His return to Brasted is described with excellent irony.
* * * * *
Mr. WILL IRWIN'S war-book naturally divides itself into two parts, since
he was lucky enough to get near the Front both about Verdun during the
great attack, and with the Alpini fighting on "the roof of Armageddon."
To these brave and picturesque friends of ours he dedicates his study,
_The Latin at War_ (CONSTABLE). You must not expect much of that inside
information which the author, as an American journalist, must have been
sorely tempted to produce. Indeed he has little to offer us that has not
been common property of the Correspondents for long enough, and several
of his descriptions (his picture of a glacier, for one), given with a
rather irritatingly childlike air of new discovery, cannot escape the
charge of commonplace. But his reflections, for once in a way the better
half of experience, more than make good this defect. His essay on Paris,
for instance--"the city of unshed tears"--is something more than
interesting, and his analysis of the cause of the successes of the
French army, in the face of initial defects of material, even better.
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