Fiction

Italy Liberated, Greece Conquered-and
Democratic Freedom accept young Greeks. The things he
hates could quite easily be identified
A Bell for Adano. By John Hersey. (GoUancz, 8s. 6d.) Household In Athens. By Glenway Westcott. (Flemish Hamilton, 8s. 6d.) My Days of Anger. By James Far tell. (Routledge, Ills. 6d.) William and the Emperor. By Lewis Gibbs. (Dent. 8s. 6d.) Reviewed by W. J. WOE THE first three novels arg studies in fictionised reportage. Each has a social imeu, Lance and alt arc interesting tales. I pretcr Mr Hersey's.
Hersey bnought his story back from Italy. He covered the liberation for an American newspaper. He lived among the people
It tells a moral tale of Adano, a small Italian township. and Major Viltor Joppolo, Amgot officer, citizen of New York City, who will administer it for the Allies. Major Joppolo is " a good man."
He estimates the situation in the town. He is determined that the simple people will be made to feel liberation as something that will restore their belief in government and ordered justice. He is a democrat with the burnmg faith in democracy which is the finest • thing in American political life.
Major Joppolo judges the people of Adano strictly on their merits as men_ He undcroands their weakness, for he knows his own weakness. He gives them working jobs. He goes to Mass. He consults with the elders on the town's problems. He has an affection for the citizens because they remind him of his forbears. The people come to love him because he is good and because he has promised to restore their The bell had been taken by the Blackshirts to melt into a gun. Guns might be placed on a higher level than butter in certain circumstances in A.lano, but not on a higher level than the bell. The bell is tradition. It rang out the Angelus; it called the people to prayer, to weddings, to church; it brought them to the town
crier and it tolled for their dead. it was a bell of peculiar characteristics. They knew every tone of its tongue; it consoled them as the .voiceof a mother will control a worried family. It had always been Adano. The bell was a symbol of confident life. Major Joppolo divined this he was "h good man." He set out to find the bell because he knew, as professional democrats don't. that confidence is the foundation of just society. Confidence is faith.
And then emerged General Marvin. who is a " bad man " The General bears such a startling resemblance to another general who is, alas. no figment of a reporter's imagination, that it is better not to dwell too much on the detail Hersey uses to create him on paper. He " totes " a gun. He wears spurs and careers in a jeep. He " cusses " out loud He is a ' gogetter." In fact, he is the worst type of American. The type British moviegoers-most often imitate. In a fit of spleen he issues a stupid order based on the tank-like ignorance of a congenital corporal in a Sam-Brown. The order will mean economic death to Adano. Major Joppolo countermands it.
The story then •becomes a race between the major's work and the general's discovery of .h:s action.
It is absorbing; Hersey's characters glow all the life an affectionate, honest writer can give them In his denouement lies a moral which if it were absorbed by all Europe and the U.S. would make the tolling of the bells of Adana, Berlin. Coventry and Albany, N.Y.S., toll proudly for the simple deaths of persons instead of in vicious hysteria for the mutilations of the world This is a "good -book." I wish a British reportet had written it.
GENWAY Westcott shows great skill in re-creating his household in Athens, but one feels he has oversimplified. He has taken the propaganda which could logically be drawn by our people from Nazi doctrine and created his Germans on that basis. Germans, fortunately for Europe, are people. They can's be fitted into psychopathic herds. It would be tragic for humankind if they could be. They woald, in fact, be just exactly like the Jews as Hitler describes that unforunate and cruelly abused people. The Germans must be understood. And we need cool heads to‘understand.
Mr. Westcott's German officer who sites up residence in the home of Helianos, the Greek publisher, is a 'ype drawn from hate-propaganda. He is explained in terms of the now psychologies. Helianos is a man with a deep inferiority complex. Mrs. Helianos is a hypochondriac. Master Helianos is a Greek boy twisted by hatred so much that he would make useful addition to the Hiller Youth were that organisation to decide to " • lish or the niggers, given a skilful propaganda macnine to redirect them. The child feels; be does not think we are expected to admire him.
This novel has been created by a craftsman of writing who presents a:aut, intensely' interesting tale, which is as phoney as a Goabbeta' Jew-lie and as dangerous. Incidentally. I will lay a wager that Westcott has been no nearer Greece in this war than a Greek restaurant in Greenwich Village.
THE whole problem of democratic
society is raised in Mr. Fariell's My Days of Anger. His hero, Danny O'Neill, never knew anything but the freedom his fellows now defend on the destroyed continent, which cradled it and its fundamental concept. Yet this freedom brought the boy despair. Danny is young, eager, and perplexes] by life. He is a Catholic but his Catholicism is stifled by the conditions in which it must find its being. These conditions, upheld by other Catholics. fling. the lie back in the teeth of his creed. He loses his faith. Like many another boy democratic society robs him of it. Flow he regains it makes painful reading, almost as harrowing as the novel's first part, his descent. But Danny finds penitence is the first step towards a living faith. Mr. Farrell's book' cannot he recommended except
to the detached reader. He flings obscenity on his pages. fiercely But
he is honest, not a seeker after sensaaon. My Days of Anger is brutal. crude, but its writer has the heart and oyes of an artist. A book for adults only, for them a must.
MY last book must regretfully be written off in a few lines. William and the Emperor is a chartnsig tale. as pleasant to read for its careful ironically, affectionate craftsmanship as for its story. It contrasts the character of William, seventeen-year-old ensign in the army of Wellington. with that of he Emperot Napoleon. It is a book for all to read — young people and adults—and unusual 'n a book with this classification nowadays it bristle. with shafts of quiet wisdom on the subject of peace and war