The Young Soldier
By
PROFESSOR JOAD is a philosopher-humorist. The Adventures of the Young Soldier in Search of the Better World is a sort of Alice in Wonderland and also an illuminating analysis of the ways proposed to make the post-war tomorrow worth man’s living in.
A young officer has heard that he is fighting to create a better world and asks, “Yes, but how?” He wanders forth into a Lewis Carroll forest and meets strange mentors. Captain Nick says that man is incurably vicious and that hope for a better world is sentimental nonsense. He vanishes in a brimstone smell, and Mr. Speakeasy comes to advocate a return to the status quo ante, but has no idea how to bring that about. Mr. Transportouse, the Labor Party, advocates socialized mass production as a cure-all. That will give leisure to everyone; but will leisure be a blessing or a curse? Transportouse is not sure.
Along comes the Ultra-red Robot, a Marxist full of proletarian clichés. He speaks and acts by clockwork and occasionally runs down and must be rewound by a robotmaster. And here is that once harmless bureaucrat, the Red-tape Worm, who has lately been crossbred with the Planner Worm and become diabolical. He describes the world of super-gadgets in a passage which will never again allow the reader to hear radio “plugs” about plastics and the like with a straight face. Hurrah not only for the cinema and television but also for the “smellies” and the “feelies"! And dreadful is the system of thought-conditioning by which man is to become subhuman and able to enjoy the Red-tape-Worm-Planner world, instead of spewing it out in nausea.
Then Joad presents religion, as Joad misunderstands it. Mr. Heardhux, a combination of Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley, lectures the Young Soldier on the primacy of the spiritual, but is possessed w7ith fond desire to escape into an astral place. This is skillful burlesque. Choruses of long-robed Theosophists, Oxford Groupers, Crystal Gazers, and Christian Scientists sing droll songs. Here Joad’s satire is too Swiftian to be effective. As for the Church, Joad dismisses it with an airy gesture, revealing his old prejudices still uncorrected. The only Churchman in the book is the Rev. Mr. Hateman, who shouts, “Kill all Germans and Japs, and the better world will be here.” When one remembers the real utterances of Church leaders about after-the-war and knows the character of Christian devotions in these days of tragedy, Joad’s gibes about the Church stick in one’s craw. Aside from that, this book is truly amusing, and more important than one might at first suppose. Arco, $2.00.
BERNARD IDDINGS BELL