Undoubtedly his book should be read with great deliberation,
constant reference to the maps and a lively recollection of personal
experiences on the spot; but the civilian reader may still be content
to skim the text and save himself for the photographs. These, mostly
taken from the air and of exquisite technical quality, form an amazing
series, in themselves worth the heavy price. And who minds heavy
prices when the proceeds are pledged to the service of wounded
officers?
* * * * *
"Rather an anti-climax," I thought when I opened _The Happy Foreigner_
(HEINEMANN) and found that it purported to tell the experiences of an
English _chauffeuse_ in France after the Armistice; but I know now
that, in any place where ENID BAGNOLD happened to be, there would not
be any anti-climax about. In a style so daring and vivid that it
could only have been born, I suppose, of fast driving, the authoress
describes a romantic affair with a young French officer; but her real
theme is the suffering of France bowed down under the intolerable
burden of so many strangers, both enemies and friends. The rich and
well-fed Americans who will not trouble to understand, the grotesque
Chinamen and Annamites, the starving Russians liberated from the
Germans, flash by, with the ruins of villages, the tangle of wire and
litter of derelict guns; and even the romance, intensely felt though
it is, must be fleeting, like the rest of the nightmare, because the
Frenchman's eyes are set on the future and the rebuilding of his
fortunes.
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