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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 .
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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