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World Affairs Institute All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; A. W. Wheen Advocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 92, No. 2 (May, 1930), p. 142 Published by: World Affairs Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20681451 . Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:30 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . World Affairs Institute and Heldref Publications are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Advocate of Peace through Justice. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.60 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:30:30 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque; A. W. Wheen

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Page 1: All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque; A. W. Wheen

World Affairs Institute

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque; A. W. WheenAdvocate of Peace through Justice, Vol. 92, No. 2 (May, 1930), p. 142Published by: World Affairs InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20681451 .

Accessed: 15/06/2014 18:30

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

World Affairs Institute and Heldref Publications are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Advocate of Peace through Justice.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.60 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:30:30 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: All Quiet on the Western Frontby Erich Maria Remarque; A. W. Wheen

142 Advocate of Peace, May, 1930

personal angle, yet we think this but adds value

to the completed work.

Four volumes on the world crisis, each a finer

piece of work than the preceding, are now fol

lowed by this, which narrates the trend of the

trying and turbulent years immediately after the

war. With his training in British official life, his

power to keep facts in relation to the whole, and

his uncanny intuition for the right phrase, he is

able to give this remarkably thrilling narrative of world events from 1918 to the Kellogg- riand

Pact.

Life of Miranda, by William Spence Robertson.

2 vols. University of North Carolina Press,

1929. Price, $10.

Not so well known in the United States as he

should be, Francisco de Miranda has now, by

means of an adequate biography, become a vivid

and romantic figure. Professor Robertson, long

a student in the Latin-American field, has pre

viously written of Miranda. But recently, fol

lowing a clue picked up in his studies, and carry

ing on an assiduous search in England, he dis

covered?what no one living knew was in exist

ence^?some 64 folio volumes of letters, diaries,

clippings, and memoranda accumulated in the

eighteenth century by Miranda in the course of

his wanderings. These have since been purchased

by Venezuela, the country of his birth.

Born, 1750, in Caracas, Miranda undertook in

his lifetime to aid liberty in three revolutions.

He fought for the American Colonies in Florida

during our Revolution. Later the French Rev

olution claimed his sword and he became a gen

eral in the army of the French Republic. Then,

after further wanderings in Europe, he was

among the first to inaugurate revolt against Spain

in his own country. His career was checkered,

not quite all glorious, alas! He died in a Span

ish prison in 1816, while Bolivar and San Martin

carried on the revolution in Latin America.

The many documents lately found add tre

mendously to Miranda's side of disputes and to

his connection with the events of those years the

world over. His acquaintance with many of the

great of his day, Washington, Adams, Jefferson,

Pitt of England, Catherine of Russia, and many

others adds interest to his career; his comments

upon persons and things are shrewd, often

piquant. Being a person of quite untrammeled

opinion, his admiration of the character of Wash

ington and comments on his popularity will in

terest any student of American biographies.

Not least in the value of the work is the de

tailed story of Venezuela's struggle for independ

ence which absorbed so much of Miranda's later

life. The whole work is not only absorbingly

interesting, but it adds a store of entirely new

information to the reader of general history.

All Quiet on the Western Front. By Erich

Maria Remarque. Translated from the German

by A. W. Wheen. Pp. 291. Little, Brown &

Co., Boston, 1929. Price, $2.50.

"This book is to be neither an accusation nor

a confession, and least of all an adventure, for

death is not an adventure to those who stand

face to face with it. It will try simply to tell

of a generation of men who, even though they

have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the

war." This, without a heading, precedes the first

chapter. And the book, written in the first person,

its scenes drawn evidently from experience, that of

of the author and of his friends, goes on quite sim

ply, without pose or apparent exaggeration, to tell

of the unnatural life, become habitual. It gives the

horrors, the comradeship, the pranks, the super

stitions, the terror of loneliness, the physical pains

and pleasures and the occasional dull wonder,

the "living of a closed, hard existence of the

utmost superficiality." "But then, unexpectedly, a

flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up."

Again, on home leave, he feels it necessary to parry

his father's minute questionings ; "it is too danger ous for me to put these experiences into words.

I am afraid they might become gigantic, and I be

no longer able to master them."

The thing most tragic of all to this young

German soldier is the thought of the boys who

have come straight from school, the youth who

had had no time to find themselves in civilian

life before the war. Others may be able to go

back to a trade or profession. But these, even

though they have escaped shells and obscenities,

have lost something in their formative period.

Their lives now will never find fulfillment. Life

can never restore the things they lost. These are

the casualties.

If we must find something cheerful out of the

hardness and desperate woe of this book let us

say that one who could write such a book, read

by thousands all over the world, has not quite

missed his chance of living a useful life. It is a

book which finally takes the glamor out of war.

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.60 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 18:30:30 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions