Review Essay : Faltering Steps in No Man's Land : The Problems Raised by Three French Writers and the Great War

Frank Field , Three French Writers and the Great War. Barbusse, Drieu la Rochelle, Bernanos: Studies in the Rise of Communism and Fascism (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 212pp. £4.75.

D. Caute , Communism and the French Intellectuals (London, 1964).

J. Plumyène and R. Lassierra. Les Fascismes français 1923-1963 (Paris , 1963).

J. Mabire. Drieu parmi nous (Paris, 1963).

For a contrary view see J. King on Barbusse and B.A. Rowley on Remarque in The First World War in Fiction (to be published bv Macmillan later this year). The literature on Toller is by now so rich as to render picking out specific studies unnecessary.

F.J. Grover , Drieu la Rochelle and the Fiction of Testimony (Berkelev and Los Angeles, 1958 ), 248f.

E.g. pp. 29, 75, 83, 124, 146, 159, 166, 170f, 183, 191.

To cite just two major studies which are—surprisingly—absent from Field's fairly long list of criticism:

H. Deluë , Les Romans de Georges Bernanos ou le défi du êve ( Neuchâtel, 1965);

B.T. Fitch , Dimensions et structures chez Bernanos (Paris, 1969).

Cambridge University Press have produced the book with admirable care. The only errors noted are: p. 142 was (instead of were), p. 144 exercised (instead of exercises), p. 196, note 3 fransaise (instead of français), p. 200, note 24 Fascimes (instead of Fascismes). On p. 128 the German commander at Stalingrad is erroneously ennobled (von Paulus instead of plain Paulus), p. 176 wavers between calling Barbusse's "La Force" a novel and a story, and on p. 199, note 1, P. Andreu's work Drieu, témoin et visionaire (Paris, 1952) is referred to as "op. cit." whereas this is the first reference to it.