The Marne
By . New York: D. APPLETON & Co. 1918. Tall 16mo, vi + 128 pp. $1.25.
MRS. WHARTON, in her latest story, is a stern guide to the very storm-centre of the World War. Troy Belknap, the hero, an American boy who, at fifteen, sees the initial ravaging of the land he loves, and who carries her sufferings in his heart until his years permit him to take a share in the struggle, in 1918, possibly seems less an individualized character than a personification of Mrs. Wharton’s love of France; yet this hardly matters. It is a fine and disinterested devotion which is pictured in those tragic days of 1914 which end his boyhood, in the school years which follow, when he chafes because of his inability to help, in his share in the second battle of the Marne, which brings him the boon of suffering.
The author’s old aloofness, her air of being wholly apart from the human spectacle which she is presenting, appears here only in the background. There is welcome relief in the satire of certain impetuous American helpers, who, failing to understand, patronize a France immeasurably nobler than they, and offer their guidance to lift her to a higher level of domestic and of spiritual life. Mrs. Wharton’s keen rapier touches deftly here and there, at points where a little literary bloodshed is not amiss. It is well for us to know that we who approach the France of to-day have much more to learn than to teach.
To the voluble benevolence of the many, Troy’s ironic sense of failure, running through his great desire and his endeavor to help, presents a fine contrast. His heroism is the greater because of his own sense of its littleness. Here is none of the glamour of war, but a silent and enduring idealism that out-distances the days of nodding plumes.
In depicting the crisis of her hero’s life, at this crucial moment of the world’s history, the author betrays an intensity of feeling which constantly stimulates and defies expression. There is a deadly quiet about the book, as if the situation were beyond the power of words. Whether the repression marks disdain of more facile writers, who have voiced more loudly emotion more quickly stirred, or whether it reflects the dilemma of an analyst, a skilled satirist in the grasp of passion for which her old forms of expression are inadequate, is hard to say. The note of mysticism at the end is surprising; many a reader would have preferred to miracle some hint of inner spiritual growth as the crown of Troy’s fine heroic struggle. But, whatever question one may ask about this or that phase of the story, no American can fail to take delight in Mrs. Wharton’s singlemindedness of devotion as evinced here — that deep attachment to France which has inspired her unremitting practical work for the sufferers in France during the years of war.
M. S.