to uoier- r;. stand that profits and economic advantages are the : only things worth fitting for.*,* . We've still got tin trumpets for the fools, but the others ;. : . / . believe their bellies are more, important them v - - •

It was almost written in the start that Upton Sinclair should : A : A-/:-V 1^. C: A'A i - K A-Av/,:‘ publish a book about armament makers* Reference has been mado to

Sinclair* s literary activities during the war* Twenty years changed his views considerably* The confused worker, Jimmie Higgins, pulled

in every direction by the forces of war, wai A.:.' ;V T A •v

An early criticism of profiteering was implied in Janes

eomplaiaed* "They*ve sucked us ri#it into a nis*able-ear ....7 'Tfe'/r.; 0 Thet no one on airth aint responsible for; They*ve run us a hundred cool millions in d«__ (An* fer Demmercrat Homers ther*s good plums left yet)*8 The tegja:£gayi:ia s i s m ,m m m > 8l81* ■' '' ' '. .'- '-r-.. . A: V::"- 'AA;:-vs

Janet Taylor Caldwell, m e % l e s .Cither, pp.266-67. (1940) ty Limny Budd, the s o b of fm' iaeritian munitions king, laany

Moved ammag iaie important figures of Europe, took part 16 the Peace :

. fk» 193# e strangely tended to adopt memy of tiio oynical ideas about war

in the 1920* S« World* s End was almost an hi h tor leal novel: in aconn^ It m m d European sunitiems concerns, but gave imaginary titles to - '

American firms. It treated at length real flgw##. fbere wereiehm^l portraits -of the soft-spoken Zeharoff, the ex^fireman of Greece who ;

boiled politicians of Europe; As in all of Sinclair*s books, char­

acters and historical processes were > oversimplified. At the end of the

book lanny left Paris for the south of Prance:

the world come tb an. end, » • - ■ ' • •• • , > t * -"iff.'".*' - f

last war, Befwe 1914 Britain watched the, strife in' Europe, never

different ideas.

military

earns, and the French had German connections. At Versailles Zaharoff

spoke and Gleaenceau obeyed, the armament ^makers saw fourteen little

wars in Wilson* s proposals, one for each point. In spite of such overslapliflcatioa, there m s much truth la SinelalriB ohargesV

Bstea f lorid b (1941) W a o o n t l ^ i o n of In it Lanny Budd became a leftist journalist, and continued to see the famous and infamous of the world ptOJL strings that would eventually lead to si catastrophe^ - - y ^ • -

Jte lt e o£ teS2. (1935) ly Thomas Boyd continued the story of

William Hicks after his return home from the first World War. The author of Through the Wheat decided to join the Communists. In 1934 he ran as that;party|s candidate for ^nremor of fermont. Until his

sudden death in !935 he was a member of the League of American Writers

to fi^it, then he wrote one

hero of his first story, made the ye

of. the tendency of writers of this

be cited than Boyd«s novels Through the Wheat (1923V was a v i v M

account of what went on in one soldier** mind; In Time of Peace (1935)

was a biting criticism of the injustices of the capitalistic system.

The last named book did not deal specifically with war; but the hero's 9 T

-** n & t &s stnle beer, Alxiufc, aubjeote he felt deeply, however, Boyd

. m s eloquent.* ; v;-. f *l±. V- w '.M . '

. • For flfteea years after the ArEisUee tiie old aoldler Hlcka

fought poverty and _the ^eooitoalo s y e t m In-geawal., He learned early ^

that budgots were made for people who were able to pay thelr bills. .

In the depression of t W 1930«s, be saw starvation and even miicide

: on l^e streets of toe country. Leading a. group of citizens, in a de-

sand for Jobs, he was clipped ty a machine-gun bullet. Men of property

were not as ^entowsiastic over this .protest, against poverty as they

were over toe war: with Geimny. fhere was little opportunity for

making profits in a oiass war. Lying on .the pavement, Hicks could

not underatand the situation. Unarmed, ha had been shot by a man he

had not, even threatened. The capitalistic system surely was at fault.

: : Thomas Boyd:-nsvwr>• lived;to • ees toe threat of awatoer inter-* s national conflict overshadow and seriously hamper toe class struggle*

He expressed, as a representative of the war novelists, toe hope in

'.years*.: -i

A more impressive book than Jja Time of Peace m s Gomoanv &

(1933) by William March. March enlisted with toe marines, was wounded , ■ : : ' . ' •' : ' V - : ■ ' ■ :■■■ : ' ;■ '• 1

1 Th o m s Boyd, In Time of Peace P«3Q9» 231 monologues by 131 members of that company* Each monologue was a

r . . - - - - : separate dramatic sketch, tut they were all tied together by tiie war*

Instead of analysing the reactions of a single individual, the author attempted to paint a truer picture of war by doing a collective portrait of aray life* Although he expressed no definite radical point of view, as did Boyd, March was la the spirit of the decade because he icon- eentrated on the emotional response to war of a large group of men*" m* E, Luccook writes of the book: •■'■■■ ' • '' 7 ‘ 51

In form it is sort of proso Spoon fliver Anthologyi each of the gallery of soldiers "speaks his piece" and helps to build up a total effect* The author» s burning hatred is felt in nearly every flash of r the picture; also his despairing hopelessness* Chapters of this book could well be substituted , , for the opening prayer'at American Legion conventions.

March himself thought of his book as "an mending circle of pain," which tie believed was the truest description of war.2 v>

Many of the stories burn into the reader* s memory with toe com­

pleteness of a powerful acid* They were written with an economy of

phrase that suggested Hemingway* One portrait was a msterpiece in

bitter irony. Caught on a barbed wire in battle, a soldier hung in

excruciating pain* He bit too wire wlto his toeto 'to help him endure

toe suffering* To beat toe orators and wreath "layers at toelr own

game, to avoid a braes band and a marble shaft,1 he destroyed M s

H. E. Luccook. Contemporary American Literature and Religion. PP« 197-98.

^ William March. Company K*. P*14« 9*

vas taught to beliere about mercy, justice, and virtue waa a lie. The scat terrible lie of all was to believe that God,was love, va t is..

but it did

reflect fairly well

.1920'a*

According to

other

1 Henry Jb p.109.

1 3 9 4 7 7 nations took , to cripple the new regime in Russia were well illustrated la JWaiiBa&jBssm* r.:

. .■ The book revealed how an American newspaper branded the soldiera of the United States Bolsheviks, because tiiey had ztot taken a store active part in the slaughter* Actually, they had never been ordered

to do so* When they returned. Department of Justice men hounded them*

These soldiers had been exposed to communistic propaganda* As in so many novels of these later years, "the hot contagious breath of war*

that Thomas Boyd mentioned in the early 1920* a, was replaced by am . ' - interest in what actually happened behind the scenes during and after

the struggle.

A novel by a leftist Hollywood writer who wrote and produced

motion pictures was Johnny Got His Gun (1939) by Dalton frwbo* It is

difficult to imagine anyone* s, surpassing this book for sheer horror*

It carried the post-war generation* s feelings about war to their

logical conclusions* More effective novels were published} a more

terrible indictment of war could not be written* Johnny Got His Gum

was as much propaganda as any pro-war literature, but the sincerity

of the author was beyond question. Truabo intended his work as a

passionate pretest against war* This book, which won the American

.Bookseller*a award for the most original novel of 1939, is an excellent

choice with which to conclude this discussion of American fiction

which depicted the first World War.

The main character in Johnny Got His Gun was Joe Bonham, one of

the "little guys" as he described himself. One day in 1918 time

stopped for Joe* He returned to hia native land, at least his back. cases* which profited so enormously by everything the doctors had learned in the ear.' The story was told through Joe and recounted his gradual realization of his condition and hie mad efforts to comaunicate with the world. This was no small achievement when one was without legs, arms, ears, or mouth* The story was filled with telling ironic barbs that struck the reader and could not he pulled out.-

Joe and all the other mangled men left from the first World War would ask what they were fighting for that was worth thls suffering.

A H others who hated war would echo this ;4»»S&Lon.

For Christ sake give us things to fight for t o • ran see and foel...and understand. Ho more high­ falutin words that mean nothing like native land.... If you get killed fighting for your native land you*ve bought a pig in a poke. Iou*ve paid for something you* 11 never collect*1

Their native land, according, to Trumbo, was not so dear to the wounded

that they thought of it when they watched their blood pump out into

the mud or when gas began eating their lungs away. .

To summarize* in the 1930* s the depression which crippled the

rest of the world, largely as a result of the first World War, reached

the United States. The era of the »big money* was over. Poverty

replaced dullness as the prevailing enemy. As never before, writers

studied the close relation between a nation* s economic and social

health. Many of them turned to Marxism as the one hope for the world#

^Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun. P.1A7. 102

In general the wsj

jUlusloraent, A few of

wished to neke the world to a better plan. Almost all

of them believed that wa:

nations and that i*

,f.i

in the light of this new interest

on behind the' during CHAPTER VI

- --a.-'. - v CONCLUSION

u . The study of the representation of the first World War In the

Aseriean novel fToa 1914 to 1941 yielded no startling results. The

general conclusions might have been guessed in advance.

Briefly, the realistic ear novel owed its beginning to the

French Revolution, After that upheaval, the limited war of the ,

eighteenth century was replaced by more ambitious conquests fought by

citiaen armies* War* s widespread results were reveal^ to scattej^ed

men of letters, who produced the few great war novels of the nine- V t

;: v ■ These books, however, were e ^letely forgotten when war was

declared in 1914. In the United States dm-ing the hysteria of the _

m * years most literature about the world struggle was sentimental : ,

and humorous. Only a few questioning novals were published. .During .

' the 1920*8, as was inevitable, ttot generation that had fought in

Emrope gave to the world its first great body of literary protest

against war. These writers pictured m o d e m combat as dull and

monotonous slaughter. These great war novels not true tragedies. -t The age was hostile to that literary quality largely because of the

disillusionment caused by the war. During the depression years of the

lBo»s, the i i i i ^ shobic df the wotid catastropbe had w o m off "

what. Authors tended to interpret war in the light of a sudden

m i- .. '' '*•- " — *• ■ " '■*+ ■ - -x- > - •* «- - ' * - . *♦ ■- r< - N interest in economic reform. futility of war* In the 1930* s this country faced a sevro-e depression*

Intellectuals became interested in changing the world. The novels looked at sar primarily from an economic viewpoint*

A knowledge of the forces in civilisation that cause a writer to picture war as he did reveals in a logical manner the principles behind his work* In the case of this study this knowledge charges with mean­ ing the conclusions mentioned about the attitudes of the American war novelists.

...... '

In conclusion, I shall make a few brief predictions. As far as the United States and the second World War are concerned, this is a period of confusion. Naturally, the same confusion exists among men of letters. The controversy started by Archibald MaoLeish, when he urged another bloody defense of democracy, is proof of that. As one looks back upon the history of the American war novel, he catches an occasional glimpse into the future» Liberals demanded the United States* entrance into the first World War* Will the repute-

debasement similar to theirs in years to come? - Will the battle of

■good* and "evil” again end in another "evil” t Will, the demise of. the

British Dapire or the annihilation of Europe again make & permanent peace even more of ah impossibility? Would the entrance of the U n i t ^

States into tiie war be as fatal as it W in 1917%, A review of m e bi®t??7 -and literature of the past war provides only one; answer* It is "yes." 106

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;:

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-5 ; a3900 1 00 I 28 4 0 9 3b C v.r 2 _

9 7 9 1 94 1 2 1 DOEHLER J MISREPRESENTATION of the first

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